Highlight: Influence of the Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments provide a biblical framework for the ethics, such as love and compassion, that have shaped the western world. Dr. John Dickson expands on the influence and impact the Ten Commandments has had on our society.
“It isn’t just that the Ten Commandments shaped the West, it’s the Ten Commandments via the teaching of Jesus that shaped the West. It wasn’t Jewish missionaries who took the law of Moses throughout Europe and around the world. It was Christian missionaries, with the Sermon on the Mount, the whole Gospel and the Ten Commandments, and that’s what shaped the world.”
According to Dr. Dickson points to the dissonance between evolution and inalienable rights as one example of how Christianity has shaped how we think.
“If there is no God, what is the basis for regarding human beings as inestimably precious, as possessing inalienable rights?”
“These ideas really can’t be based, rationally, on an evolutionary model. If we are just an accident in the universe, how on earth can you say that a human being has inalienable rights and is inestimably precious?”
Our belief in God provides a rational basis for the ethics of love and compassion because the characteristics of God shape how we define good and bad.
“If there is a God, whose own character is imprinted on the universe, then instantly there is a difference between the good life and the bad life – it is a rational difference.”
“When our lives reflect the character of the God who made everything, they are good. When they depart from that character, then they’re bad. So there is a rational basis to biblical ethics that really doesn’t exist in the atheist view of the world, even if we can happily concede there are some wonderfully, beautiful, humanitarian atheists.”
How does Jesus understand and expand the Ten Commandments?
“In the Old Testament law itself, there is the acknowledgment that the people of God won’t be able to keep these commandments, that they’ll need to seek God’s forgiveness. There is a sense in which even the Old Testament looks forward to a New Testament, to a new covenant, where there will be a new Moses who will provide the answer for our forgiveness because we have actually fallen short of these commandments.”
“The New Testament says that’s Jesus; Jesus is the new Moses who died on a cross so that we could be forgiven, but who also gave a law in the Sermon on the Mount that is the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments.”
Dr. Dickson reminds us that the Ten Commandments, through the teachings of both Moses and Jesus, provides a rational, biblical framework of love and compassion that has shaped the hearts of believers and non-believers alike.
“Each of the Commandments has a reflection in the teaching of Jesus that intensifies, or beautifies, the teaching of Moses. So it’s really Moses and Jesus together.”
Dr. John Dickson (PhD, Macquarie University, Sydney) is a senior research fellow of the Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University; co-director of the Centre for Public Christianity; and senior minister at St. Andrew’s Roseville. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including . Dr. Dickson is the host of two major historical documentaries for Australian television and is a busy public speaker in corporations, universities, churches, and conferences.
