MARCH 17, 2006
Even
though Moses started the trend, Dave Letterman has popularized the top 10 list. Today everyone seems to be getting on the band wagon and the Travel Channel is always listing the 10 Ten Beaches, Resorts, Hideaways - you name it and someone is already ranked it.
I am always interested in the listing of the issues most Americans feel are important to them, and invariably the environment makes the list, but for most it is never the #1 priority. It seems that the economy, or terrorism, or health care get most of the attention these days, and yet one day soon it will of necessity be the #1 global issue.
I would like to suggest, however, that all of these issues relate to what I am now calling the 11th Commandment - or the summation of all the commandments and issues important to us today. If we just step back for a moment we realize all issues relate to a desire for a healthy quality of life. Even terrorism is born out of frustration and anger at the inequities in our world. Every issue you can name eventually ties into preserving healthy eco-systems. For example many doctors now feel that a majority of illness, and even cancer, is a direct result of a polluted environment. A healthy long term economy will depend on preservation of the resources that sustain our economy.
So what is this big deal commandment? If we look to the Torah and the book of Genesis in particular we notice a strange combination of two Hebrew words into one big idea. Avodah and shomer means to keep and to serve. We are asked to tend the garden; which is called Eden, and this is a metaphor for the earth.
Commandment #11 - Thou shall keep and serve creation. I first started talking about this in an article for the Los Angeles Reader in 1991. Today more than ever it deserves congressional, or seminary approval. It does not say that environmentalists, or farmers, or fisherman or computer scientists or politicians or baseball players specifically should worry about the garden, because the challenge is for everyone to put the garden as # one priority. Everyone must keep and serve creation.
If we lose the garden what do we have? All the toys and all the noise will be for nothing if we let creation slip through our fingers. The collapse of creation is due in part to our focusing our attention on everything but the creation that sustains all life. Too often we feel it will accommodate our destructive tendencies, and we are now being proven that this is delusional and detrimental to our long term well being.
Thus when anyone asks you to rank the top ten issues you care most about, list creation first. This will demonstrate more clearly your love of children, family and the fragile island home we have inherited. The most important issue is the preservation of our fragile island home.
--Peter