Explore the mind of an eclectic and radical thinker in George Chainey's The Ten Commandments, An Interpretation; Or the Constitution of the Spiritual Universe. George Chainey was a Baptist minister who repudiated Christianity to become a leading proponent of free thought in the early 20th Century. He started a weekly newspaper, The World, which printed a vigorous defense of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, among other interesting pieces.
Chainey's interpretation of the Ten Commandments is rooted in the Old Testament commandments, with each chapter corresponding to a different Biblical directive. However, as a free thinker, Chainey gives a more general explanation than he would have as an evangelical preacher. What this ultimately means is that the text discusses a spiritual being known as God, who is the creator of the universe, but does not refer in any way to Jesus or to the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God.
Chainey interprets the commandments symbolically, using them to inform his theories of free thought. For example, the Fifth Commandment is "Honor Thy Father and Mother." Chainey sees this as an example of the duality of divine law into male and female. As a result, Chainey writes that "[t]he divine law rests upon the equality of male and female. Anything short of equal honor between these is of a mortal stain." The Sixth Commandment, Thou Shall Not Kill, has always presented a challenge for humanity. So it is here, where Chainey states that taking a life in self-defense is not murder, and therefore wars between nations also do not result in murders. War is about the administration of justice, not about intentionally killing, and those prepared for it cannot be "slain," in the meaning of the Sixth Commandment. As those two commandments demonstrate, Chainey's message can be considered at once progressive and regressive.
The prose style in The Ten Commandments, An Interpretation; Or the Constitution of the Spiritual Universe may seem simplistic and easy to read in one sitting, but readers would be better served by not speed reading the text, and instead stopping for contemplation after each chapter. This is a historically important text and you don't need to be for or against free thought to find thought-provoking ideas in the book.
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