The 10 Commandments: A Postmodern Translation

Samantha Stephenson shares ground-breaking data on the “commandments” of our present culture.

Linguistic researchers working with coding specialists have recently made technological breakthroughs in social science research. Using a newly developed algorithm, they have analyzed social media data from the last fifteen years. The results are astounding. After careful analysis, they have uncovered the ten basic rules governing our society:

Thou shalt have no other gods before thy phone.
Thou shalt not rest.
Thou shalt not age.
Thou shalt avoid suffering and sacrifice.
Thou shalt not admit weakness.
Thou shalt store up thy riches.
Thou shalt buy.
Thou shalt not offend thy neighbor.
Thou shalt publicly shame wrongdoing.
Thou shalt pursue pleasure over virtue.

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We were made to worship. There is no “opt-out.” There is no real atheism. To deny God is simply to worship something else. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen declared:

If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.

If we fail to consciously choose what we live for, we find ourselves swept along by the tide of our age. We will spend our time the way our society spends its time. We will prioritize what our society prioritizes. We will denigrate and destroy what our society does not value. We will uncritically absorb the beliefs and practices of those with whom we surround ourselves.

We will worship. The question is: who, or what?