332: The Ten Commandments

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Speaker 2 So in 1853, during the California gold rush, Halifa Tier out West published the Ten Commandments for gold miners who had come out to prospect.

Speaker 8 Commandment number four,

Speaker 5 commandment four in the traditional Ten Commandments, tells you to observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Speaker 12 Commandment number four reads like this, thou shalt not remember what thy friends do at home on the Sabbath day, lest the remembrance may not compare favorably with what thou doest here.

Speaker 15 For commandment number eight, the commandment about stealing in the traditional commandments.

Speaker 17 Commandment eight, thou shalt not steal a pick or a shovel or a pan from thy fellow miner or take away his tools without his leave, nor return them broken, nor remove his stake to enlarge thy claim, nor pan out gold from his riffle box.

Speaker 10 There's the

Speaker 15 Ten Commandments of umpiring, written in 1949 by the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Speaker 8 Commandment number one,

Speaker 11 keep your eye on the ball.

Speaker 19 Four different commandments on this list are basically about not getting mad at the players.

Speaker 5 There are the Ten Commandments of tractor safety. Number one, know your tractor, its implements, and how they work.

Speaker 11 The Ten Commandments of Paris dining, assembled by Photos Travel Guides, which include number two, thou shalt not be too familiar with a waiter.

Speaker 5 Don't expect to hear my name is Gaston, and I will be your server tonight.

Speaker 11 Also, number eight, thou shalt not assume that the customer is always right.

Speaker 5 And number 10, thou shalt never use the term doggy bag.

Speaker 22 Okay, let's see what else.

Speaker 19 The Ten Commandments of cell phone etiquette.

Speaker 12 Number four, thou shalt not wear more than two wireless devices on thy belt.

Speaker 5 The 10 commandments of sports betting.

Speaker 23 The 10 commandments of protecting your million-dollar idea.

Speaker 5 The 10 commandments of good historical writing.

Speaker 14 My favorite, number 10, thou shalt write consistently in the past tense.

Speaker 15 Interesting to think that you would need that.

Speaker 24 The 10 commandments of bilingual blogs.

Speaker 22 The 10 commandments of pastors leaving the congregation.

Speaker 15 Ten commandments of working in a hostile environment.

Speaker 5 The 10 commandments for communication with people with disabilities.

Speaker 12 This includes a very helpful.

Speaker 24 Number six, don't lean on a person's wheelchair.

Speaker 5 Or number 10, don't be embarrassed or freak out if you accidentally use a common phrase like, see you later with somebody you can't see, or did you hear about that with somebody you can't hear?

Speaker 5 The Ten Commandments of being a math teacher.

Speaker 2 These actually reveal a lot about the internal life of being a math teacher.

Speaker 5 Number one, thou shalt recognize that some students fear and dislike math.

Speaker 15 and be compassionate.

Speaker 10 And then there's

Speaker 5 a long list that's basically different ways to encourage the math teacher to keep patiently explaining over and over in different ways things until your students understand them.

Speaker 10 And then at the end of that list, there's the rather mournful number 10.

Speaker 5 Though they may at times seem few, thou shalt count thy blessings.

Speaker 14 Then, of course, as peaches and herb remind us, there are the 10 commandments of love.

Speaker 14 Thou shalt never

Speaker 27 love another.

Speaker 27 I shall never love another.

Speaker 20 And stand by me all the while.

Speaker 20 Stand by me all the while.

Speaker 29 I think there's so many different versions of the Ten Commandments because Ten Commandments are such a perfect way to get across an idea.

Speaker 29 There's 10 of them, you know, so it's enough that you feel like you're getting a comprehensive view.

Speaker 26 And yet, at the same time, it's just 10, right? 10. Manageable.

Speaker 20 Not too overwhelming.

Speaker 26 Sure, I can do 10. 10, sure.

Speaker 8 But you know, the biblical commandments have one important thing that all these imitator commandments don't.

Speaker 29 And that is that they're about much more basic stuff.

Speaker 17 Honoring parents and murder and lying and wanting things we don't have.

Speaker 5 Primal stuff that's in our lives.

Speaker 5 And we thought, it's Easter weekend. Passover's just ending.

Speaker 17 Let's find stories where people are grappling with these old primal rules for life.

Speaker 9 Perfect time to devote an episode to the Ten Commandments.

Speaker 34 The real ones.

Speaker 35 And that's what we have today.

Speaker 5 From WBEC Chicago, it's this American Life.

Speaker 4 I'm Eric Glass.

Speaker 35 Today's show, the Ten Commandments, stay with us.

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Speaker 37 Recorded Future, know what matters, act first.

Speaker 24 Just American Life.

Speaker 35 Today's show about the Ten Commandments is a rerun from long ago, 2007, that we're bringing back this Easter weekend.

Speaker 4 Now, different denominations attach different numbering schemes to the commandments, to which commandment goes goes with which number, though the commandments are always the same.

Speaker 4 But however you count them, the first two or three commandments, they cover the same ground.

Speaker 2 They're all about acknowledging God.

Speaker 19 I'm the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.

Speaker 37 You shall not carve idols and bow down to them and worship them.

Speaker 19 For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Speaker 29 These commandments in particular are ones that Shalom Auslander tried to understand and obey as a boy going to a religious school, a yeshiva, a school where they were drilled in all of the Bible's commandments by teachers who could be pretty intimidating, some more than others.

Speaker 38 Here's Shalom.

Speaker 39 Ellie said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer once broke a student's nose by slapping the student's face.

Speaker 39 Dove said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer had once broken a student's arm when he was dragging the student from the room for talking during prayers.

Speaker 39 Rabbi Breyer was the scariest rabbi in the whole yeshiva.

Speaker 39 He was a stocky man, wide as the doorway, with a long rough beard and thick angry hands, and everyone trembled that first day of third grade when he stomped heavily into the classroom, wrote his name on the blackboard, and shouted at Akiva for slouching in his seat.

Speaker 39 Nobody spoke during class. Nobody doodled in the margins of their prayer books.
And when, at the end of the first test, at the end of the first week, Rabbi Breyer shouted, pencils down,

Speaker 39 It was as if the commandment had come from God himself.

Speaker 39 At recess, we stood huddled together on the concrete slab beside the door, afraid to play, worried that Breyer was somewhere watching. Avi and Ellie started flipping baseball cards.

Speaker 39 Flipping cards is considered gambling, which is forbidden, so we were supposed to return the cards to each other at the end of recess. Nobody ever did.

Speaker 39 Ellie won a large stack of cards from Avi, and I flipped Ellie next. I lost an old Willie Randolph and a frayed Lou Pinella, but I won a mint call Yostremsky, whom I was pretty sure was Jewish.

Speaker 39 I'd been trying to win him for months.

