Communism is enjoying a resurgence today, even in America. But communism is against each of the Ten Commandments and vice versa.
How does communism violate all 10 points of the greatest legal code ever revealed to man? Let me count the ways.
In the first commandment, God says that He alone is God. Communism says there is no God. But the communists say that the state is God.
Wendy Wright, president of Christian Freedom, International, notes that tens of millions of Christians are at risk these days in various countries, including the countries that are still communist. For example, the website of her group has an article on how Christians can’t be communists in China, noting, “To join the Party, you must give up your Christian faith.” The article quotes Wang Zuaon, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs for China, who declares, “Party members should not have religious beliefs, which is a red line for all members. … Party members should be firm Marxist atheists, obey Party rules and stick to the Party’s faith. … They are not allowed to seek value and belief in religion.”
In the second command, God says we are to worship no idols. In practice, communism promotes the worship of idols. For decades, Russians have worshiped Vladimir Lenin, who forced communism on that nation. For decades, babushkas and the peasants have paid homage to Lenin in his hermetically sealed tomb. I have heard witnesses observe on occasion seeing some Russians even make the sign of the cross on their abdomen as they paid their respects to Lenin’s corpse.
In command number three, God says that we should not take His name in vain. But communism says there is no God. So, if they ever use His name, it would only be in cursing or in denying that He exists.
In the Fourth Commandment, God says we are to honor the Sabbath. Since the rise of Christianity, believers in Jesus have worshiped the Lord on Sunday because He rose from the dead on Sunday. In 1929, the Soviet government abolished the traditional seven-day week, including Sunday as a day off. They wanted to maximize productivity in the factories. But the problem was premature death. The abolishment of the weekend (because of its ties to the Judeo-Christian tradition) was called nepreyvka. History.com wrote about what could be called the violation of this command: “For 11 Years the Soviet Union Had No Weekend.” That experiment failed. People need breaks. The Sabbath gives us a break every week.
“Honor your father and your mother,” commands God in number five. But the playbook of this movement, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, advocates “the Abolition of the Family!” (the exclamation point is in the original). So much for honoring parents.
The sixth command says, Thou shalt do no murder. The communists violated this precept as much as any of them. Instead of bringing life, communism brought death. “The Black Book of Communism”(Harvard University Press, 1999) documents the widespread killings of the communists, in country after country, where it was imposed, in the 20th century alone. No wonder the late, great British historian Paul Johnson said that the greatest killer of all time was the 20th-century state. The communists in China and Russia are a huge part of that, even dwarfing the work of that National Socialist, Adolph Hitler.
The seventh command prohibits committing adultery. As noted in point No. 5, under communism, the family (including marriage) is subservient to the state.
The eighth command declares, Thou shalt not steal. And it doesn’t add, “unless thou art the government.” But communism steals, supposedly in the name of the worker, as they “seize the means of production.” They steal from the laborers, the very people they claim to help.
The ninth command prohibits lying. But lying is at the heart of communism, which claims that the system ushers in “the workers’ paradise.”
Finally, the tenth commandment gets at the fountain head of the communist’s propaganda – Thou shalt not covet. Communism is the politics of envy. If Elon Musk has a lot of money, it is because you don’t. It’s an either/or, they say.
Historian Bill Federer wrote a book, “The Ten Commandments and Their Influence on America.” He documents how the Ten Commandments have been important to America’s legal system.
For example, President Harry S. Truman said in 1950, “The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.”
What a contrast to those places where full-blown communism has sway, such as in China, where pictures of Jesus or images of the cross are replaced by portraits of Xi or by Mao. Over this last weekend, the U.K. Telegraph wrote, about China: “Christians are disappearing for worshipping a God other than Xi.”
I’ll take the Ten Commandments and the freedom this affords society any day over the tyranny of the communists.