Peter Assad

You are correct that the first four Commandments are about the relationship of Maker to the humans, and latter five about humans to humans relationship. Sandwiched is our relationship with our parents (kind of important). When you author anything, your authority is absolute over your work. You have the right to choose your parameters. You can demand your characters to obey you (but that will not make an interesting novel). The Decalogue, we must remember, was given after their deliverance. God’s salvific grace always comes BEFORE any parameters given to us to follow. And as such these “commands” are really the picture how we will behave in the Promised Land of full thriving with the Maker. We will be people who honor the only true Maker (who claims to be beyond Time and Space, and yet for our sakes became incarnate, or at least speak through the Burning Bush, within natural realms), because of grace already given. But, of course, free will can dictate the final outcome. We create the Golden Calf even as the Decalogue is given. When I paint, I “listen” to my work. I seek a sort of back and forth “relationship” with my own work. It’s only after I have made my work that any judgment of “Is this good?” question begins. I make judgment and decide as an “author” how the work is exhibited, etc. Since I use materials that subtly change over time, the painting, it seems, have a life of its own. I can demand my materials not change (destroy the work if I do not like the outcome), but beauty is in letting go of my own creation. So, even though my own relationship to my paintings is not of categorical Aseity as Maker to creature relationship, I can see how the Maker/Author allowed the creation to have free will. Author-ity is a pre-condition, and not anything earned. To me, Grace of God woos me toward a relationship with the Maker. The Decalogue is not a “check list” of right and wrongs that this angry God uses to punish or reward, it is a depiction of when the creature is in a right condition of shalom, filled with Covenantal love that originates from the Maker. I realize that may sound far fetched. But the Author set the terms, released us in love to make decisions whether to follow God’s path or not.