You Shall Have No Other Gods BEFORE Me?

For those us who do not know the first of these ten, here is a refresher from Exodus 20:

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

Peter Rollins pointed out that the first of the 10 commandments can be read at least two ways. The first way to read this is as the people should not have any gods in the presence of the living God. It is interpreted as a directive as abolishing any other god from our lives.

However, there is another way to read this commandment: You can have other gods, but they shall not come first.

In this way the commandment suggests, “you can have other gods but they have to stand behind the living God. In this way we shall worship no other gods before the living God.”

In practice, the more we worship something the more we draw closer to that thing, just take a standard Christian worship service. The hope in this setting is that we would draw close to God in our worship. The one who worships and draws close to the living God will begin to see only God. That is how worship “works” and changes our lives.

Drawing close to that which is worshiped not only gives us the eyes to see, but it also blinds us to anything outside of the object of worship. For instance, if we worship fame and celebrity, we will begin to look at what can bring us those thing while ignoring (become blind) to the things that imped the fame and celebrity status we worship.

God knows we are driven to worship and that we often choose idols that lead us to death. And no matter how hard we try, even the most devout person will be temped by idols. God’s wisdom and cleverness shines through by saying in this commandment - “Look, I know you are not going to give up your idols, in fact you can keep all your other “gods”, they do not bother me, but do not have those gods before me. Worship me first.” And when we worship God first, when we draw close to God, then even if there are other idols we will be unable to see them and worship them.

Every parent knows this when it comes to feeding children. Parents know that kids will usually always be tempted to eat desert. Some parents might say, “before you eat desert eat your healthy dinner first and then wait ten minutes.” In this way, the child is likely to eat less desert since they are full from the meal or they have forgotten after ten minutes. Other parents make the prohibition of not eating any desert at all. And, if the Bible has taught us anything it is that the prohibition actually generates additional desire for the thing that is off limits. One might imagine we would be in a different place if God said, “Adam/Eve, you are free to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, but before you do, you must first eat from every other tree.”

Maybe since the misstep with Adam and Eve, God pivoted and said, “you shall have no other gods before me.”

Now, it is our turn to pivot our worshiping habits.

The Ten Commandments - Bottoms Up

Human beings seem to love lists. I would guess that 30-35% of sports talk radio is some form of “list talk”. Questions like “top 5 soccer players” or “who would you have in your starting line up” or “worst quarterback of all time” all are versions of “list talk”.

Like most lists, there is a bias toward #1. It is usually at the top of the list as you work your way up from #10. The “top spot” is reserved for the penultimate of the list talk conversation and the top of the list is also a short hand embodiment of the whole list. It is as though lists “build up” to who is #1 like a triangle with #1 being the peak.

This is bias is important in that it impacts how we read and understand the 10 commandments of Exodus 20.

The bias toward #1 might give the impression that the first commandment (You shall not have any other gods before me), is the most important. And there is nothing wrong with that assumption, frankly that is a really good commandment. However, the power of that commandment is lost when we read it as #1 and the others are slightly “less important” - especially the farther down the list you get.

However, if we read the 10 commandments not as a list of descending commandments, but as a list that builds up to something then we come to a keen insight.

If you read the 10 commandments as building up to the last commandment (you shall not covet) then you may come to see that it is #10 that is the most important commandment - not the least.

If we were a people who did not covet , if we did not desire the desires of others, if we were only desiring the desires of God, then all the other commandments would not be necessary. We have false gods because we covet the power of that god. We do not honor the sabbath because we covet the approval of the market to make money. We would not kill or participate in adulatory if we did not covet our neighbors things or loved ones.

The next time you read the 10 Commandments, consider reading them from ten to one and see how that impacts how you understand them. And then, let us not violate the commandment to covet.

The Problem Is We Practice "No Other Gods Before Me"

Of the “Ten Commandments” perhaps you can name a few: Don’t steal, Don’t murder, honor you mother and father, keep sabbath. Many of these are straight forward, but Peter Rollins mentions an interesting point from philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The point that I gathered is Zizek argues that commandment “You shall have no other Gods before me” might me that we should not have gods “in front” the God of the Bible. As in physically before, in front of. The idea being that we all have little gods and perhaps the commandment is saying, keep your other little gods, just don’t worship them in before (in front of or prior to worshiping) God.

This may sound odd but the Bible does not begin at monotheism. Monotheism says that there is ONLY one God. However, when you read the Bible you will see that there are in fact many gods. For instance, Psalm 82 assume there are many gods: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (82:1). In a monotheistic worldview there is no need to mention other gods.

However the Bible does not stay in the polytheistic world very long before it makes a theological step toward monotheism. Before arriving at monotheism, there is a long stop at something called henotheism. Henotheism might admit there are other gods, but that our God is the best. Psalm 95 says, For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

This is where Zizek’s observation comes into play. The Ten Commandments is in the era of henotheism and thus having no other gods before the God of the Bible makes sense in a henotheistic world.

But today we are supposed to be monotheistic. That is we are supposed to understand that there is only one God. No others. This God is the Alpha and the Omega - the greatest and the weakest. God is all there is.

However, a case might be made that we are stuck in the henotheism. We live our lives taking the commandment “no other gods before me” very literally. That is, we worship our little gods of power, money, ego, prestige, nature, resentment, and envy but we don’t do it “before” we worship God of Jesus Christ.

The problem is not that we worship God, it is that we practice having no other gods before God.

How is "Love one another" a New Commandment?

In John 13:34-35 Jesus says “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Upon reflection I have to ask, “How is this a NEW commandment? Didn’t Jesus talk about and share love all the time? Then what makes this so NEW?”

Yes, Jesus taught about and lived out love in so many different ways so the way this commandment is NEW is the direction of the love.

Notice that Jesus says we are to love one another and that through loving one another we are disciples of Jesus. The direction of the love is toward the other person. More specifically, the direction of the love is NOT toward Jesus.

Perhaps what makes this a NEW commandment is that Jesus is removing himself from the equation of the direction of love and commanding disciples to love the other person. What is new is that Jesus is removing the requirement of direct affection and love of him (the leader) as proof that the disciple follows the leader.

It is much more common for the leader to say, “direct your love toward me and in this way people will know you are my disciples.” Rather Jesus says the opposite.

The more I come to discover about Jesus the more I am amazed at the constant kenosis (self-emptying) of God in Christ. Jesus came down, was obedient to even the point of death, and then when giving his farewell address to his disciples he says - put one another as the direction of your love.

What does it mean for us in the Church to say, “we love you Jesus” and for Jesus to say, “please direct your love to one another”?