Previous Chapters: Creation. The Fall. The Flood. Abraham. The Destruction of Sodom. Abraham and Isaac. Jacob and Esau. Moses is Called. The Ten Plagues.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
After the Israelites left Egypt, they wandered in the desert for three months until Moses led them to Mount Sinai. When they arrived, the peak of the mountain was engulfed in a dense, dark cloud; the rumble of thunder and crackle of lightning terrified them; children wept and clung to their mothers, and husbands and wives trembled together, for they knew that they had come to a holy place, and that the God of their forebears, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who freed them from their bondage, was near.
Now Diversity had observed the wanderings of the Israelites through the desert, for in truth she had never lost her fascination with Abraham and the nation that sprung from his loins. How it galled her that Abraham’s God commanded such devotion based a handful of plagues and a parted sea. She had parted the day from the night! What had that God done? Killed fish and dunked a bunch of Egyptian chariots?
Party tricks!
So Diversity, in her deepest voice, called Moses to the summit of Mount Sinai, and she spoke unto him these words:
“I am Diversity, the first among many gods, including the god whom you call ‘God.’
“You shall exclude no god, including me.
“You shall be creative in the ways you honor your gods, representing them in media of various sorts, including paint, stone, clay, metal, fabric, papier-mâché, and, hey, if you’ve got a bucket of feces lying around, why not?
“Whatever you want to do, remember, there’s a god for that.
“You shall rest on the Sabbath, and as you rest, you shall remember that if it were not for labor unions, you would not be able to rest, and would be at the mercy of hook-nosed capitalists, who would not pay you a living wage, and would exploit national, ethnic, and class divisions in order to consolidate their power, and would slaughter your babies in order to make unleavened bread—no offense, Mo!—and would mark your fifty years of service to their company with a gold-plated wristwatch in lieu of a retirement plan.
“Honor your mother and father, for theirs are powerful washer-dryers.
“You shall not abide peace until you have obtained justice, neither shall you define justice, even when pressed.
“You shall not narc.
“You shall not bogart.
“You shall not question the opinions of those with darker skin than yours, for their grievances against you are great, and your sins against them eternal, and if you say a certain word, and I think we all know what that word is, they are liable to go berserk, and they can’t help themselves, because, you know, they’re just not like us, so don’t go there, girlfriend!”
After Diversity had spoken the ten commandments to Moses, she air-dropped the text with her own finger so that he might share them with the Israelites, and she instructed him to save the commandments to the cloud for future reference, and to make many back ups.
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