Speaker 39 The bell rang and everyone headed glumly back to class, where we sat quietly at our desks, waiting for Ebbai Breyer to return.

Speaker 39 I took out my Kali Yostremsky, turned it over, and carefully wrote my name across the back. I didn't want to lose him and didn't plan on flipping him.

Speaker 39 Name of the Creator, Rabbi Breyer shouted. I jumped and turned to find him standing beside me, his face red, his furious finger pointing at the baseball card on my desk.

Speaker 39 Name of the Creator, he shouted again.

Speaker 39 He grabbed the card from my desk.

Speaker 39 Name of the Creator?

Speaker 39 I was confused. Yaz?

Speaker 39 Rabbi Breyer slapped my hand, grabbed me by the ear, and led me to the head of the classroom. He held Yostremsky over his head and shook him.

Speaker 39 This, he declared loudly, must never be thrown away. It must never touch the ground.
It must never be covered.

Speaker 39 Then Rabbi Breyer waved the card in my face and told me that my name was the same name as God's, and I must never write it again.

Speaker 39 The Jewish God has 72 names, and even though I was only eight years old, I already knew a lot of them.

Speaker 39 There was Adonai, there was Yahweh, there was Elohim, there was he who was full of mercy, he who was quick to anger, the Holy Spirit, the divine presence, the rock, the savior, and now, somewhere near the bottom of the list, there was Shalom.

Speaker 20 Peace.

Speaker 39 My name.

Speaker 39 Rabbi Breyer handed me the baseball card and told me to take it to the prayer hall upstairs and immediately put it in the Shamos box.

Speaker 39 Shamos means names, and it was the place where any old or unusable names of God are left to be discarded.

Speaker 39 Pages from prayer books, crumbling Talmuds, old Torah scrolls, and, from now on, anything I wrote my name on.

Speaker 39 When the box was filled, the rabbis would take it outside, dig a hole, and bury the pages in the ground.

Speaker 39 From now on, Rabbi Breyer said, when writing my name, I was to replace the last Hebrew letter, the M sound, with a simple apostrophe. I was no longer shalom.

Speaker 39 I was shalo.

Speaker 39 I headed upstairs with a sigh.

Speaker 39 Life with God's name was more difficult than I imagined. I was annoyed with God for being so selfish with them all.
He had 71 other names. I couldn't see why he'd mind so much if I used just one.

Speaker 39 I didn't want to tell God how to do his job, but I wondered if maybe there weren't bigger things for him to be worrying about than who was using one of his six dozen names without permission.

Speaker 39 Isn't this, I wondered, what led to Holocausts?

Speaker 39 The Shamos box in the prayer hall filled quickly.

Speaker 39 My homework, my test papers, my what I did this summer, even my highlights for children, and, buried at the bottom of the box, a pair of underpants my mother had written my name on with permanent marker.

Speaker 39 It seemed I couldn't go an hour without making something holy, and I wasn't the only one.

Speaker 39 Every morning, my mother wrote my name on my lunch bag, the name of God, in bright red magic marker with a quickly drawn smiley face just below it.

Speaker 39 And every afternoon, Rabbi Breyer would grab my lunch bag, shout Name of the Creator, dump the food out onto my desk, and send me upstairs to the Shamos box with my suddenly sacred lunch bag.

Speaker 39 It didn't end with writing. I was standing at the Urinal one day when Avi came in.
Hey, Shalom, he said. Name of the Creator, Rabbi Breyer shouted from inside the nearby stall.
Name of the Creator!

Speaker 39 We heard him fumbling with his pants and ran back to class. Later, as we sat with our heads down as punishment, Rabbi Breyer explained that speaking God's name in the bathroom was also forbidden.

Speaker 39 And then, a few weeks later, it suddenly all clicked. I began spelling my name with an apostrophe without even thinking.

Speaker 39 My mother stopped writing my name on my lunch bag, and my friends stopped saying hello to me in the bathroom. It had been a hassle at the beginning, but now the whole God thing was growing on me.

Speaker 39 My classmates were named after rabbis and forefathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob? Please, I was named after God.

Speaker 39 So I was surprised a few days later when I heard Rabbi Breyer in the middle of an exam on the first chapter of Genesis shout name of the Creator.

Speaker 39 I turned around expecting to see him standing beside me, but he was on the far side of the classroom. standing behind Shlomo's desk, pointing a furious finger at Shlomo's test paper.

Speaker 39 Name of the Creator, he shouted again, and he slapped Shlomo's hand, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him to the front of the class.

Speaker 39 Shlomo isn't technically a name of God, but it means His Shalom, His Peace. And for some reason, that day, Rabbi Breyer decided that was close enough.

Speaker 39 But instead of feeling relieved that someone else in our classroom would share the burden of a holy name, I was disappointed. It was a pain in the ass being named God.

Speaker 39 But it was my pain, and it was my ass.

Speaker 39 Rabbi Breyer handed Shlomo his test paper and told me to take him upstairs to show him where the Shamos box was.

Speaker 39 I still didn't quite understand God's reasoning behind the third commandment of, Thou shalt not use my name in vain, but I suddenly had a pretty good idea of the reason behind the first, Thou shalt have no other gods besides me.

Speaker 39 It's one thing to be the only God.

Speaker 39 It's quite another, lesser thing, to be one of two.

Speaker 39 I headed upstairs with Shlomo two steps behind me. I wanted to push him down the stairs.
I wanted to shove him out the window.

Speaker 39 As we walked toward the prayer hall, I remembered that Rabbi Breyer told us that Moses had killed an Egyptian by uttering the name of God.

Speaker 39 Shlomo pushed his way in front of me and hurried to the Shamos box.

Speaker 39 Adonai, I whispered.

Speaker 39 Nothing.

Speaker 39 Yahweh, I said.

Speaker 39 Nothing.

Speaker 39 I couldn't bear to watch him violating my Shamos box, so I turned and headed back to class, Shlomo running behind me, trying to keep up, using my name in vain and calling, Shalom, Shalom, wait up.

Speaker 39 As I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, one last time,

Speaker 39 nothing

Speaker 32 Shoem Oslander his latest book is called Feh a memoir

Speaker 29 This brings us to the fourth commandment remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy six days will you labor but the seventh is a day of rest dedicated to the Lord Lord your God.

Speaker 40 Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

Speaker 40 We're glad to have everyone here today.

Speaker 41 It is awesome to see you tonight. Thank you for coming to worship with us.
The ushers are going to come forward now.

Speaker 42 I'm going to be reading from the 48th division of Psalms.

Speaker 42 Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

Speaker 44 We also begin with words of blessing at the bottom of page 104.

Speaker 30 Here are six congregations in six different cities remembering the Sabbath and trying to keep it holy.

