"a vowed life is a full life"

It has been a long silence, I acknowledge. Lent season is supposed to be a time of fasting, prayer, reflection and meditation on the word of life. Ironically, this is the time when I have decided to break the silence and reflect aloud (hopefully think afresh too) about the Decalogue.

There is a general negative perception about commands, rules and laws. By themselves, laws and commands somehow conjure the notions of legalism, self-righteousness, power struggle, legalistic meticulousness and for some, they are 'chains and fetters' of freedom and personal preferences. Perhaps a strong feeling against commands and laws is because it suggests 'control' by the powerful of the powerless. Moreover, it is not infrequent that laws become some 'play-thing' in the hands of the experts and even politician. No wonder, we read how writers in avoiding the apparent awkwardness of talking about laws speedily skipped the laws and turn readers' attention to the love and grace found accordingly is the message of the New Testament. Naturally, we prefer grace, love, mercy and freedom to laws or commands to laws and commands. Indeed such perceptions are hard to deny and a lot of times, we experience abuses of laws, not to mention its oppression too.
One of the liturgical readings for Lent calls for the return of the people to God. It is not a call to an abstract returning; not merely psychological or even emotional returning. Deuteronomical narratives say very clearly that the return takes the form of obedience to the commands of God.
If laws are machineries of control, freedom stifflers, joy-killers and oppressive, our legitimate questions would be why would God call His people to return, a return signaled by obedience to God's commands? According to the writer of Deuteronomy, returning to God's commands is a choice for life and shunning the commands is a choice for death. Indeed God's Commandments are intended to give life and the flourishing thereof, not merely for an individual but a community as a whole! It is living by the Commandments therefore that we experience life and life flourishing. Hence, when the Commandment prohibiting taking God's Name in vain, it is not merely about not using God's name in a playful fashion or frivolously. Seriously it is about invoking God's Name to support one's agenda as if making God his/her accomplice in a mission or project that is not God's, worse when it fails respect and honour our neighbour (See Terrence Fretheim, Exodus. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991, pp 227-229 and Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press,2004, pp409-412) A classic example would be some of the conquests done in the name of 'expanding God's kingdom'/Christianity. We all know the repercussions of the such conquests. The conquered and generations after them and Christians then and generations after them, alike still experience the adverse effects of the act of 'taking God's name in vain. We live in a long-drawn suspicion and fear plaguing us from being more trusting and well-wishing.
'A vowed life if a full life,' quotes one my professors. Life lived within the 'life-giving' boundaries promotes life.