The First Commandment

You shall have no other gods but me.

So this god, who was supposedly talking to Moses and giving him a set of rules, is worried about competition. Followers of the Abrahamic faiths claim that there is only one god and that god is all powerful. This first commandment actually acknowledges that there are other gods, but the god of Moses’ first instruction to humans is that they must accept him as their god. It seems like a very insecure position for an all powerful god to take doesn’t it?

Some might argue that this is an inadequacy of language or translation and that god is unique and just giving the instruction for people to acknowledge that. That does raise the amusing question of what language does god speak. Is it Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic? In which language were the stone tablets inscribed? A pre-hebrew desert semitic dialect?

Anyway, let’s get back to the heart of it. If there is only one god there is no possibility that anybody shall have another one so the commandment is pointless. If it is an insistence, as it is taken to be, that people should not worship false gods why doesn’t it say that? If the Abrahamic god is all powerful and the only god anyway, why does it matter if people have mistaken beliefs in non existence gods. Why doesn’t an all powerful god make his human creation undertand that there is only one god. There are a host of more realistic options for this god than to give an instruction that people shall have no other god but him.

The truth, of course, is that Moses did not talk to god. There were no tablets of stone handed down from the deity. There was no god giving such silly instructions. The commandments are human made. They are products of their time and of no relevance to twenty first century humans other than as subjects for academic study.

Deprivation

 

When you could see the ribs of the poor

and the fat man watered their beer.

You knew who got exploited

You knew who to pity or fear.

 

The waif who was wan with rickety knees,

the rich man deaf to his desperate pleas,

died of consumption or killed at the loom.

Nothing marked his pauper tomb.

 

Now we have underprivileged

who are fat and spotty and rude.

While the super rich are toned and trim,

helping the starving grow food.

 

An oil rich man with a yacht or two

and a football club for fun

is an easy shot for the feckless lot

who think they have been hard done.

 

The fat cats they say are parasites

bloated on ill earned gains,

but who is tied to their Blackberry

and who on a couch just lays?

 

A thirty stone woman

wheezes and pants

the fifty hard yards

to the pub.

 

There she labours through

five portions a day

of alcohol, burger, nicotine, pizza

and pure, pure ecstasy.

 

Her loutish lover leers

through smack wracked, bloodshot eyes

at the writhing teenage arse

framed by a thin black thong.

 

A blotchy beau with spike pierced cheeks

leaps to honour’s cause.

He and Mr Stanley

will carve respect on cheeky jaws.

 

Through blood and screams the medics work

to save these wasted lives.

Their patients kick and shout abuse

at those who treat their wounds.

 

Like education, that they valued,

free health care is their right.

They use it every weekend

after drinking through the night.

 

The woman lurches homeward

to her seven dadless kids.

They have their chips and Gameboy

and the freedom of the streets.

 

Just a normal family

struggling through life.

The fat cats are just ignorant

of the poor who have such strife.

Forty Two

 

Disgraced.

Disgraceful, dirty deal

to save a neck unworthy.

Presumption of an innocence

that’s stood 800 years,

today was sold to Ulster

with nine tawdry, traded votes.

 

Life, the universe and everything

depends upon defeating,

the theft of precious freedom

from those who dare to think.

 

No martyr and no caliphate

has stolen peace or land.

The pledges torn

from King John’s hold

died by our own Brown hand.

 

Disgraced.

Disgraceful, dirty deal

done at the Red Top bidding,

will save none from a dreadful fate.

Nor, Gordon, will it save your neck.