Speaker 48 Lord, we pray for our sick and shut in everywhere, Lord. There's sick among us, Lord Jesus, that need you.
Lord, we pray for the homeless on today, the men.

Speaker 49 United now in faith, we pray.

Speaker 49 May the Lord look with kindness upon all efforts to uphold the dignity of marriage and of family life. We pray to the Lord.

Speaker 50 We pray especially for the Neely family.

Speaker 50 We pray for the loss in the Gombiski family and the loss of a cousin.

Speaker 51 And here, all of us can learn something from an ancient text which seems so irrelevant.

Speaker 44 When someone has for whatever reason had to separate themselves from a society, the priest has to get involved and help this person get back into the community.

Speaker 52 People claim nowadays that they are the first ones who are asking for the woman's right.

Speaker 21 Islam, about 15 centuries ago, said,

Speaker 52 Oh, people,

Speaker 47 you must consider the right of your wives.

Speaker 52 Be kind and nice to them.

Speaker 47 Fear Allah in your wives and be good to them.

Speaker 11 Oh Allah, be my witness.

Speaker 27 Do I have a witness? And he continued.

Speaker 42 We are the bride of Christ. Why? Because Christ died for us.
He's married to us. And we need to understand what marriage means.
You can't be married and cheating.

Speaker 42 And Ty far too many of us cheating on Jesus. Nobody comes before Jesus.

Speaker 40 Turn to our hymn notes on page 154. All hail the power of Jesus' name.
And we'll all stand.

Speaker 17 Amen.

Speaker 17 Amen.

Speaker 50 Thank you all for coming, and you're all welcome to stay.

Speaker 54 Speak, oh Lord, as we come

Speaker 27 to you

Speaker 27 to receive

Speaker 27 the fruit of your holy word.

Speaker 4 This is the Bentree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas, and before that, the Northwest Venice United Methodist Church in Corona, Michigan, Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church in Chicago, the Muslim Community Association Mosque in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Temple Road of Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia, and Our Lady of Angels Monastery in Hansville, Alabama.

Speaker 32 We recorded them in 2007 when we first broadcast today's show.

Speaker 29 If you're just tuning in, we are devoting our show today to the Ten Commandments, and we are at commandment number five right now, honor your father and your mother.

Speaker 8 When he was 11 in Charleston, South Carolina, Jack Hitt and his friends back then formed a little club where they would hang out in this one backyard that was all overgrown, and which they thought of at the time as a jungle.

Speaker 22 It had a big brick wall along one side.

Speaker 5 And they started doing things that did not honor their fathers and their mothers.

Speaker 27 Anyway, we had declared it to be our land. We were squatters.

Speaker 19 And so we started painting things on the wall.

Speaker 27 And one of us painted a naked woman. And one of us wrote his name and then loves.
And then, you know, the girl he had a thing for at that time.

Speaker 27 And that's how he got caught because he wrote his name on the wall.

Speaker 27 And then I wrote all these bad words. I just wrote every bad word I could think of.

Speaker 27 And so I came home one day and the police came to my house and told my parents or called my father at work or something. And anyway, he came home early from work

Speaker 27 and

Speaker 27 he

Speaker 27 sat me down in his big study and said, you know,

Speaker 27 I understand you painted some words on a wall. And I was like, oh my God, I just burst into tears.
You know, I was just beyond.

Speaker 27 control. My father never cursed, at least not in front of us.
And he was very strict about language. And so he asked me what words I we painted.
I painted on the wall.

Speaker 27 And, you know, I think I choked out HE double hockey sticks or something. And, you know, he kind of looked down,

Speaker 27 very grave indeed. Anything else?

Speaker 27 I was like, yeah.

Speaker 27 That was just the warm-up.

Speaker 27 And

Speaker 27 so then I said, you know, I painted the other words. I can't say them.
I can't say them.

Speaker 27 And he said,

Speaker 27 tell me what it started with.

Speaker 27 He was going to get it out of me. So I coughed up the letter S.

Speaker 27 And he was just, his eyes blazed. And he bowed his head.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 27 Anything else?

Speaker 27 And I was, I could not be contained. I was wailing around on the sofa.
He said, there's only one word left. And yeah, I painted it.

Speaker 27 And he was just, just, I mean, I think he was actually thunderstruck. And then he sat there in silence for a few minutes.
And then he looked up at me and he said,

Speaker 27 he said, now you have to understand, my father comes from the rural area, marries the, you know, the Southern Belle in Charleston, South Carolina.

Speaker 27 So marriage of two kinds of families, you know, in the South.

Speaker 27 And he said,

Speaker 27 son,

Speaker 27 I've worked all my life

Speaker 27 to make sure that when you or your sisters or your brother walk down the street, people say, there goes a hit. They're good people.

Speaker 27 I don't think anybody,

Speaker 27 anything that anybody in this family has done has damaged that reputation as much as you have today.

Speaker 27 And he said, that is your punishment.

Speaker 27 You may go now.

Speaker 27 You know, I was 11. Wow.
I was just, I was floored. You know,

Speaker 27 I asked him, I think, to spank me because, of course, part of me wanted an explosion that would end it.

Speaker 27 But he said, when he dismissed me from the room, he said, you know, that, you know, this has been your punishment.

Speaker 27 And it was, you know, and then he, of course, you know, a couple of months later, he dies.

Speaker 27 So, um, and that's one of my last memories of him telling me that.

Speaker 29 Do you think he was being sincere?

Speaker 27 Well,

Speaker 55 I'll tell you.

Speaker 27 Years later,

Speaker 27 we had a little family reunion. I might have been 20.

Speaker 55 I was in college.

Speaker 27 And all my siblings got together. They were all married at this point.
And we dismissed all the in-laws to go see the movies. And the five of us stayed up really late talking.

Speaker 27 And I don't think we'd ever really talked about our father

Speaker 27 in any deep way. since he had died.

Speaker 27 And I started telling that story. And I had never told that story because I was ashamed of it.

Speaker 27 It was the black mark on the family that I had done this.

Speaker 55 Right.

Speaker 27 And I couldn't bring to, I'd never told anybody that story. And I started telling that story and all my sisters start wailing with laughter.

Speaker 27 And then they all start telling the story that

Speaker 27 what they had done that had prompted essentially the exact same speech.

Speaker 27 Like one of them had been on shoplifting in Atlanta and he had to fly there and get her, you know? And it was just, you know, a terrible story. I'd never heard that one before either.

Speaker 27 And I thought, ooh, we, well, you know, painting a few bad words on a wall, that's nothing compared to shoplifting in Atlanta.

Speaker 12 And was this the first time that everybody else was realizing that he had said the speech to them too?

Speaker 23 Or were you the only one who didn't know?

