The Ten Commandments explained

1. Even though God is the only God, and free of mortal weaknesses, he's got jealousy issues. So don't worship anything but Him, or he'll really mess you up (and your kids and grandchildren too, 'cause he's REALLY got issues, even though he's perfect).

2. Don't make stuff to worship at all. Uh, pictures of religious stuff, crosses, maybe even stained-glass windows might be bad. Jesus said he didn't even want churches built, but then again he said a lot of things. So nobody's really sure about this one, except for all the people who know exactly what things it refers to.

3. Don't ever swear, and don't even use religious words for non-religious reasons (you know, like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, or George W. Bush in just about every speech he's ever made). By the way, this is so important that we mentioned it before the stuff about not murdering.

4. Don't work on Sunday (or maybe Saturday). That's God's day. Doing work FOR God may be exempt, such as all those folks who get paid for broadcasting religious services, or appearing on conservative talk-shows, or playing professional football, or finishing all that stuff that you had to take home on Friday, or answering company emails...hmm. It's gonna be tough to reconcile this with modern capitalism, isn't it? Anyway, at least think about God once or twice on Sunday (or maybe Saturday).

5. Treat your folks well and do what they say. Unless it's against God's word, in which case: defy away! God's way more important than those dorks who raised you. And along the way we decided this also means you should obey any kind of 'legitimate' authority too. So when you say George W. Bush is a weenie, you're making God really mad.

6. Don't kill. And when we say don't kill, we mean don't kill people- that's God's job and He does it a lot better than we ever could. And when we say don't kill people, we don't mean during war, which we decided (about a thousand years after these commandments were written down) is fine in self-defense (though it's still wrong for an individual person to kill in self-defense). And when we say self-defense, we're including preemptory self-defense, which is killing someone before they get the chance to try to kill you. And abortion may or may not be killing. God's not really clear about that, but some folks know exactly what he meant to say.

7. Don't fool around. Marriage is sacred. We kinda thought for a while that it was so sacred that it was for life, but nobody really believes that anymore. Maybe it should be, but let's be realistic. Technically, adultery covers a married man messing around, or even thinking of messing around, with another woman. It doesn't say anything about a woman messing around on her husband, but that's probably wrong because she's technically his property. Gay stuff is wrong too but there's no real 'commandment' about it. So just to be safe, don't mess around at all, unless maybe your wife can't have kids...or God specifically tells you to do so, like He did a bunch of times in the Old Testament.

8. Don't steal. Taking stuff that doesn't belong to you is wrong. Keeping stuff away from the person who owns it is wrong, unless you go by the old 'possession is 9/10ths of the law' thing, in which case I guess it's okay. And your government, as we've said, is the same as your honored parents, so sometimes it may or may not be okay for them to take your stuff. It also might be okay for a man to steal bread to feed his starving family, but just to be safe, that's probably wrong too.

9. Don't lie. Don't ever, ever, ever lie. They used to think this applied to things like fiction and plays, but then they realized that Jesus himself told stories, so I guess it's okay. But lying about real stuff is very bad. No matter how small the lie is, or how much not telling the whole truth is practical and accepted and expected in just about every sphere of human existence, it still makes God really mad. And whatever you do, don't make up a bunch of lies about how the world began and what people used to do and what God supposedly said, because that's our job.

10. Don't desire anything that belongs to someone else. This, we know, is a toughie. Since capitalism is all about making people want things that they don't have, you could say that modern society is automatically devoted to breaking this Commandment. But then again, this one talks about slaves, which we now know is wrong, so maybe this one doesn't apply anymore? Nah, couldn't be.