As young people were forced to go to church, Sunday School, youth meetings, evening song and every other spiritual occasion the church held, made many people close to God and His word. It was during those years that people could recite Bible verses and sing hymns flawlessly.  Now older members of society, who do not know the last time they darkened the church doors, many have trouble remembering even the simplest of biblical text -- much less their importance or relevance in today's world.  One such text that many are familiar with but probably consider just another one of life's guidelines is the 10 Commandments, which most people were able to recite by route as children, and today can't remember the order of the commandments, much less recite all 10 of these ancient laws which are just as relevant today as they were when they were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and are as follows:
o I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; do not have any other gods before Me.
o You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.  For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
o You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
o Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work; you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.  Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
o Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
o You shall not murder.
o You shall not commit adultery.
o You shall not steal.
o You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
o You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.
According to religious ministers like Canon Basil Tynes, rector of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, people are falling back into practices that are not pleasing to God.  He said this is especially true as it relates to the second commandment found in Exodus 20:4-6, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.  For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments."
"One of the most important things you have to remember about the 10 Commandments that shows just how important they are is the fact that they were known as the decalogues -- the 10 words -- when they were first given.  In the traditional Jewish society those 10 words carried the weight of the death penalty should they be broken," says Canon Tynes.  "When Christians came into being in typical covenant style [the 10 Commandments] were meant to be the stipulations in the covenant which God's people were meant to agree to and adhere to for the duration of their existence on the earth.  As it regards the second commandment which speaks against worshipping idols in the early times this meant if anyone was found worshipping an idol or an image they were in contradiction with the law and put to death.  Everything was taken seriously.  And if you look at the church today you may say we have images in it but this is not the same thing."
Father Tynes says although God instructed that there were to be no worshipping of images it didn't mean that the Israelites did not create certain images and that in Exodus 25: 18-22, God instructed Moses to make the two cherubim to rest on the end of the mercy seat to point to the omnipresence and movement of God's power.  In Numbers 21: 7-9 Moses is ordered by God to make a bronze snake so that the people could look upon it and be saved. In the temple itself there were decorations like pomegranate branches but all these things that you would find in the Bible were created not as idols but as a means to point to the deeper reality of God's presence or power. He says that this is something that the modern church still does today.
The importance of the 10 Commandments have not and will not ever lose their relevance according to Pastor Sam Boodle, pastor of the Lutheran Church of Nassau. The second commandment he says in particular was an essential law in the times of the early Jews because the worship of idols were prevalent, but Lutherans consider the second commandment to be a part of the first commandment.
"The commandment speaking about the worship of idols is considered in the Lutheran Church as being a part of the first commandment in which there shall be no other gods before God.  However this second part is still very revelant and very important.  When it was originally given it was because there was a lot of idol worship in those times.  God was discouraging it and telling the people what is the right thing to be doing.  Today there is nothing  different. Many of us still worship idols in our own ways.  When we uplift our wives, houses, jobs or anything before God, we are making them into idols. But they are not equal to God for if you have to carry your god or protect it, then it really can't be much good to you. God wants us to always remember that He is the all-powerful one.  Nothing has changed about this commandment's importance from the old times to now.  God is still the one God and we as His people should be worshipping Him alone."
Bishop John Humes, overseer of the Church of God, says that Christian society's lax nature as it regards to following the second commandment is often causing many of us to be distracted from a true sense of worship.
"The second commandment says that we are not making unto ourselves any graven images to worship that resembles anything of, above, or below the Earth. The Bible is clear on how we should understand this commandment, but we still do not listen as well as we should. Today we can find that in many places of worship there are images and statues of biblical icons and this is something that the Bible speaks against.  These very images such as pictures that we put our focus on as we worship are not even real likenesses of the actual people since no one really knows what they did look like.:
Bishop Humes says it is not right to have such images or structures with the intention of them being there as an aid to people's imagination and visualization in the worship of their invisible but omnipotent God.
"This is something we do that is not pleasing to God because we are to have faith and just believe that He exists.  Having a structure as a representative of the Father or His son is just a distraction in worship.  What we imagine God to be like is a personal thing and we should be focusing on our relationship with Him and not the images we have created.  God should just be worshipped from our hearts and souls and not with our eyes."
Over the next nine weeks, The Nassau Guardian will engage a number of ministers of religion on the topic of the 10 Commandments, as they dissect each one and talk about the relevance of the Commandments to the twenty-first century society.

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