Speaker 34 I think I was the only one who didn't know. I mean, they're much older than I am.
I'm a mistake, right?

Speaker 6 So my oldest sister is 16 years older than I am.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 34 So I think what was kind of moving about that whole encounter was that

Speaker 6 all of them had long ago forgotten their particular crime that had prompted daddy to give them the big reputation speech.

Speaker 34 But, you know, when I brought it up, it suddenly, for all of them, that all flooded back.

Speaker 34 I mean, it just created this great little moment where we all suddenly realized we were, you know, the whole family was just so defined by my father's rather Baptist sense of morality.

Speaker 32 Jacket.

Speaker 29 Well, the sixth commandment seems like it could not be more straightforward.

Speaker 4 Thou shalt not kill.

Speaker 10 But of course, even this is one that is not always so simple to know how to obey.

Speaker 4 Army Reserve Chaplain, Lieutenant Colonel Gwynn Brown, is back in this country from Iraq, where he has served two tours.

Speaker 29 When he was in Iraq, he would run services for his unit once a week, but most of his ministry was just talking to guys one-on-one. The main issue they have, he says, is about missing their families.

Speaker 31 But often they talk to him about killing.

Speaker 2 He spoke with Alex Bloomberg.

Speaker 45 I did meet with one soldier on several occasions

Speaker 45 to just work through, you know, the commandment.

Speaker 45 This young man had actually,

Speaker 45 along with another soldier, had gone forward when the vehicle in front of them had been blown up to

Speaker 45 hold the hand of a soldier who was not going to survive.

Speaker 45 You know, somebody had told me that, you know, he was having a tough time.

Speaker 45 And so I went over to him and I just said, you know,

Speaker 45 what are you thinking?

Speaker 27 And

Speaker 45 he said, I never thought about the killing that would be going on.

Speaker 45 You know, when you're firing at a target, you know, to practice, you know, you think of those things as targets, not as people.

Speaker 45 And for him to be there and to see.

Speaker 45 you know, that he had some buddies that were on the receiving end. And

Speaker 45 you're just saying, you know,

Speaker 45 the Ten Commandments in the Bible says, you know, thou shalt not kill. And he says, I'm not certain.
I can go out and kill.

Speaker 56 But his concern was that like God wouldn't forgive him or

Speaker 7 that it was that it was wrong.

Speaker 45 Well, that God wouldn't approve of him doing that.

Speaker 55 Right.

Speaker 45 And he also brought up, you know, just, you know, if he were to do it, you know, who could he tell?

Speaker 45 Because he said, I wouldn't want to tell my girlfriend about this. I wouldn't want to tell my children.

Speaker 45 And that's why, you know, I went ahead and had a little Bible study with him.

Speaker 45 It was, you know, it was the kind of thing that I did meet with him on several occasions to find out, you know, what God had to say about war.

Speaker 45 And, you know, where did the commandment, thou shalt not kill, where did that come in?

Speaker 45 But also to work through, you know, other instances where, you know, for example, in the New Testament where Jesus meets an army officer who has a child who's dying.

Speaker 45 And he asks Jesus if he would heal his daughter.

Speaker 45 But the interesting thing I would point out is that Jesus never condemned the soldier for his job.

Speaker 45 Now,

Speaker 45 I also know that when King David wanted to build the temple, that God said, no. He said, Your son's going to do it because you're a man of blood.

Speaker 45 And so there's a lot of controversy, as you can imagine,

Speaker 45 as to trying to interpret what God was talking about there.

Speaker 45 And of course, that seems to reflect on even my role as a chaplain. Why am I wearing an army uniform and trying to deal with people who are out to kill people?

Speaker 56 Are there times that you feel like

Speaker 22 faith and the U.S.

Speaker 7 military are sort of at odds?

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 45 You know, we preach, you know, the love of God and the fact that we ought to be at peace with each other.

Speaker 45 And at the same time, I'm wearing a uniform that says U.S. Army on it.
And, you know, I'm there to support them in their mission of, you know, winning a war. And that means taking lives.

Speaker 45 So I do wrestle with that. I mean, there's times that you just kind of go, you know, God, can I resign here? You know, can I get away from this?

Speaker 45 Rather Rather than having to deal with the questioning that people have and often not having answers.

Speaker 45 I mean, I think that's probably the biggest challenge that I ever had was, you know, I couldn't just say, just think this way and you'll be fine.

Speaker 45 There were times that they were asking the same questions that I would be asking.

Speaker 7 Such as?

Speaker 45 Well, you know, should we be here? Should we be killing people?

Speaker 28 Do you think that you have a different

Speaker 56 understanding of

Speaker 56 this particular commandment about the fifth commandment, thou shalt not kill?

Speaker 56 Do you feel like you have a different understanding of it

Speaker 56 after serving in Iraq than perhaps somebody who didn't serve?

Speaker 45 I think I'm much more hesitant about having a definite opinion about who should die.

Speaker 45 Just seeing the brutality and the,

Speaker 45 you know,

Speaker 45 people have got body parts missing or, I mean, there's big holes. There's,

Speaker 45 you know, they died a violent death. And it's not pretty.
And it just doesn't seem normal, you know, which it isn't.

Speaker 45 But also even with the Iraqi culture, that there were times that people just said, well, you know, whatever group it was they didn't agree with, they just said, you know, kill them all, you know, and I was going,

Speaker 45 you know, these are people, you know.

Speaker 45 And I didn't like that attitude.

Speaker 45 And then I was seeing it even among, you know, the armed forces that there was people that just would just kind of say, well, we just need to kill them all and then that'll take care of it.

Speaker 45 And I was going, whoa,

Speaker 45 you know,

Speaker 45 who

Speaker 45 nominated you to be God, you know?

Speaker 45 You know, I just,

Speaker 45 we all have a tendency to interpret

Speaker 45 the Ten Commandments in a way that's convenient for us.

Speaker 45 You know, there's interpretation of thou shalt not murder. It shouldn't shouldn't be a premeditated killing.
It has nothing to do with war, you know, those kinds of things.

Speaker 45 But it just makes me,

Speaker 45 you know, I'm looking at it as a principle that God says you need to value life and don't take it lightly.

Speaker 45 You know, just don't condemn people to death just because, you know, that's easy to do.

Speaker 45 You got to stop and think about it seriously. This is something that God himself doesn't take lightly.

Speaker 4 Army Reserve Chaplain Lieutenant Colonel Gwynne Brown, talking with Alex Bloomberg back in 2007.

Speaker 35 Brown died in 2008.

Speaker 12 Coming up, adultery, thievery, lying, envy.

Speaker 29 No, it is not an afternoon of daytime TV.

Speaker 14 It is the last four commandments.

