“OK, I get it, Carll,” my friend prods, only half in jest, “you’ve got your do-it-yourself religion with your do-it-yourself God, no one-size-fits-all, make your own Sunday. So what are your do-it-yourself rules? A religion without rules seems useless, like a hat with no head.”

            “My do-it-yourself Decalogue?” I smile sheepishly.

            “You could say.”

            His question wakes me. A God without decrees is indisputably lo-cal. Doesn’t cost much – and you get what you pay for. A high-test God asks a lot, maybe everything: devotion, denial, even martyrdom. Mine, face it, resembles a life-coach you hire for encouragement. Nice work, Carll, He thumps me on the back (but not too hard), if I lift a finger. What good’s a God who makes no demands?

            My friend’s inquiry I can shrug off but not the silence’s. I fear sometimes I’m playing with religion, turning it into material to jabber about. God’s a conversation-stopper, for sure. Writers are show-offs and show-offs exaggerate for effect. Would my story be different if I kept it to myself?

            One cannot know, of course. “A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.” We can’t see ourselves in the mirror because the mirror looks back. The best I can do is strive for earnestness, strip away my antics and see what’s left.

God, when He visited me, was real – this I know. I felt His presence, warm, glorious, and strange. Whether revelation or delusion, how can I tell? He hasn’t visited me since, but why should He? God is persuasive: once is enough.

Now I must translate that fleeting impression into practical direction. God can’t be just a cool thing that happened, like a drug high. God is an assignment, not an event: responsibility must be our response.

That means rules.

I review Moses’ ten, to see which, if any, I can recycle. Moses’ commandments, recall, were wartime propaganda. He was fighting for the allegiance of the tribe of Israel. His disappearance onto Mount Sinai’s summit to receive God’s word on clay tablets was a theatrical stunt, meant to awe his auditors and vanquish the claims of Aaron’s Golden Calf. Moses’ challenges are not mine. I don’t need to establish my God’s superiority or stipulate how to worship Him (commandments one through five). I’ll honor my mother and father as they deserve, but not more. Though I’ve never killed, I can imagine circumstances where I might. Ditto with adultery. The prohibition against malicious mendacity (bearing false witness) is crucial to our species’ survival – that commandment I’ll keep. Ordering me not to envy my neighbor makes no sense. Envy is no more controllable than a sneeze. Do I envy Shakespeare? You bet – and countless others. My challenge is to transform envy into an engine, to propel me in a just direction.

Jesus’ take on Moses was dead-on. When asked which of the Commandments was greatest, he replied,

            Love is the guiding principle: love of God – that is, a pure ideal – and love of folks as they are. From love all other precepts and prohibitions flow. Love, as Saint Paul put it, is “patient… kind… not jealous… not pompous… not rude… does not seek its own interests… is not quick-tempered… does not brood over injury (or) rejoice over wrongdoing… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

            Now we’re getting somewhere.