During this past week's fabulous retreat, the "Let's start a new Religion" committee took on the notion of "commandments". Since this format has worked in the past, the committee felt obligated to consider adoption or adaptation of the concept. Here is how the committee left the subject at the close of the last session.
* We reference the meat and potatoes / bare bones / easiest to translate word choice version of the commandments. Thou shalt not, is assumed to be synonymous with Do not etc etc.
1. Do not worship any other gods
This is a reasonable required administrative rule. Competition is fierce out there. We appreciate the original intent, but most agreed that we would need to tweak the language just a bit. In an attempt to frame the idea in a positive way (so many of these start with "do not"), it was suggested that "Worship only what we say to worship", might work better. This also gives us some flexibility down the road. We thought that perhaps we would post the worship list on the web.
2. Do not make idols
We find that it is way too easy to make idols these days. As such, the committee decided that we would consider going with a complete reversal on this. This would no doubt be a controversial move, but heck - we ultimately plan to be judges on most matters, so we can handle it. The proposal was to go with, "Make idols".
3. Do not misuse the name of God
We have accepted for some time that "God" is not a phrase / name / trademark that we can secure for ourselves. We've been working on several alternatives, and we expect that whatever we call our Chief (it won't be Chief), it will be protected by Patent and Trademark laws. We'll probably just go with “Do not misuse the name of [insert]"; followed eventually by the R with the circle around it indicating a registered trademark - and we will sue. For now we use TM suggesting we own it even though it's not official.
4. Keep the Sabbath holy
Our Sabbath will be Friday. Since we don't do creationism (it didn't do well in focus groups), the whole tuckered out on the seventh day thing - is not working for us. Once we decided that trying to change the number of days in a week was too big of a battle (eight days would have worked swell, but we won't get into that now), we selected the afternoon on Friday as our religious excuse day. For practical reasons we have also made "opt-out" synonymous with "keep holy". At high noon on Friday, you can opt-out of anything you need out of - for the rest of the day. So the new commandment is recommended to be, "Friday Afternoons are Optional".
5. Honour your mother and father
The committee concluded that this commandment wasn't at all bad. All that is needed here is a freshening. We could have simply spelled honour as honor and left it at that. We also had a proposal to make it, "Be covered by your parent’s health and liability insurance until you are at least 18". In the end, we decided to go with, "Parent well and prosper".
6. Do not murder
a.k.a. Do not kill (Catholic translation)... Tough to argue with this one. Some states would lobby for exceptions for capital or particularly heinous crimes. And then there is the whole issue of a woman's right to choose. We also have interference from P.E.T.A. Hey - who decides on eligibility of species? Rather than print all the exceptions in the commandment directly, we thought perhaps we could use a cover commandment of "No Killing People", and then refer everyone to the website for details. This seemed like we were avoiding the question, and the committee found itself going off on tangents, so our facilitator called for a stand-n-stretch, which was immediately kicked up to a pee-n-smoke. When we came back, we agreed to create a sub-committee to look into number six specifically, and make some recommendations. So - for now, we'll stick with, "Do not murder". If you do murder something before a new commandment is published, you do so at your own risk.
7. Do not commit adultery
Once again, we felt the need to clean up some gray areas. An effort was made to review subjects such as web-porn, strippers, masturbation and sniffing the air as pretty girls walk past you in the mall. The committee did extensive research in this area and concluded that the definition of Adultery is a personal matter. The language will become, "Do not show the world your nasty ways". We don't encourage or condone cheating on your partner -no no no. You can covet / drool over your neighbor’s wife, but bang her at your own risk and keep in mind divorce is expensive. We just want to be more open. We realize this is a bit of a departure from the original version, but in a world where Viagra, Cialis and the whole "wood" industry is on fire, we'll include the "spice" benefit in our marketing package hoping to attract more followers. Nuff said?
8. Do not steal
Another hard to argue with point. So much so, that the committee initially thought it could not be improved upon. Yes, there's that set of circumstances where disputes arise and people argue over who owns what, but we have to remember that we're not government. We're just religious leaders. We reminded ourselves that we decide what's right and wrong, and then we sit back and watch people scramble to take advantage. In this area - much the same as killing - we couldn't go into too much detail. After some debate (we always debate - it's healthy), we elected to go with. "No stealing". Essentially the same thing, but with a fresh face.
9. Do not lie
These things seemed to get trickier and trickier. We observed that the Catholics took a crack at this back in the day. They came up with a rating system for sins that appeared to be geared toward the lie. Society is willing to dismiss some lies as "little white". As long as they don't do too much damage, you can get a pass. The committee found this area to be muddy at best, and we struggled with what to do about it. Rating system? No rating system? Once we were reminded by the facilitator of our real purpose, we were able to come up with, "Do not lie to us - ever, no exceptions".
10. Do not covet
This was a problem for most members. After all, coveting is an important economic driver, and we (especially the men) find coveting to be something we might not do when we're sleeping, but otherwise - we're coveting all the time. If it isn't cars or gadgets, it's women and money. The committee thought perhaps we could just blow anti-coveting out and slip in a wildcard commandment in its place. We had some serious fun with that idea, but eventually decided to go in a different direction and deal directly with coveting. We added a reference link footnote to the Gekko speech, and chose "Do not admit to coveting" as our tenth rule. You can covet all you want, but don't talk about it. By going with this version, we were also playing to the committee members who really thought we needed somewhere to say, "Do not be annoying".
In summary, the committee enjoyed a fabulous weeklong retreat at a charming resort. The golf, tennis and shopping were top shelf. The committee enjoyed the reprieve from the discussion of required hats and other ceremonial garments. We would like to thank the members for all they do - especially the taller females.
To recap the current recommendations regarding commandments:
1. Worship only what we say to worship
2. Make idols
3. Do not misuse the name of [insert TM]
4. Friday Afternoons are Optional
5. Parent well and prosper
6. Do not murder*
7. Do not show the world your nasty ways
8. No stealing
9. Do not lie to us - ever, no exceptions
10. Do not admit to coveting
Thank you.
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