Most modern appliances come with a manufacturer’s instruction booklet. Such booklets are more than just an optional extra. You may recall trying to operate a microwave oven for the first time or setting up the timer on a new video recorder. You discovered at those moments that a manufacturer’s instruction booklet is not a luxury. Many folk have tried to run or repair a certain piece of equipment and after several futile attempts have finally said, “When all else fails, read the instructions!"
Today the Ten Commandments are often thought of as something quite out of date. Hardly relevant any longer for people in the 21st century! Yet, in some sense, the Ten Commandments are the Manufacturer’s Instruction Manual’. The God who brought us into being also gave some guidelines on relationships between the human beings He created. It makes a lot of sense to consider the Ten Commandments (and in fact the whole Bible!) as the Manufacturer’s Instruction manual. Of course it’s also much more than that... but think, for example, of how practical and effective an appliance instruction booklet is. Follow the instructions and the whole process goes much more smoothly. The manufacturer of the appliance obviously knows what he’s talking about. His instructions actually work because he made that piece of equipment. So too there is a practical wisdom in the Ten Commandments that still serves us well. It works.
Consider for instance the commandment that children should honour their parents. Take an average family: Mum, Dad and 2.3 kids! Introduce an element of tension and disagreement and see what happens. In such a situation most parents would love to see the fifth commandment upheld by their offspring. Children honouring their parents, certainly makes for more harmonious living in the home.
The Ten Commandments are not only an expression of what God wills but they also contain practical wisdom that helps make life easier for us. Those commandments were given for our good. So whatever people’s view of the Ten Commandments, most parents favour the retention of at least this one.
However we must not forget that the Ten Commandments belong together — they form a unit. You cannot pick and choose just SOME instructions from a manufacturer’s appliance instruction book — hoping that by taking up a few instructions here or there it will all work out. No! If you want the appliance to work properly you’ll have to follow all the instructions.
Neither can we pick and choose which of God’s commandments we’ll obey. It’s well and good to endorse the commandment that children honour their parents. But the same God who gave us that instruction also told us that we must worship Him alone and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. He also calls us to keep His day holy. So in our parenting it’s great to have a commandment that addresses the relationship between parents and children but we need to put that into the broader context of the other commandments — also those that deal with our relationship to God. Again we see that in practice this works. Where parents and children have learned to bow together before the Maker of heaven and earth, and together acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and Lord, there they have a wonderful basis for family living. Francis Schaeffer once said something along the following lines: When my children come to that point of confessing Jesus as Saviour and Lord they are not only my children, they are at the same time my brothers and sisters in Christ.

John Westendorp