An 11th Commandment?

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We all know the 10 Commandments. Well, this week the producers of BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought segment asked contributors like me to come up with an 11th Commandment. ‘You’re not supposed to add to these things, you know,’ I said, before coming up with this idea. But not before discovering an endearing fact about early morning presenter Vanessa Feltz! Here’s the audio and text.

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Pause for Thought December 1, 2014

We all know the 10 Commandments: ‘You shall not murder’, ‘You shall not steal’, ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife’ etcetera. Well, this week the Pause for Thought producers have asked us to come up with an 11th Commandment. Hopefully there won’t be a lightning bolt! You’re not meant to add to these things. But others have already tried and come out alive:

There’s the Geek’s 11th Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbour’s wifi

The Facebooker’s 11th Commandment: You shall not lust after your neighbour’s Likes and Shares

And the Parent’s 11th Commandment: You shall not leave your room in a mess, you shall not feed your toenail clippings to the dog, and I don’t care what Jenny’s mum says, you shall not go out dressed like that!

Before I offer my 11th Commandment, let me tell you about Ken Cooper, a man I interviewed once. A loving husband, a doting father, Ken was the kind of guy you’d want living next door. But mild-mannered Ken had a dark side—he was also one of Florida’s most wanted criminals.

Ken began shoplifting as a child, started stealing cars at university, then progressed to robbing banks. He lived this double life throughout the 80s until he was caught and sent to Florida’s infamous prison, The Rock. With just five guards for 900 inmates, The Rock was a hell hole of knifings, murders and rape. But while there, Ken became a Christian. Some of his cellmates did too. And their lives began to change.

One day Ken and his friends adopted a kitten, who they named Mr Magoo. Mr Magoo’s back had been broken for fun by the inmates. It was blind from acid they’d thrown in its face. Ken and his friends nursed Mr Magoo back to health. The change begun in them started spreading throughout the prison, and attack rates at The Rock dramatically decreased. But perhaps nothing reflected the change in these men more than their newfound concern for Mr Magoo.

Laws are important—they help us live together in safety. But all laws—even the 10 Commandments—can only do so much. While they can guide behaviour from without they can’t change us within. The law could convict Ken Cooper and put him behind bars, but it couldn’t change his heart. That took a divine encounter.

So to ‘You shall not murder’, ‘You shall not steal’ and the other Commandments, I add this as number 11—‘You shall let God change your heart’.

As Ken Cooper would say, this is what turns hardened criminals into kitten-loving gentlemen.

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