Speaker 5 We have one story for each of them.

Speaker 2 That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Speaker 4 Tis American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Speaker 30 Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme.

Speaker 33 Today's show, for Easter Weekend, the Ten Commandments.

Speaker 29 We're doing one story for each of the commandments. First few commandments, of course, about how to relate to God.

Speaker 31 Then there's one on relating to your parents.

Speaker 4 And the rest are all direct injunctions about how to act.

Speaker 10 Basically, a list of things that you are not supposed to do.

Speaker 29 We are at commandment number seven, you shall not commit adultery.

Speaker 29 And yes, we are at the commandment that is about sex, And while there is going to be nothing explicit in this next story, it does acknowledge the existence of sex.

Speaker 55 A little warning there.

Speaker 16 In 1976, in an interview with Playboy magazine, then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter admitted kind of famously that he had committed adultery in his heart many times, meaning, of course, that he had had lustful thoughts.

Speaker 5 There's this thing that Jesus says in the book of Matthew: whoever looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery in his heart.

Speaker 29 David Ellis Stickerson grew up going to an evangelical church in Tucson, Arizona, and he remembers hearing about what Carter said about committing adultery in his heart.

Speaker 38 Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we take every thought captive in the name of Jesus, which means that any spiritually healthy person ought to be able to control every thought in his head.

Speaker 38 Of course, in practice, this is even harder than it sounds.

Speaker 38 So for young evangelicals like me, there's a whole sub-industry of sex advice columns and books with titles like Every Man's Struggle or Taking Thoughts Captive.

Speaker 38 You can find them in the For Men section of any Christian bookstore.

Speaker 38 The first thing they always tell you is that sex is a beautiful gift from God.

Speaker 38 Even though it's a gift they don't want you to touch or even think about because you're just going to ruin it with your filthy paws.

Speaker 38 Any physical pleasure, even pleasure you'd give yourself while alone, is completely forbidden. Then they tell you how to survive until marriage.

Speaker 38 They all run some variation on, you can't help the first glance, but you can prevent the second.

Speaker 58 You can obey God with your eyes. They don't have to see everything around them.
If an attractive girl walks by, they don't have to survey her body, but they must obey Jesus Christ.

Speaker 38 This is Josh Harris in the audio version of his book, Not Even a Hint, Guarding Your Heart Against Lust. It's full of practical tips.

Speaker 38 Other tips: these books tell you to watch TV with a remote in your hand, so if a sexy beer commercial comes on, or when the sports camera cuts to the cheerleaders, you can immediately jump to another channel.

Speaker 38 And be honest with yourself: when you watch ESPN2, aren't you hoping to see gymnastics? And guys need daily quiet time to read the Bible and pray for strength in the fight against temptation.

Speaker 38 I don't know why, but in my case, none of this ever worked. I wanted it to work, longed for it desperately.
But every week or so, late at night, I'd give in.

Speaker 38 M happened again, I would write in my journal, as if it weren't an action, but an event. Something that could just engulf you, like a flash flood or a car accident.

Speaker 38 Something so terrible it could only be referred to in code.

Speaker 38 I was an adulterer. That's what the Bible told me.
And I struggled with the guilt of that every day.

Speaker 38 After high school, I went to a huge state college in Tucson. And on warm days, I would walk across campus feeling like a monster.

Speaker 38 Because I believed that noticing a girl's body was the spiritual equivalent of something like sexual assault. I assumed all this was the same for all of us fundamentalist kids.

Speaker 38 At every all guys prayer meeting I ever went to, someone was always asking for help with their thought life. But I'd never actually asked if anyone had quite the same problems I did.

Speaker 38 So I called my friend Derek, a missionary's kid, who was my best friend from church back then.

Speaker 38 You're right, it wasn't your own obsession at all.

Speaker 59 I developed a technique of seeing girls as just floating heads, you know.

Speaker 59 It's like, just learn you're just not going to look below the neck, you know, because it's like

Speaker 38 there's only bad news there. Yeah.

Speaker 59 It did have this funny effect on.

Speaker 59 I mean, I was a cartoonist for my college newspaper, and I didn't actually know how to draw girls, really.

Speaker 20 I mean, you can see.

Speaker 38 That's all right.

Speaker 20 You can see when I would draw a female figure top to bottom in the cartoon, there's an awkwardness to it because I didn't actually know what they looked like.

Speaker 59 And those kind of things were kind of, it's funny to look back and talk about them now, but it was all very dead serious back then.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. I mean, it seems so trivial and silly, and yet it caused actual agony.
Yeah. You know, we felt depraved.

Speaker 59 Yeah, and there's this terrible, a real anger, a sense of unfairness at the media.

Speaker 59 Like, you know, Coors Light put up these billboards with women in swimsuits on them, and they were very well-designed swimsuits.

Speaker 59 And

Speaker 59 then there they would be, right? Like, right up in the sky. You know, and so you just felt like the devil was just absolutely this very wily opponent.
And it's just in your face all the time.

Speaker 59 And it's so frustrating if you're trying not to go out of your way to look for it. But then it seems like everybody's pushing it in your face.

Speaker 38 Do you ever, you know, wish you could go back?

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 59 You know, it's funny you should ask that because I have actually had that imaginary conversation before. You know, you see some time travel movie.

Speaker 59 You fantasize like, wow, if I had a chance to go back, you know,

Speaker 59 what would I tell that kid?

Speaker 59 And I think I would tell myself, you know what? You spend so much time straining over this one issue that you are

Speaker 59 avoiding or overlooking the whole rest of your spiritual journey.

Speaker 59 I wasted a lot of time. There was a lot of time wasted obsessing.

Speaker 59 And I think that's kind of what you found out yourself too, right?

Speaker 27 It just gets to a point where things crack instead of bending.

Speaker 38 He's right, they do crack. And for me, they cracked worse than for Derek.

Speaker 38 I couldn't buy porn. That was obviously forbidden.
I didn't have a girlfriend. I couldn't even watch MTV.
So the only sexual experiences I'd had were the ones that happened by accident.

Speaker 38 A woman bending over in a low-cut shirt, for instance.

Speaker 38 And then at 22, I started finding myself walking slowly along campus or in supermarkets at a library, hoping to see another accidental glimpse of something.

Speaker 38 It took more and more of my time.

Speaker 38 My grade started to suffer. I was like a stalker, but a shy one with incredibly low standards.

Speaker 38 Then after a couple unbearable months of this, I begged my pastor for help.

Speaker 38 He suggested... Sex Addicts Anonymous.

Speaker 38 At my first meeting, we all told our stories. There was a guy who'd spent thousands of dollars on prostitutes in a single long weekend.

Speaker 38 There was a woman who'd slept with a different guy almost every night for years. There was a huge tattooed biker who was so ashamed to be there that a friend let him in blindfolded.

