I know I am opening a can of worms here... but what the heck, its a free world with free speech so I am exercising that right


I was reading a book by Orson Scott Card recently (Called "Seventh Son"). The man is a devout mormon which I find incredibly interesting considering a lot of his written work appears to be anti-religion (or is that just anti-ESTABLISHED-religion?).

The interesting point he brings up in this book is that there is a commandment....

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Now my poor and feable understanding of this commandment is that there are no conditions, no wavers, no corrollories, no clauses and no "accept when"'s.

Yet didn't Moses kill an Egyptian guard? Or was he forgiven for breaking the commandment?

And didn't warriors kill those who lived in the city of Jerico? They were doing it at the request of God himself if my understanding is true.

What about David and Goliath? Didn't he KILL Goliath in the name of the lord?



I remember asking this question years ago in a bible study group and the rest of the group proceeded to try and justify themselves and twist words they found in completely unrelated passages that basically came to the following conclusion :

"Sometimes its ok to kill, like self-defense, or during war and stuff like that... what they REALLY meant by the commandment is that you shouldn't kill for no reason or to commit evil deeds or for your own purposes".


The funny thing is that it never actually SAID that anywhere and so the only conclusion I could draw was that these people were incabable of admitting a flaw and instead had to TWIST things so that they could remain comfortable in their beliefs.


Cna someone "enlighten" me?