If you had to choose, would you want religious education classes

[hedgehog]

to teach children the beatitudes or the 10 Commandments? I taught relgious ed for many years, and while every kid had to learn the 10 Commandments before 1st Communion, I doubt a lot of them would even know where to look for the Beatitudes.

Feel free to discuss what it means that we emphasize the one and tend to ignore the other.

[tjwmason]

1. Other - that they're both the same

Different sides of the same coin, as it were.

[hedgehog]

2. I always have problems figuring out what the Beatitudes are all about.

Every time I look at them, I learn something new.

Once big difference is that while the 10 Commandments are very concrete and linear, the Beatitudes are very open and abstract. I think a focus on the 10 Commandments encourages a fundamentalist point of view while the Beatitudes remind us that we can always get a bit closer to where God wants us to be. The Commandments encourage us to judge others, the Beatitudes encourage us to judge ourselves.

[tjwmason]

3. If the Commandments are taught in a concrete and linear fashion

that's how they will appear. I don't see them as teachings us to judge others, mostly because they're part of a seamless garment which elsewhere teaches us not to judge others.

[47of74]

4. Too often

Too often I believe conservatives emphasize the 10 Commandments but then forget the Beatitudes altogether. When's the last time you heard of any judge wanting to have a monument with the Beatitudes on it placed at a courthouse?