Speaker 38 And then there was me, a 22-year-old virgin.

Speaker 38 When I told my story, there was an awkward silence.

Speaker 38 Even here, nobody understood my problem.

Speaker 38 A few days later, I went to a Christian counselor, expecting he'd just tell me to pray harder, look for answers in the scripture.

Speaker 38 I explained my problem, and he looked at me and frowned, and he asked if I ever did the act, the one that I found so horrible I only referred to it in code.

Speaker 7 Trust me, he said, let yourself do it.

Speaker 38 Give yourself permission and see what happens.

Speaker 38 This was shocking. That a Christian would give me this kind of advice.
That it's possible to obey too much,

Speaker 38 that you could lead yourself astray by following the Bible's rules.

Speaker 38 That very day, I took home my first Playboy magazine, and that was that.

Speaker 38 After five minutes, I was no longer desperate to glimpse random women bending over the freezer cases at the grocery store. It felt like a miracle.

Speaker 38 It was so fast, so life-changing, that it was like converting all over again.

Speaker 3 David Ellis Dickerson.

Speaker 37 He has a substack called Slightly More Pleasant.

Speaker 14 Commandment number eight.

Speaker 54 This is your friend.

Speaker 30 Here's a cook for you.

Speaker 57 You shall not steal.

Speaker 54 Wait, order? Give me more time.

Speaker 53 What can I do for you?

Speaker 53 I work as a waiter. I've been here since 1995.
It was almost 13 years working in this place.

Speaker 29 Hassan marks the afternoon shift at a neighborhood restaurant.

Speaker 41 Well, Well, people usually they steal a lot of things.

Speaker 53 They sell different stuff.

Speaker 53 For example, they steal umbrellas from other customers.

Speaker 54 Really? Oh, yeah, I saw it.

Speaker 53 With my eye.

Speaker 53 The guy was lawyers.

Speaker 53 He stole

Speaker 53 a broken umbrella.

Speaker 53 In the umbrella box, there was a good umbrella. He took away with it.

Speaker 57 Do you think he might have been a mistake?

Speaker 53 I don't think so. Lawyers, they don't make mistake.

Speaker 24 There was two couples.

Speaker 53 One of the couples,

Speaker 53 wife, she used to sit on the right side of the corner.

Speaker 30 She sit in this booth.

Speaker 53 Yeah, this booth. And

Speaker 53 she used to take salt and pepper from the table. No matter what we did, no matter what we said, no matter what we act, she never changed it.
She always took it.

Speaker 53 I believe that she took at least two dozens during the two years period.

Speaker 21 Two dozen? Yes. They saw two dozen salt and pepper shakers?

Speaker 53 Yeah, totally, I mean, during the two years period. Like at one second I missed, one second I missed, gone.

Speaker 21 And she was a regular customer?

Speaker 54 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 54 Regular customer.

Speaker 53 And I believe

Speaker 53 she was doing everywhere, wherever she goes.

Speaker 21 Well, what I don't understand is what will she do with two dozen salt and pepper shakers?

Speaker 54 I don't know.

Speaker 53 I don't know. That's what I want to know, too.

Speaker 53 Do you think maybe she has a store?

Speaker 29 He says it doesn't happen often in stealing, but there is a pattern he's noticed.

Speaker 23 When a woman walked over to a display and took some food and then sat down and ate the food, and he tried to charge her, she argued with him.

Speaker 29 When a man tried to take a huge stack of napkins, like this huge stack, Anassan caught him.

Speaker 57 He didn't even seem embarrassed.

Speaker 54 He got mad.

Speaker 53 He got mad at me because I said you are not allowed to take it.

Speaker 21 Now the people who steal, are they good tippers or bad? Like the woman with the salt and pepper shaker, would they tip?

Speaker 54 They were good tippers.

Speaker 11 And the lawyer with the umbrella, a good tipper or a bad?

Speaker 54 No way. No way.
No way. The lawyer?

Speaker 53 That's why he has two houses.

Speaker 29 Which brings us to the ninth commandment. This hour is going so fast.

Speaker 5 Ninth commandment, do not bear false witness.

Speaker 17 Don't lie.

Speaker 29 To understand this next story, you have to understand this idea of a mitzvah.

Speaker 57 For religious Jews, a mitzvah is a good deed.

Speaker 10 They're supposed to fill their days doing these good deeds.

Speaker 29 But mitzvah is also the Hebrew word for commandment.

Speaker 19 And when religious Jews count the commandments in the Bible, they don't just have the big 10.

Speaker 31 They count specifically 613 commandments they're supposed to follow.

Speaker 29 Well, the woman in this next story wanted to do one of the biggest mitzvah ever.

Speaker 12 She was going to save somebody's life, a stranger's life.

Speaker 29 But to do this, she was going to have to break another one of the commandments, the one about lying.

Speaker 31 In this case, she was going to be lying to her own mother.

Speaker 2 Sarah Canning tells Mara.

Speaker 51 Haya Lipschitz does all her mother's shopping. She prepares all her meals for her, does all her cooking.
And they're extremely close. Best friends, Haya says, and she means it.

Speaker 51 And they also live in this tiny space together.

Speaker 51 a two-room basement apartment in Borough Park in Brooklyn, where they share a tiny bedroom and sleep in two tiny beds, really cots, that are about a foot apart from each other.

Speaker 51 In this kind of setup, it's unimaginable that you could keep anything from your mother. But Haya had this whopper of a secret.

Speaker 51 She wanted to donate a kidney to someone, to a stranger, after seeing an ad in a Jewish newspaper taken out by somebody who needed one.

Speaker 43 The ad was like screaming out to me. It said, save a life, be Machayim, which means to fulfill a once-in-a-lifetime mitzvah.

Speaker 51 It would be an uber mitzvah, and she was going to do it. Unless her mother found out first.

Speaker 51 Her mother has a kind of phobia about surgery and also like any parent she would worry about all the things that could go wrong.

Speaker 51 So Haya didn't tell her mother about her plan which took many many months to put together and she got away with it until her mother found some ads about kidney donation that Haya accidentally left on the kitchen table.

Speaker 51 She lectured Haya about it.

Speaker 43 And it's not for you like you could I think she said to me like you can do any other mitzvah except this one.

Speaker 43 She just like didn't ex I didn't answer her.

Speaker 51 Well, but I mean how old were you at this point?

Speaker 43 No I went oh this was um this was only yeah I mean right I'm an adult, I'm you know, I'm a grown-up forbid you to do anything really you know what but you know what

Speaker 43 I didn't want to cause her any any pain or any suffering. Don't forget she's an older lady and you know people sometimes are frightened and have heart attacks and die and I wanted to give a life.

