Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or Not

As a sort of social experiment, I want to see whether the mere mention of politically-charged names like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will garner more views to this post.  I rather fancy it will.  Furthermore, I suspect that despite how many people repeatedly assert that they are sick and tired of hearing about all of this political nonsense, most still flock to the names like moths to a candle.

I also have a point to make.  (I am so full of points, in fact, that I shall have to struggle not to become porcupinical, which is a splendid new word I intend to use frequently.)  Let us begin with a quotation from that illustrious writer known for his paradoxical statements of pithy truth:

“If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.” 

― G.K. Chesterton

So many people spurn the Ten Commandments as difficult to live by.  At least, however, one may know and repeat all of them unlike the ten thousands of laws we have in this country today—or is it millions by now?  There is a certain comfort in knowing that there are only ten commands by which to organize one's life and that these can be summarized in two easy statements.

I have always been intrigued by the language of the Ten Commandments also.  Someday I will research the original verbage to determine whether the comment I am about to make holds true.  For the moment, however, I will rest content with my observation of grammar regarding the commandments people often deem as negative, phrased thus: Thou shalt not....  

Now this phrasing has fallen out of use in standard English (a disappointing circumstance that I shall address at some future point), so if we were to translate it, we should have to say either Do not... (as you may expect) or else You will not....  Neither is fully accurate.  For shalt not and will not have distinct grammatical use.  According to grammar rules rarely heeded these days, in the second and third person (it is the opposite in the first person), will speaks simply of a future happening while shall implies determination, or, in other words, is a stronger way to say essentially the same thing.

In conclusion then, the wording of the Ten Commandments says not so much Don't do all these things but rather it is as if God were saying (in modern parlance), If you love Me, you will not do all these things.  If you love, everything else follows as a matter of course.

So let us dare then to let ourselves be governed by the Ten Commandments so that we need not the ten thousand commandments dictated by our nation's rule.  Let us, as Chesterton puts it so well:

“Break the conventions. Keep the commandments.”