The crudity of the fairy tale illustrates the point of the Fifth Commandment: honor your parents lest your children dishonor you. Or, a society that destroys the family destroys itself. The Bible assumes the existence of a family, with a father and mother. The Bible knows nothing of a family with same sex parents, or children born from anonymous sperm or egg donors, or surrogate mothers. Does that mean such combinations are incompatible with Christian teaching?

Genesis chapter two begins with these momentous words: "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating he had done."

Reverence is to be found in the humility which is characteristic of the prayer of Abraham: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes." (Genesis 18:27) It is the hesitancy, the reticence, the stumbling prayer of the tax-collector, who, in contrast to the Pharisee who prayed about himself in a self-congratulatory way, would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Jesus commended that man as j

However, since the twentieth century, and particularly the 1960's, the commandments have been criticized as restrictive of personal freedom. Love, rather than law, has been interpreted as freedom to do what one likes as long as it does not hurt someone else. But such freedom has ended up as a license to do what one wants without regard for others. It is time to review again the ten commandments to see how they are still valuable for us individually and as a society.