Speaker 43 I didn't want to take away a life at the same time.

Speaker 43 But even if she didn't have a heart attack, it would give her so much suffering and

Speaker 43 I didn't want to, I never ever liked to upset her.

Speaker 51 Haya tried to follow the commandment about not lying. For her, lying is a sin.
Never mind lying to your own mother.

Speaker 51 She could argue that not saying anything about the kidney transplant wasn't strictly lying. But as the surgery date got closer, Haya couldn't cling to that technicality.

Speaker 51 She was getting a lot of phone calls. She had to go for medical tests all the time.
When you would go out and get tests and do these things, where would you tell her you were going?

Speaker 43 Well, I did

Speaker 43 I had to say other things.

Speaker 43 You're dragging it out of me.

Speaker 43 Okay, okay. You know what?

Speaker 43 I did have to get little white lies.

Speaker 27 And what were the white lies?

Speaker 51 Like, what kinds of things would you say?

Speaker 43 I don't even want to go into details. I'm like, I'm embarrassed.

Speaker 43 It wasn't bad. I mean, I don't tell anything about about it bad, you know.
Like, yeah.

Speaker 51 Haya feels so guilty that she lied to her mother. She can barely talk about it.
And the lies just became more overt as the day of the surgery arrived.

Speaker 43 I had to spend the night before at

Speaker 43 near the hospital. What did you tell her?

Speaker 60 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 43 I told her I was

Speaker 43 going to go to a friend's house.

Speaker 43 It was a house, and and my friend was there. My kidney, the person that was the name kidney toast, she was like a friend already.

Speaker 27 So,

Speaker 43 oh gosh, it was, I had this huge bag, you know, to bring with me to the hospital because I didn't want to see how much I was taking.

Speaker 43 When my mother went to the bathroom that night before I left the house, I took my stuff, I think, out to the side of the house

Speaker 43 and left it there. And then I went back in the house.

Speaker 43 So this way, you know, I just

Speaker 43 went, went I didn't leave with that much maybe a shopping bag to go oh gosh

Speaker 43 but you know what

Speaker 43 so that was hard for me because I don't like to lie

Speaker 43 but but that you know

Speaker 43 It was all to do a good thing. It wasn't anything selfish.
You know what I mean? It was all,

Speaker 43 you know, sometimes you're,

Speaker 43 I don't, listen, I don't want people to think you're allowed to do white lies, but sometimes you have to. Sometimes you have to, you have no choice.
And I'm doing this to save another person's life.

Speaker 43 I mean,

Speaker 43 so

Speaker 43 I'm sure, you know, as a result of what I did, God's going to forgive me for all those white lies.

Speaker 51 It's one thing to plan to donate your kidney and not tell your mother. It's another thing to actually have your organ removed and not tell your mother.

Speaker 51 So Haya had to figure out some way to break it to her once it was a done deal. And her scheme for doing this is so complicated, it makes all the earlier lives look really junior varsity.

Speaker 51 What happened is that by chance, the same week of her surgery, somebody told Haya about this 23-year-old Hasidic woman who had also donated a kidney to a stranger.

Speaker 43 And I met this very lovely young woman, Fagie.

Speaker 43 I said to her, Would you be willing to

Speaker 43 tell my mother, to come over to my mother's house after the surgery surgery and tell her that she donated a kidney and then tell her by the way I donated a kidney and I'm in the hospital right now.

Speaker 43 Let her be the one to tell her because my mother will see that she's healthy, she looks healthy and she's young and she doesn't look like she had major surgery a few months earlier.

Speaker 43 And so I told her, you know, call my mother and tell her this way that you have tsudaka, charity, to give to one of my mother's charities.

Speaker 43 And

Speaker 43 that was a a good way to get into the house and

Speaker 43 I arranged it that my kidney recipient's family is gonna call her after Fey after the surgery so she called my mother and my mother was like almost at the door and she says to come no please please wait you know I have sadaka to give the charity to give to one of your charities and

Speaker 43 of course my mother waited and so she sat down with her and she said you know I you know she donated a kidney and my mother looked at her and found out and says you know she's normal and healthy, and she just did something like that three months earlier, and she came with a cute little baby.

Speaker 43 And then she said to her, By the way, your daughter's

Speaker 43 right now in the hospital, and she did the same thing.

Speaker 51 To everyone's relief, Haya's mother did not have a heart attack.

Speaker 43 My mother smiled, and she said, Smena Shemaim, it's from heaven. It's heaven, you know, it's a heavenly thing that was meant to be.
And she took it very, very well.

Speaker 43 Just like I thought, it was like, it was just exactly according to my script, the way everything worked out.

Speaker 43 And she was happy. She was happy.
You know, it was like,

Speaker 43 I was like, so happy. It was like all over, like, you know, that she took it well.
And she was proud of me. And it was like such a relief.

Speaker 51 It sounds like dealing with your mother was so much harder than actually donating.

Speaker 43 Exactly.

Speaker 43 Donating kidney was not, it was easy for me. The hottest part was not telling my mother.

Speaker 51 Haya's mother never said anything to her about the white lies, and Haya is still not sure she even knows about them. And she never chastised Haya for keeping the surgery from her.

Speaker 51 She's just proud of Haya, which is what Haya wanted all along.

Speaker 51 Last month, Haya's brother, inspired by her, donated his kidney to a stranger. He said his mother had no problem with it at all.

Speaker 32 Sarah Koenig, she's the host of Serial. She did this story back when she was a producer for our show.

Speaker 37 Since we first broadcast this story, Kaya's mom has died.

Speaker 3 Over the years, Kaya has facilitated dozens of kidney transplants.

Speaker 32 So many, she says, that she stopped counting.

Speaker 4 You can learn more about her kidney matchmaking project at donatekidney.org.

Speaker 11 And so we arrive at the end of our list, the end of God's To-Do List for Humanity, Commandment Number 10.

Speaker 61 Like iPods, everybody wants iPods. iPods, iPods.
It's really important.

Speaker 19 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.

Speaker 4 Thou shalt not cover thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass.

Speaker 61 You want phones, you want iPods, you want shoes, you want clothes, and it's a lot of things that's really important.

Speaker 29 You shouldn't covet anything that is thy neighbor's.

Speaker 62 So it's kind of hard for a lot of people to fit in because they want that same stuff.

Speaker 4 Amy and her friends Selena and Kayla are in seventh grade.

Speaker 33 Or they were back when we first broadcasted this episode in 2007.

Speaker 5 That was a month before the first iPhone was released.

Speaker 29 So during the lunch break, they explained that the latest thing that they all covet was a sidekick 3,

Speaker 24 which, if you don't remember, and I did not, it's a kind of souped up Blackberry.

