Not A Suggestion

 Thou shalt not kill. Let's start with that. It will be our base line. It's what God commanded, and put on a bit stone tablet for Moses to lug down the side of Mount Sinai. If it was important enough to carve into stone, it was probably a sentiment worth noting. Of course, the Lord was pretty comfortable forgetting this edict from time to time, or sending his minions out to do that thing that he specifically forbade us from doing. Kill, that is. 

So the bar seems to move for us all. We shalt not kill unless we go to war, for example. Keeping in mind that killing the other guys is completely acceptable and even encouraged once you get into an army. And I suppose it goes without saying that it is still frowned upon to kill the guys on your side. Because that would be murder, and you could get into big trouble for that. Big enough trouble, in fact, that you might be punished by being killed. 

Yeah. I know. 

If you're not in an army, you probably shouldn't kill anyone. We went ahead and made some laws that pretty much covered most of the ways that killing could happen. You've got your manslaughter, which is pretty bad but not as bad as murder which has it's own potential list of circumstances. Accidentally killing someone is bad, but planning to kill someone is much worse. So bad, in fact, that depending on where you kill someone, you might end up being killed for killing someone. That's mostly if you really mean to. If you didn't mean to kill someone, then you probably won't have to die yourself, but God will probably be really disappointed with you. Really disappointed. You shalt not kill, after all. 

Yet, somehow, killing takes place all the time. Across the globe and right here in the U S of A. There is so much killing that God may be getting pretty numb to all of the folks breaking that number one commandment. 

Kind of like the rest of us. 

When our laws start to diminish the seriousness of this offense, it tends to make the offense less offensive. When people get away with murder, it's like they're getting away with murder. That's why we have that expression. It's hard to figure how such a thing could happen. 

But it does. There are as many excuses for killing one another as there are murders. I don't know if you've noticed, but there seems to be some question about those folks who are in charge of keeping us from killing each other have been implicated in quite a few killings themselves. When peace officers kill, they need to have a very good reason. They're supposed to, anyway. When it gets too easy for the killing to be done without any questions, then all those laws or commandments don't have the same deterrent effect. 

Thou shalt not kill. It really shouldn't matter what you do for a living, and if your job is to keep us from killing one another, then you really should. And maybe the laws about killing should apply to you too. Because it's not just a suggestion. It's a commandment.