The first “Thou shalt not” in God’s list given to Moses on the mountain, after all the ways you should honor God and your Father and Mother was “Thou shalt not kill.”

I have always wondered why God needs to give that directive to his creation. The creator gave me free will and a rational mind so I could decide the best path to follow. I have been given the tools to decide right from wrong and the will to only do those things which are right.

I will not argue that God doesn’t exist. I only say that the Creator doesn’t need to give commands of this nature when the created have been given the tools to decide.

If you think about creation on a more mundane level, the creator of a clock may never see the clock after he has produced it and in any case has less interest in the inner workings of the clock that what time it says it is. So, whatever purpose the Creator has in the world(s) it has created, making us toe the line is probably not one of them.

The Roman Model, on the other hand is designed to make the citizen toe the line, and that isn’t intended to benefit the citizen as much as it does the State. The Church was created with Priests as intermediaries between Man and God, and gave them the power to absolve the Citizen believer of their sins, including the sin of killing, giving the state the ability to manipulate the population to desired ends.

So, ignoring what the Creator might have to say about it, what makes killing the rationally wrong action to take? What statement does one make when they kill another human, to the rest of the humans? Well the statement seems pretty clear to me. The killer has said the killing another person is a perfectly acceptable way to resolve disputes. The killer has self authorized his own death because the rest of the people they are around don’t want the killer to continue to solve his problems in this fashion. They all have a problem with the killer and the killer has said such problems can be resolved by killing the killer. So, by killing, one has self identified as agreeing with killing as a valid method of resolving problems.

This is a basic corollary to the “Do unto others” rule we all know and fail to practice.

But violation of this principle is exactly what the Roman Model suggests as the correct behavior for the State. Kill your opposition and take what they have as your own. This is the strategy that allowed Rome to conquer most of Europe. Folks eventually get fed up with aggressive bullies and between being over extended and deeply corrupt my ancestors (The Huns) were eventually able to take Rome down as a power, but by then the model was well established and continues today unabated.

Rome clearly advertised the principles of operation. Even the Hebrews chose the model and then fight two wars with Rome, each of which they loose. They loose the second one so badly that the Holy City is completely raised to the ground. It isn’t clear whether Jesus would have succeeded if he had had the support he needed, but it is pretty clear that the Pharisees approach failed very badly.  All fine examples of why killing is a bad way to resolve any level problem. I can only ask: “Why do we ignore all this evidence and continue to behave as programmed robots doing what we are told even when we know it is wrong?”