Speaker 19 They wanted Sidekick 3 so bad, they could not help but notice every single person who had one.

Speaker 62 Well, she's not in my class, but her name is Arlene.

Speaker 63 My friend Amanda has a sidekick. My cousin has a sidekick.
Arlene has a sidekick. Christine.

Speaker 63 Yeah, Christine has a sidekick. Who else got a sidekick? This girl in the chain got a sidekick.
I saw her sidekick.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 63 Almost all my family got a sidekick. I don't want a sidekick.
I don't have a sidekick. I lost my phone actually, but I want a sidekick, but I don't got it yet.

Speaker 60 See? Yeah, she has one.

Speaker 63 She, yeah, she has one.

Speaker 30 Do you have a sidekick?

Speaker 29 Can we see?

Speaker 30 This girl, Christine, pulls out her sidekick and shows it around.

Speaker 3 The photo on the sidekick's little display is herself, which definitely is one of those things that...

Speaker 22 is normal when a kid does it, but would be so weird if an adult tried it.

Speaker 30 She hasn't had the sidekick for very long.

Speaker 65 I don't really remember. I think it was in the beginning of April.

Speaker 30 Oh, so just a couple weeks ago? Yeah.

Speaker 65 It's really, it's cool actually, because I get to go on the internet and I get to go on the AOL. Text message.
Text message, all that.

Speaker 60 It's really good.

Speaker 65 It's like an extra computer, a little computer for myself to carry around.

Speaker 61 A portable, everything.

Speaker 64 A portable everything, basically.

Speaker 5 And did you want one for a long time?

Speaker 65 Yeah, I actually did.

Speaker 25 Now, were there people who didn't talk to you before the sidekick when you got the sidekick? Really?

Speaker 65 Yeah, there was. A lot of people that didn't talk to me.
And now that I have my psychic, they like every day want to use it.

Speaker 25 So they just want to use the sidekick? They don't want to actually...

Speaker 60 Yeah, they just want the sidekick. They don't want me to sidekick.

Speaker 30 These girls actually had a very grown-up attitude about all the stuff they covet.

Speaker 17 That stuff matters to them, but it doesn't totally matter.

Speaker 4 Kagel wasn't wearing Nikes or cons, and nobody cared. Selena and Amy recently got iPods, and they're the first to admit it didn't change how anybody saw them.

Speaker 10 I remind them that it's in the Bible that we're not supposed to want stuff or be jealous of people who have stuff we don't have.

Speaker 66 Do you think it's realistic that people aren't going to want stuff?

Speaker 62 No, because everybody wants stuff at some point.

Speaker 65 I think it's just natural. Like, everybody is going to want something in life.
You know, you're not going to go through life not wanting anything. You're not going to just go through life, okay?

Speaker 65 I have this and I have that. I don't need anything else, or I don't want this.
I think it's just natural for people to want things.

Speaker 66 But then you're saying, in a way, it's natural that we're always going to be breaking one of the Ten Commandments.

Speaker 65 Basically, yeah.

Speaker 23 If we needed any proof of this, we're always going to want stuff.

Speaker 37 And sometimes we're going to want stuff that we probably shouldn't.

Speaker 12 It was just a few feet away.

Speaker 23 A girl named Nadie had written on her arm, down the length of her arm, Nadie N. David.

Speaker 7 That's in the letter N, with a heart underneath it.

Speaker 64 That's my boyfriend.

Speaker 25 And is he in your grade?

Speaker 63 Nah, he's older than me. He's two years older than me.

Speaker 54 Talk about him.

Speaker 55 That's her girlfriend, taking her on.

Speaker 64 He's nice, you know. I broke up with him once.
Well, we're going back out.

Speaker 60 And he broke her heart, but I don't think she should be going out with him.

Speaker 27 Cause she's myself.

Speaker 60 I'm mad at her.

Speaker 64 Because people were saying that he talked about me.

Speaker 60 Yeah, it's true. It's true.

Speaker 64 But I love him, so

Speaker 60 you don't know what love is, lady. That's until you get to 16.

Speaker 27 Look at that David over there.

Speaker 60 That David over there, look. That's the name.

Speaker 54 He's with another girl.

Speaker 61 With the one in black, so I don't know.

Speaker 8 He's walking arm in arm with another girl.

Speaker 60 Okay.

Speaker 63 Right there.

Speaker 61 That's it, right there.

Speaker 64 See, that's what makes us mad.

Speaker 60 Oh, my God, Nadia. You say it right there.
You don't say anything.

Speaker 27 I know.

Speaker 27 That's not.

Speaker 60 That's not right there, yo.

Speaker 64 That's not stop.

Speaker 30 The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the 10th Commandment concerns the intentions of the heart.

Speaker 29 The Catechism talks about desires that are often good, wholesome desires, but come to exceed the limits of reason and make us want things too much, especially things that really belong to somebody else.

Speaker 30 Wanting things too much, it says, is a form of sadness.

Speaker 30 And the Tenth Commandment, that's what it's trying to eradicate.

Speaker 32 Love programmers produced today by Jane Marie and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Sarah Koenig, Lisa Pollock, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Senior producer for today's show, Julie Snyder.

Speaker 32 Production help from Seth Lynn, Tommy Andres, and Emily Youssef.

Speaker 37 Help won today's rerun from Angela Dravasi, Sto Nelson, Ryan Rummery.

Speaker 32 Music help today from Jessica Hopper. Mary Robertson produced our story about the Ninth Commandment.

Speaker 32 Thanks today to Leadman's Deli and the Bronx, where we taped the story for the 8th Commandment about stealing. Thanks to Middle School 51 in Brooklyn, where we taped our 10th Commandment story.

Speaker 32 And especially to one of the seventh grade grade teachers who worked there back when we did this show, Andrew Raven.

Speaker 32 This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, our website, thisamericanlife.org. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr.
Troy Malatilla.

Speaker 32 You know, he says that when he goes home, he sees the mailings from our own public radio station that arrive at his house, pile up in his front hallway, asking for money, and he cannot help himself.

Speaker 25 He just has to pledge.

Speaker 58 If you're a guy with a similar struggle, ask your wife or mother to help you in this area by ridding your home of these unnecessary temptations.

Speaker 38 I'm Ira Glass.

Speaker 32 Back next week with more stories of this American Life.

Speaker 35 Next week on the podcast of This American Life, Mario's fiancé, Mikael, has a lot of tattoos.

Speaker 17 Mario likes to make fun of them.

Speaker 17 Like the one he has a Mickey Mouse, smoking a blunt.

Speaker 4 And then somebody sends her a video, and she recognizes Mikael by one of his tattoos.

Speaker 7 And he's in a prison in El Salvador.

Speaker 10 This next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.

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