The Decalogue and avoidance

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Please help me understand why you like the way the Decalogue is written.
I find the Ten commandments to be written with the focus on avoidance. I don’t find this very helpful.
Would you want a teacher tell you what not to do?
The problem is that people focus too much on what not to do. This can make people passive. It is very easy for a teacher to tell their students they are wrong instead of telling them what they did not do that they should have done.
Moses was tlo focused on what not to do. This isn’t very helpful I think. Tell me what to do rather than what I shouldn’t do. Why was Moses so focused on avoidance?
Has anyone really lived a good life based on avoidance?
The Church often preach what not do do and to me that is anti-helpful in many cases it seems. Why this focus on what not to do?
 
Well, to build the walls and the roof you need to lay the foundation, and the Pentateuch in many ways is the foundation.

As human beings our inherit tendency with morality is to cut corners as much as possible, so we need some things to be explicit.
 
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TK421 said:
As human beings our inherit tendency with morality is to cut corners as much as possible, so we need some things to be explicit.
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Yes but how do we know what to do by focusing on what not to do?
 
The laws that were given in Leviticus & Deuteronomy - most of them - weren’t just moral laws but they were also civil laws that glued the society together and there were punishments for breaking them. There’s not really a coherent way of penalizing somebody for not being generous enough or not being wise enough or not being charitable enough, etc. Explicit commands on what not to do are governable and enforceable by the civil authorities and they promoted the common good.

A person reading the Old Testament can definitely gain an infinite wealth of knowledge for how to live their life, but the laws in the Pentateuch are primarily about governing and creating a more just society, and also precepts related to the Temple and the priests. They’re not so much “God and me” books.
 
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thistle said:
hat if you are instructed about what you cannot do then you should know what you are able to do!
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how do you mean?
If I was told “do not sing the wrong notes” would I know what to do? Probably not.
So how is focusing on what not do to practical?
would you rather hear “pleae, drive on the right side” or “please do not drive on the left side”??

The Church will all its “do not do this and that” attitude confuses me!
 
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The Ten Commandments were just a beginning. The OT is crammed with laws and instruction. Micah 6:8 summarizes how to live… You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.[f(http://www.usccb.org/bible/micah/6#41006008-f)

Besides, the first few commandments weren’t even worded negatively…i.e.have no gods before Him, don’t take His name in vain, keep the Sabbath, honor parents.
 
I think civil laws are a lot about what you did. I think people want God’s law to be like a civil law but I do not agree with this.
Civil law is about putting people in prison for something they did.
With God’s law I think it is a bit different.
I say this: People end up in Hell for what they did and what they didn’t.
Sin always have two sides: the omission and the commission.
This is also true for civil law but this kind of laws focuses more on comission than omission although some laws focuses on omission.
 
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jesusmademe said:
Moses was tlo focused on what not to do. This isn’t very helpful I think. Tell me what to do rather than what I shouldn’t do. Why was Moses so focused on avoidance?
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It’s been close to three thousand years since then. We still have lots of people committing adultery, robbing each other, slandering and falsely accusing, murdering.
We haven’t yet learned that basic lesson.
There is still need to tell us to not do these things.

Also: the Decalogue says don’t do this, don’t do that. But Jesus says love your neighbor. Jesus says feed the hungry, clothe the naked. Jesus says if you have two coats and someone else has none, give them one.
Jesus says no man has greater love than to give his life for his neighbor.
All that sounds very positive indeed to me.
 
So people are allowed to go to Confession and confess their sins of ommissions?
Some poeple have actually said that Priests do not want to hear about omissions.
This confuses me. All sin has two sides: a sin of omission and a sin of comission.
So really, I think we should be allowed to confess the omission as well.
Why would confessing the omission be a bad thing?
I think that all sin has to do with an omission. All sin is about an omission.
Why would someone disagree with me?
 
jesusmademe said:
The Church often preach what not do do and to me that is anti-helpful in many cases it seems. Why this focus on what not to do?
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The Church (and Jesus) preaches the easiest set of rules in the known universe: Love God with all your being; love your neighbor.
Christ clarifies that we are to love each other as He has loved us.
The Decalogue was/is our way of recognizing when we aren’t doing those things.
“Am I loving God?”
-Well, look at the 10 commandments; are you keeping His Day holy? Are you worshipping Him, and Him alone? (Neither of those focus on avoidance, by the way.)
“Am I loving my neighbor?”
-Have you stolen, murdered, coveted…? If so, you are not loving your neighbor.

See how helpful that is?
 
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jesusmademe said:
So people are allowed to go to Confession and confess their sins of ommissions?
Some poeple have actually said that Priests do not want to hear about omissions.
This confuses me. All sin has two sides: a sin of omission and a sin of comission.
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Of course we can confess sins of omission.
I don’t know who said that about the priests, nor why they said it; so I can’t really comment on it.
I’m not sure what you mean by the third sentence.
 
jesusmademe said:
Please help me understand why you like the way the Decalogue is written.
I find the Ten commandments to be written with the focus on avoidance. I don’t find this very helpful.
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Some modern folks who became entangled by call it a spirit of anti-authoritarianism
and who therefore did not want Anyone to dare to tell them what to do or not do,
became vocally opposed to what they’d refer to as the, “THOU SHALT NOTS!”

