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I am a first born child, a rule-follower. I have always been the type of person who wants to be very clear on what the rules are so that I can follow them well. When people use “house rules” in a board or card game it drives me crazy.
My son is a lot like me; my daughter… well, that is another story. But, I digress. As a rule-follower I have always appreciated the Ten Commandments. It seems as if God makes it fairly straightforward to let us know what he expects from us with a list of ten simple rules.
Pretty cut and dry, right?
The Ten Commandments are all about how we can live in right relationship with God, and with one another. Whenever I am teaching the Ten Commandments to kids, especially to those who have a tendency to be “rule-followers,” they often go down the list marking off the commandments they haven't “broken.” More often than not, I always hear them say, “Well, I haven't ever killed anyone.”
I generally hear a chorus of agreement (except from the inevitable child who is extremely worried about the ants she killed last week). I wish it were that simple. I would like to “check” this one off of my list too. I mean, it is kind of a tough list, and I fall short a lot, so it would be nice to have one rule that was pretty cut and dry that I could mark off my list and say that I was doing a pretty good job of following.
However, I think this may be the commandment we break most often.
You see, we can also kill someone's spirit. Whenever we say an unkind word to someone or do something to them that hurts their spirit we are breaking this commandment.
To illustrate this point I've often played a game of Jenga with a group of kids. Every time they remove a block from the game they say something unkind, and then when they place it back on the top, they say something nice. At the end of the game you will have said an equal amount of unkind and nice things, but the structure will still collapse, because every unkind thing kills your spirit a little more until you can't handle it anymore.
This lesson is so important in a society where stories of bullying and suicide are overtaking the news. People's spirits are being killed slowly every single day. The biggest effect we could have on our communities is to be examples of love and kindness, sharing Christ's love with all those we encounter.
