The Christian Faith
This section of the website provides more extended teaching on larger content areas, such as the Creed and the Sacraments. It begins with Introduction·to the Christian Faith. More content will be added in due course.
The section entitled Short Talks comprises stand-alone talks and articles on different aspects of the Christian Faith, including the teaching of Jesus, the seasons of the Church’s Year and Feasts and Festivals.·
First: No other gods
Today we come to the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods but me”. You’ll remember that this Commandment was given to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai soon after they had escaped from the land of Egypt. The Egyptians believed in an enormous number of different gods, and they used to paint or carve pictures of them on the walls and pillars of their temples. So the people of Israel would have been used to seeing pictures of the Sun-god, the Nile-god, the Crocodile-god. There were even four Hippopotamus-goddesses. Of course, all this sounds very strange to us, but we must remember that the Egyptians really believed in them and worshipped them.
First: To believe, fear and love God
The First Commandment is, “You shall have no other gods but me”, and the Catechism explains this by saying, “My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength…”. (1)
Second: Graven images
The second of the Ten Commandments forbids us to worship any graven (carved) image: “You shall not make for yourself any graven image…You shall not bow down to them, nor worship them”.