MeanWhile - the 10 Commandments were very necessary for the folks of that time way back when.

Love God and Love Thy Neighbor - Encompasses those 10 and more…

This, JESUS, brought to the fore -

)
 
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jesusmademe said:
Please help me understand why you like the way the Decalogue is written.
I find the Ten commandments to be written with the focus on avoidance. I don’t find this very helpful.
Would you want a teacher tell you what not to do?
The problem is that people focus too much on what not to do. This can make people passive. It is very easy for a teacher to tell their students they are wrong instead of telling them what they did not do that they should have done.
Moses was tlo focused on what not to do. This isn’t very helpful I think. Tell me what to do rather than what I shouldn’t do. Why was Moses so focused on avoidance?
Has anyone really lived a good life based on avoidance?
The Church often preach what not do do and to me that is anti-helpful in many cases it seems. Why this focus on what not to do?
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Man sins, so man’s righteousness is compromised by evil acts. We must be told what not to do, almost like children. This is because fallen man’s conscience is weakened and dimmed, so Augustine would say, “God wrote on tablets of stone that which man failed to read in his heart.” The most basic commandment, however, is positive: put God first above all else; that is the right order of things for man-and that, in itself, would keep man from committing sin, if perfectly fulfilled.

But God was working with an immature humanity to begin with, preparing them ultimately for the coming messiah, the full light, and one first lesson to be learned is that man cannot be obedient or worthy apart from God: “Apart from Me you can do nothing”, Jesus tells us.

So the Church teaches that a primary lesson to be learned is that the commandments-the law-cannot justify us; it can only serve as a teacher, informing us that we are not justified, simply because we cannot keep it on our own, by our own efforts. The law, as the Church teaches, “discloses sin”. And when we realize our inability to overcome sin, we become open to grace, to a union with God that Jesus came to establish, without which we are spiritually dead. Man was made for communion with God, and creation is out of order to the extent that we are distanced from Him. So we must first be reconciled with Him by coming to know the true God whom Jesus came to reveal:
"No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,” Jer 31:34

"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." John 17:3

That knowledge and the faith it engenders is the first step for man back to a state of justice, the state that all humanity lost at the Fall. Then God can do the justifying, which only He can do:
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people." Jer 31:33

The justice or righteousness that God desires to work in us is most fully defined by the term “love”. Because love, as Rom 13:10 tells us, “fulfills the law”. And this is why the Greatest Commandments are what they are.
 
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But why should we focus on sins of comission rather than sins of omisssion?
This is what I cannot understand?
This confuses me.
 
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jesusmademe said:
But why should we focus on sins of comission rather than sins of omisssion?
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Interesting question…

What do you see as Sins Of Omission?

The Failures of some in Authority to Adequately Teach Catholic Teachings to their Flock? “”
 
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jesusmademe said:
But why should we focus on sins of comission rather than sins of omisssion?
This is what I cannot understand?
This confuses me.
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Maybe because the wrong that we do is the more obvious evil-and the first needing to be addressed? The Decalogue deals with very basic sin-and the catechism then expands on those commandments-and how and why sin reveals an impoverished heart. Every negative is associated with its positive. Rather than taking life, we must cherish and safeguard it. Rather than stealing from a person we’re to respect them and their possessions.

And of course the Greatest Commandments address sin from the positive side-as love inherently opposes and precludes sin.
 
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jesusmademe said:
Please help me understand why you like the way the Decalogue is written.
I find the Ten commandments to be written with the focus on avoidance. I don’t find this very helpful.
Would you want a teacher tell you what not to do?
The problem is that people focus too much on what not to do. This can make people passive. It is very easy for a teacher to tell their students they are wrong instead of telling them what they did not do that they should have done.
Moses was tlo focused on what not to do. This isn’t very helpful I think. Tell me what to do rather than what I shouldn’t do. Why was Moses so focused on avoidance?
Has anyone really lived a good life based on avoidance?
The Church often preach what not do do and to me that is anti-helpful in many cases it seems. Why this focus on what not to do?
Click to expand...
Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. Christ is the fulfillment of everything actually.
The Law was given as instruction for a stiff necked people before Christ has come.
The point of the Law is not obedience to the law per se, the point of the law is fulfillment.
Obedience leads to Christ. To know Christ is to know love.

Love is the point of prohibitions. If you live in love, you live in Godly freedom, and in this freedom a whole new world opens up to you.
 
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I see it this way. If the list of “don’ts” is shorter, list those. Everything else is a “do”.
Dominus Vobiscum
 
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