The New Ten Commandments

In which we cloned Moses and got some updated tablets

Welcome to 2023!

I wrote this story a few weeks before the end of 2022, and after reading it, my wife made the astute observation that it seemed like a good way to kick off the new year.

So here we are.

---

In the year 2023, archeologists discovered a tomb containing the desiccated remains of Moses. Operating outside the ethical constraints of American Science (TM), some enterprising Israeli geneticists decided to clone him. Using some new hand-wavy technology, they also managed to age him up to however old he was when he first went up into the mountain to get those stone tablets from God.

Why? Well, we all wanted an update to the Ten Commandments, and how else were we gonna do it?

Sure enough, once Clone Moses had gotten himself into a nice scratchy robe made out of pure wool, and enjoyed a big bowl of frosted flakes (manna, basically), he headed right on up the nearest mountain to see if God had any thoughts He wanted to share. And of course we got a couple of drones to follow along to see what would happen, and right there near the top you can see God, ever obliging, step right on out of a burning bush to hand over a brand new set of tablets and say, "I think this should about do it."

Now you don't want to spook the Lord God of Israel right in the middle of communing with His chosen (cloned) vessel, so we kept those drones at a safe distance, which turned out to be too far to see what was written on those tablets. We had to wait until the living, breathing triumph of science and religion had trudged all the way back down the mountain to the swiftly growing crowd (#clonemoses had been trending for days). By that point, everyone could clearly read what was written on those freshly engraved stone tablets: ten brand new commandments, in crisp Helvetica font.

1. Thou shalt not eat processed foods

2. Thou shalt moderate all thy appetites

3. Thou shalt get enough sleep and drink enough water

4. Thou shalt exercise thy body and mind, proportional to the comforts with which thou are blessed

5. Thou shalt observe a weekly Sabbath, wherein thou and those in thy employ may rest from labor

6. Thou shalt hearken to the wisdom of thy elders

7. Thou shalt not cleave unto reductionist ideologies

8. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, even and especially on the internet

9. Thou shalt always seek to pay thy privilege forward

10. Thou shalt not doom scroll

We weren't impressed.

Not that these aren't all fine ideals. By 2023, everyone basically agreed that it's good to be healthy and bad to be a jerk. And that's the problem: "Be a good person," doesn't pack much of a philosophical punch.

Which got us all thinking about what made the OG 10 Commandments such a big deal. Wasn't there something about smiting? "Be a good person, or else?" It's one thing to say you should respect your parents, but it's quite another to suggest that if you don't, you and all your friends will die in a famine.

Or anyway, this was the general thrust of the conversation. So we decided to send Clone Moses back up the mountain. Maybe that sounds a little exploitative to your modern sensibilities, but there was a pretty clearly marked trail, which had since become a hot tourist attraction, with plenty of other hikers hoping for a glimpse of the Big Man Himself (meaning God, obviously, not Clone Moses, who was actually remarkably short). Also, by this point we had convinced Moses to get into some hiking boots and breathable underwear, along with a light jacket from The North Face. If it hadn't been for the cameras, nobody probably would have recognized the man with the close-cropped beard and disquieting stare.

Bad news for the camera guys, turns out God wasn't in the mood to be filmed. Soon as the Almighty showed up, all their equipment got smote. Accounts vary, but they all mention snakes. Most of the crew ran back down the mountain -- none of them hurt except for a guy who caught an exposed root with his foot, and wound up with a compound fracture and needed a helo to come get him.

Couple of guys stayed, though. Cowering, as you do. By some miracle, God didn't notice one of them fire up a voice memo on his phone, or He didn't care. Anyway that guy got the whole conversation between Moses and God on tape.

Here's the transcript we took later:

(Side note: hard to say what the original Moses was like, but our clone was a champ. Not much of a talker, but a real mensch when it came to helping us run all these little experiments.)

Moses clears his throat and reads the first of the prepared questions we'd sent him up with.

Moses: Will there be some kind of punishment for breaking these new commandments?

God: Punishment?

Moses: Like will we be smitten with disease or floods or fire from heaven or something if we don't obey?

God: What? I'm sorry...no. Is that a real question?

At this point Moses had to go off script, but we'd all talked so much with him beforehand that he really didn't need it.

Moses: That's what the Bible says. Obey the commandments, get blessings, break them, get punished.

God: Maybe that's what it says if you’re eight years old. And also, what are you doing talking about the bible for? I'm right here.

Moses: So you're saying all that stuff in the Bible isn't about you?

God: I mean some of it, sure. But you do know that book is basically just a long game of telephone, right?

Moses: I'm not sure I understand.

God: You know what, forget it.

Moses: Well what about hell?

God: What about it?

Moses: Is it real?

God: That's a weird question.

Moses: Why?

God: Like a fish asking if the lake it's swimming around in is real.

Moses: You're saying this is hell?

God lets out a weary sigh.

God: When people break the rules, what they get is what they make, and what they make, is hell.

Moses: So there is a punishment for breaking the rules.

God: What?! No! Look, I'm gonna explain this once and then that's it, OK? I don't punish people. I tell them the rules. They're not my rules. They're just the rules. Like gravity is a rule. Like fire is hot. You fall down, it hurts, you pick up a live coal, you get burned. You guys are pretty good at those kinds of rules. You call it science. But that's like a kid doing paint by numbers and calling it art. There's other rules, too, but they're not as obvious. You can't measure them in a lab. Which is why, when people bother to ask, I'm happy to tell them what they are. Whether or not you guys follow the rules is not my responsibility. But that's life. You gotta own it. That's what it's for.

Moses: I guess that makes sense.

God: Great. I gotta go. Good luck with everything.

A clap of thunder. [God's gone.]

When Clone Moses and the Two Witnesses came back down the mountain, it was like all the air got let out of everyone's balloon. We argued for a long time about whether there was some kind of hidden meaning behind God's ranting. But, to our dismay, it all seemed pretty straightforward.

What we realized, when we finally faced the music and admitted God meant what He said, is that we'd been hoping for some kind of shortcut around those stupid commandments. Like someone who wishes there was a trick to learning how to play the piano that didn't require thousands of hours of grueling practice.

Not a bad analogy, actually, considering God's claim that He didn't make the rules -- neither did anyone arbitrarily decide one day that it should take a lot of practice to get good at something. That's just the way it is.

This did introduce the problem of whether a God who didn't make the rules deserves to be worshipped at all. Especially if He's not the punishing kind. Some of us (the more level-headed, perhaps) observed the futility of this question, and that the positions people took on every side of it did far more to reveal their own nature than God's.

Anyway, regardless of all that, what seems pretty well beyond dispute is that the God we've got is not the intervening kind. Which is a pretty big bummer, because personal responsibility is a bitch.

---

Dying to give me, your favorite Substack author, a shiny New Year’s Gift?

Also, look for Chapter 8 of Arch/Eternal this Friday. If you’ve been meaning to catch up, I give you my full permission to blow off work and filial responsibilities to do so.