Ten Commandments

I had so many study thoughts a few weeks ago on the ten commandments. And of course not one of them made it to this blog.

Yet.

Here comes the ten commandments ten thoughts in ten days! (Or something like that.)

Cecil B. DeMille, producer of the movie The Ten Commandments, made this observation:

“We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them—or else, by keeping them, rise through them to the fulness of freedom under God. God means us to be free. With divine daring, He gave us the power of choice.” ( Commencement Address, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year, Provo, 31 May 1957.)

Powerful. Do you have a testimony of that? That commandments are there to help us, and if we try not to live them we only find ourselves broken in the end?

And from our ever eloquent Neal A. Maxwell,

"In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion. No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith urged, "Let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 178). Hence annihilation — not moderation — is the destination! ... Selfishness is actually the detonator of all the cardinal sins. It is the hammer for the breaking of the Ten Commandments."

Or in other words selfishness is the precursor to breaking one of the ten commandments. That make selfishness something I want to nip in the bud right away!