At least it is funny now. LOL

See you don’t suck! But you are the pilot that can’t change the direction of the plane only keep the passengers as happy as you can. Tough position to be in but we need about 1000 more like you on the inside.

Okay I was wrong, especially if I said thousands what I meant was over a thousand. But 613 is still a lot. As a young catholic it seemed like over 1000 for sure. But there was never a number on it, I am pretty excited to have a number now.

Now on the first commandment, perhaps Catholics and Methodists have a different version than traditional Jewish law, I remember the first commandment as, “I am the Lord thy G-d; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.”

Dash after the G there is for you Alex I have no idea the etiquette here so I am erring to the side of caution.

In any event as a child catholic and later as a teacher in the Methodist church I understood and taught that this was not about one G-d existing rather that he was the only G-d and no other anything was to be worshiped. No statues, no additional deities, etc. One was to be loyal, period, to the One G-d, the end. In modern Christian thinking it goes further. Noting before G-d means NOTHING, one who puts money ahead of G-d, is worshiping money, or prestige or anything. In the end it is a command that not only you believe but you believe in one alone and no other and nothing comes before that belief.

Later in the new testament Jesus said the following about the whole of the law,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Meaning the first commandant is the keystone of the law, and how we treat others the arch. That is a man has G-d fist in his mind and heart (as the first commandment requires) he will live a very sin free life. If he adds to this that he must love his neighbor as much as himself, he will do no harm to any person. That a person who sincerely did ONLY these two things would seldom violate any law that was just and Godly, and if they did it would be due to human weakness or simple accident.

One an see why Jefferson who was a Deist such as I am, still admired the ethics of true Christianity. He said the following, “the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen.” This led him to create the Jefferson Bible, a copy of which was given to every member of Congress until the early 1900s, then in 1913 something went very wrong, coincidence, perhaps but it smells funny!