It is human nature to admire and desire things. There are things that can be envied in our surroundings, like flowers, vegetable gardens, crops and others. Of these, one can either buy the seeds or seedlings and plant them to also acquire the ownership of the same things.
SUNDAYWORLD BY PROSPER TINGINI
For other things, you have to work very hard to achieve possession. These are things which you might envy, like cars, houses, or many other items of wealth.
To want to copy and achieve ownership of the envied things out of your own sweat or efforts is ambition, so there is nothing wrong with that. There is absolutely no fault with desiring to emulate another person’s possessions or achievements.
What is wrong is envying and desiring someone’s belongings and then seeking to make use of or wanting to take possession of those same belongings. Such kind of envy is dangerous as it can lead to thoughts of acts of sin. Admiration alone without lust or without a sinful want is fine.
Jesus the Christ our Lord spoke on the subject of lust, which is a combination of both envy and desire. In the book of Matthew 5 verse 27-30, He spoke, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away. It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away”.
So desiring a thing that does not belong to you and wanting it for yourself is a feeling of sin. Jesus here equates the feelings of lust to the actual act of adultery itself. The thought of desire brings the sin.
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The 10th of the first 10 commandments reads; “You shall not covert your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or his man-servant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbour’s”. Let’s look at the English word “covet” used in this commandment.
Depending on the object at hand, to covet is to have one’s eye locked on that particular thing. It is to long for, to lust after, thirst for and yearn for whatever the thing that has caught one’s eye which does not belong to you or which belongs to another person.
To then aspire to own that same thing belonging to someone else by craving for it is a sin. Such feelings can then lead to the commitment of acts of jealousy against the owner, thus leading to acts of sin.
The Lord our God named various things that can be coveted. The first mention is coveting of a neighbour’s house.
If you envy someone else’s house and instead of aspiring to work hard and try to build the same type of house for yourself, you then seek means and ways to destroy the existing ownership by devious means, this can eventually lead to common acts of sabotage like the burning down of the property out of jealousy, or even the murder of the owner just to extinguish the ownership.
The coveting of your neighbour’s wife might also lead to the commitment of adultery should she accept and give consent to it.
It might also lead to acts of rape. Coveting of servants comes in many forms. One might also covet the maidservant for sexual reasons, or for their hard-working, or for both, thereby leading one to cunningly want them for their own personal gain. Of the livestock, coveting them can also lead to acts of sabotage either directed towards the animals or the owner.
God seeks to nip the issue in the bud by putting measures in place to suppress people’s feelings, which might lead them to commit sin.
The fact of the matter is that this 10th commandment is not the last. The people gathered at Mount Sinai were consumed with fear — the fear of the awesome presence of the Lord and all the frightful things happening on the mountain in their full view. They were so afraid that after God spoke this 10th commandment, the people then pleaded with Moses to allow them to move away from the presence of God and for Moses to continue to listen to what God wanted to say to them.
The next verses immediately after the 10th commandment (Exodus 20 verses 8-20) corroborates my view: “Now when all the people perceived the thundering and the lightnings and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled; and they stood afar off, and said to Moses, ‘you speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die’”. And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to prove you, and that the fear of him may be before your eyes, that you may not sin”.
God’s deliberate intention to gather the people at Mt Sinai was so that they could experience the awesome nature of His presence, to induce a sense of fear for Him in the people, so people would then refrain from committing sin.
The next verse, 21, quotes what happened next: “And the people stood afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was”. Verse 22 proceeds to then quote God’s words to Moses, to say to the people, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel, ‘You have seen for yourself that I have talked with you from Heaven’”. His purpose had thus been achieved. To prove that God continued to give further laws and commandments to the people, the next chapter, 21, opens by the word of God to Moses saying (verse 1), “Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them”.
And He continues to give hundreds of other laws and commandments which we will talk about in future instalments. The doctrine of the 10 commandments misleads people. There were many other laws and commandments enacted by the Lord our God thereafter.
l Prosper Tingini is a religious writer. He compiled a book titled, God’s Constitution For Mankind. The laws and commandments. His contact details are: 0771 260 195 or email: [email protected]
