Discussion Questions for The Ten Commandments

We know religion studies can be boring, especially when you really just want to go outside and play, but before you head into the fourth grade, we need to make sure you have a solid understanding of some of the most important rules ever put to paper--or stone, as the case may be. A little Bible humor there for you, even though you should never ever joke about the Bible. 

Ever.

Please answer the following questions in three sentences or less.

1.  The First Commandment says that “The Lord is the Lord and that you shall have no other gods but the Lord.”  What other gods would you like to have if you could have other gods?  Maybe a God of Junk Food?  A God of Television?  A God of Not Having to Do Homework?  What do you think these other gods would look like?  Would they be gods you could hang out with instead of just up in the sky sending down stone tablets for you to obey?  Discuss.

2.  The Second Commandment says that you shall not make idols.  Using colored paper and glue, put together an idol, and then destroy it in front of your class as dramatically as possible.  Feel free to make the idol look as funny or scary as you like.  Maybe it’s a golden calf.  Maybe it’s a blue warthog made out of popsicle sticks.  Maybe it’s a purple parrot.  You know, there was a game show called Legends of the Hidden Temple where one of the teams was named the Purple Parrots.  Have you heard of that show?  Doesn’t it sound fun?  Don’t answer that as part of answering this question.  Just trust us, the game show was very fun.  Make sure your idol is at least six feet in length or points will be taken off.

3.  The Third Commandment says you shall not take the name of your lord in vain.  Do you know what “in vain” means?  If not, what do you think it means?  Do you think it means a place, like, you can’t take the lord’s name to the supermarket?  Like, when you’re shopping for canned pineapples and they’re out of the brand you like, you can’t say ‘Lord, why aren’t there any canned pineapples here?  I know they have the store brand, but I want the real one with the cartoon Polynesian lady holding two pineapples under her arms!”  We’re just kidding.  We know you know that’s not what “in vain” means.  It means cursing using the Lord’s name.  What kind of cursing would you do if you could take the Lord’s name in vain?  Create a list with at least twelve examples of all the ways you could curse using the Lord’s name.  If you’re having trouble, find an old Italian man and tell her that his car has just been towed.  Be prepared to read your list out loud to your class in as vociferous a voice as you can. We know “vociferous” was one of your vocabulary words last week, so hopefully you studied hard for that pop quiz your teacher is going to give you after recess (but don’t tell her we told you about it).

4.       The Fourth Commandment says to remember the Sabbath.  Do you remember the Sabbath?  When you remember it, what do you remember about it?  Did you know it was last week?  Did you miss it?  Did you know it’s happening again this week?  What are you going to do for it?  You’re not going to do anything, right?  You know that’s the point of the Sabbath, right?  You can’t do anything.  You can’t even go to the supermarket and take the Lord’s name in vain (See Question 3) or you’ll be breaking a commandment and you don’t want to do that, do you?  Do you?  No?  Okay, great.  So just write “No” next to this question.  Your teacher will know what it means and she’ll mark your answer correct.  We explained it to her in the packet we sent along with a box of toasted almonds, because those are delicious, but we told her you can’t have any, because you might be allergic to nuts, even though we’re not sure almonds are nuts.  We just can’t take any chances these days, you know?  Do you understand?  Don’t mark “Yes” even if you understand or your teacher will have to mark this answer wrong, okay?  You got that?  Again, don’t mark “Yes” even if you do, in fact, got that.  Just mark “No” and go to the next question, all right?  Are you nodding your head?  We’re going to assume you’re nodding your head and go to the next question.  Good job on this one though.  You really nailed it.

5.       The Fifth Commandment talks about honoring your father and mother.  Do you have a father and mother?  If not, then who do you honor?  Do you have to honor anybody in that case, or can you skip that commandment?  Do orphans get to skip commandments until they’re adopted?  What do you think about that?  Not orphans. We’re not interested in what you think about orphans--only what you think about skipping commandments.  Would your parents want you to skip a commandment if they were still alive?  Probably not, right? So maybe you can honor them in death?  Perhaps with an annual ceremony where you hang up photos of them and cry a lot?  It’s just a suggestion.  Actually, no it’s not.  Using colored paper and glue, create a collage of your dead parents, and then hold a ceremony during lunchtime in the cafeteria to honor their fallen souls.  Be as creative as you want, but make sure you also make six-foot tall replicas of your dead parents to truly honor them and the lives they led.  Then, destroy the replicas because you’re not supposed to have false idols and “six-foot tall statues of dead parents” sounds an awful lot like idols to us, but we’ll let that slide, just don’t do it again, okay?  Put down “Okay” and your teacher will know what you’re talking about, unless she lost the packet we sent her, in which case, you’re probably going to get all these answers wrong and fail this class, but your parents are dead so there won’t be anybody to be disappointed in you, so it’s no big deal, right?  Mark “Okay.”  Okay?  Okay.

6.       The Sixth Commandment says you shall not murder.  Write down a list of people you would murder if you could.  Make sure there are at least twelve people on the list, but don’t show it to anybody or you’ll probably be expelled from school or sent to some sort of institution where they won’t give you the nice colored paper that you get here at school or the high quality glue that you’re used to, because you might eat it, since you’re so unstable that you actually wrote down a list of twelve people you would murder if you could just because a workbook told you to.  If you can’t think of twelve people you want to murder, you clearly haven’t talked to enough people.  Sign up for an account on any social media site and then post a few political statements.  Then, sit back and wait for the potential murder victims to pour in.  You’ll still have to limit your list to twelve though, because we can’t just go writing pages and pages of people we’d like to murder even though it would make us feel really, really good.  So keep it to twelve and then just memorize all the other people you would murder, and let that list sit in your heart for awhile until the Lord answers your prayers and smites all those people off the Earth using disease and misfortune.  We’re not promising that’s what’s going to happen, but we’re pretty sure it is, because based on what we’ve been reading in the Old Testament, the Lord is a very petty deity.

