God Wasted a Huge Opportunity

The poet Katha Pollitt has noted that God wasted a huge moral opportunity with the ten commandments.  She wrote:  “How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people’s countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beatings, stoning, treating women–or anyone–as chattel or inferior beings.”

Instead we get one about honoring the Sabbath and another about not coveting your neighbor’s wife’s ass.  I’m a little shaky on that last one; I think that’s what it says.  In any case, Pollitt has a point.