7.       The Seventh Commandment is about adultery, which is about, uh, you know, when two people are…supposed to be with two other people—or maybe just one of them is, you know, supposed to be with another person, but he or she ends up with a different person in a way that’s—you know what?  Let’s skip this one.  Let’s just skip this one.  Jesus, you can’t go anywhere these days without getting all this stuff shoved in your face.  Like, even the Bible isn’t safe from it.  It’s ridiculous.  We’re just trying to come up with a nice set of questions for schoolchildren and up pops adultery when we were just having a nice conversation about murder.  You know what?  Just write “Skipped” next to this question.  We didn’t tell your teacher you would be doing that, but once she sees what the Seventh Commandment is, we’re sure she’ll get the hint.

8.  The Eight Commandment says “Don’t Steal,” which is much better than adultery.  If you’re going to break a commandment, break Number Eight—or even Number Six—but do not break Number Seven, and if you do, for the love of God, do not tell anyone about it.  Nobody wants to hear about that.  We certainly don’t.  Now, for the question:  Have you ever stolen anything?  If you have, go tell a policeman right now.  Or go tell a policewoman to tell a policeman.  You’ve committed a crime and broken a commandment, and you need to be punished.  After you’ve confessed, staple a copy of your confession to this piece of paper and feel ashamed for as long as possible.  How long do you think you could feel ashamed?  Two days?  Four?  Four seems a bit excessive.  Don’t feel ashamed for that long.  I mean, all you did was steal something.  You didn’t commit adultery.  Take two days, feel bad, and then get over it, because life is too short.  That’s what we always say.  Write down “Life is too short to feel ashamed for four days” as your answer, and we’ll make sure you get extra credit.  We’ll probably have to call your teacher and let her know how you earned it, but we’ll do that just as soon as the Sabbath is over, and just as soon as we find out when the Sabbath is, so we can know for sure when it’s over.

9.  The Ninth Commandment is about bearing false witness against your neighbor.  That means if you don't see your neighbor do something, don't say you did.  But if you see your neighbor doing something, you should definitely tell someone.  That's what “If you see something, say something” means.  You’ve probably seen that in subways or on the side of a deli that you don’;t go into, because the guy who runs it isn’t all there, and you don’t trust him to make your turkey sandwich even though your friend Steve tells you it’s the best in Jersey City. Now, if you think you see your neighbor doing something, but you're not sure, you should probably tell someone anyway, but just tell them you're not sure, and that way you're not bearing false witness.  Have you ever been a false witness before?  Have you ever been a false witness against someone who wasn't your neighbor?  Because if it wasn't against your neighbor, that might be fine.  We're not sure.  It's possible that you could lie about the guy two houses down from you and say you saw him streaking through the neighborhood, even if he didn't, and still not break a commandment.  We'll have to get back to you on that one.  Just write down “They're getting back to me on this one” and hope for the best.  We doubt your teacher will still be reading your answers at this point, as you'll probably sound like a crazy person who didn’t study for the vocabulary quiz he or she didn’t know they were having.

10.  The Tenth Commandment is all about coveting.  You're not supposed to covet things, even in your mind.  Have you ever coveted anything?  If so, what was it?  See, you just thought about it, and now you broke a commandment.  See how easy it is?  Nobody said following the Ten Commandments was easy.  Oh sure, at first, you think--Only ten?  How hard could it be not to break them?  But they pretty much cover everything.  Well, everything except doing drugs, which you should absolutely not do.  If they had drugs back in biblical times you can bet there would have been an Eleventh Commandment and it would have been all about drugs.  Thou Shalt Not Do Drugs--that's what it would have said.  And it might have mentioned liquor too, although that could fall under drugs.  Maybe it could be Commandment Eleven Section B or something.  Sorry, anyway, the discussion question--Write your own Ten Commandments and then make your classmates follow them for a day.  We would advise you against making your classmates do stupid stuff like hopping around on one leg or speaking nothing but Pig Latin, but if that's what you want to do, you're essentially the Lord in this scenario, so we guess it's not for us to say.  Once you're done enforcing your commandments, and your classmates all hate you, create ten stone tablets using colored paper and glue, and make sure each table is at least six-feet tall, and then destroy them in front of your entire class, then write about how it felt destroying something you worked so hard on and cared about so much.  Then ask yourself--Is that how god must feel watching all of us sin against him?  Mark down “Yes” for now, because by the time you do all that, the test will already be graded, so just put down “Yes” because “Yes” is the right answer and we don't want you to get a bad grade on this.  We really don't.  And if somebody else gets a better grade than you do, try not to covet their grade, because it won't get you what you want, and you'll be breaking a commandment, which might result in you getting an even lower grade, because we've advised your teacher to give perceived commandment-breakers lower grades than everybody else.  Do you think that's fair?  In a short essay, describe whether or not you think getting a bad grade for being a heinous sinner is fair.  Be sure to use all the new vocabulary words you've learned including “covet,” “adultery,” “in vain,” and “vociferous.”

Good luck!