Why are there so many rules in Christianity?

One: You shall have no other gods before Me.

This commandment exists because it keeps your priorities in life straight. Humans always need a god. If you don’t have God occupying the place of being god in your life, you’ll end up with something else being your god. This god could be yourself, it could be money, it could be another person, it could be your job, it could be entertainment, it could be sex, it could be gambling, it really could be anything.

Whenever you have someone or something other than God occupying the place of god in your life, your life will be prone to chaos and spiral out of control. Often you’ll find yourself miserable as well. Therefore, the consequence will be your life being controlled by something that can’t fill the void. Be that money, power, sex, drugs, or anything else.

Two: You shall not make idols.

This second commandment follows along the same lines as the first. When you construct an idol, you’re elevating an inanimate object to a place of reverence. In the Old Testament, the Israelites made a golden calf. God is the only entity in existence deserving of reverence. Placing an idol in that place usually results in you making poor decisions and your life once again spiraling out of control. You’re essentially worshiping something that has no power. It’s pointless and it will let you down ultimately. Therefore, the consequence is placing your trust in something that will fail you.

Three: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

This third commandment has a twofold meaning. The common understanding is that you shouldn’t use God’s name as a curse word. This is true enough and the consequence of doing so is that you decrease your reverence for God which makes it more likely for you to begin following other idols or to adopt something else aside from God as your god.

The less common understanding is using God’s name in a manner inconsistent with God’s will. This would be like doing things in the name of God that are not according to God’s will. Waging a war on behalf of God is an example of taking his name in vain. The consequences associated with this are quite steep. When your fraud is eventually discovered, physical harm is probably going to be the least of your concerns.

Four: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

This one seems tough because you might wonder how working on a Sunday could possibly have consequences for you. However, it’s not so much the work that’s the problem as it is the lack of proper reverence for God. The purpose of the Sabbath is to give you an opportunity to dedicate a day to rest and God. The failure to do this carries with it the consequence of burnout along with your life priorities slipping out of order. Once your priorities shift, your mental health and everything else are quick to follow.

Five: Honor your father and your mother.

This one also seems tough. What could possibly be the personal consequences you’d experience by not honoring your father and your mother? How about the collapse of society as a whole. As an individual, your first relationship as well as your longest relationship is with your parents. They’re the ones you owe your very existence to second only to God.

A society that doesn’t have respect for elders, a society where children don't honor their parents is a society that’s doomed to fail and likely on the decline. As far as personal consequences go, typically your parents care about you and they have a vested interest in you. If you have a poor relationship with them, the consequence you can expect to see is missing out on the benefits of their previous life experience. When you scale this up, a society that doesn’t value the input of its elders is doomed to repeat past mistakes. Most past mistakes are very costly.

Six: You shall not murder.

The consequences of murder are pretty obvious. Personally, if you commit a murder, that is to say, if you kill someone without due reason, you’ll likely suffer emotional consequences for it. If you have fully functioning faculties, your actions will likely haunt you for the rest of your life. Beyond you individually, the murder you committed will harm the person you murdered along with everyone else who loved your victim. This will in turn prompt the victim's family members to seek revenge and attempt to murder you. At a societal level, if everyone were committing murders whenever it was expedient, society couldn’t exist. Humans wouldn’t be able to interact with each other. Every encounter would be reduced to a power struggle with everyone trying to murder everyone else. Every disagreement would be settled with deadly force if this wasn’t a rule.

Seven: You shall not commit adultery.

As with murder, the consequences of adultery are obvious too. The basic structural unit of society is the nuclear family. One man, one woman, and their offspring. The consequences for you personally should you choose to commit adultery are pretty nasty. Aside from betraying your partner, you’ll also do damage to yourself as well as everyone else around you. Adultery harms your ability to feel relationship connections. It damages your partner’s ability to trust others. It can also tear your family apart. At a societal level, if adultery were rampant, men wouldn’t be able to tell if their offspring were theirs which would remove the incentive to form a family. Without male support, raising a child alone would likely result in hardship or death for the mother and child. Beyond that, rampant adultery would likely lead to murder and overall cause a societal collapse once again. A society can’t exist without the nuclear family. The nuclear family falls apart in the face of adultery.

Eight: You shall not steal.

The consequences of stealing aren’t as obvious as murder or adultery. The personal consequences you might face are pretty minimal if you don’t get caught. If you engage in stealing from others, you’ll have to deal with the fear that others will steal from you along with the mental health damage and guilt that comes with taking from others. If you do get caught, then you can expect your relationships to be damaged severely. At a societal level, stealing is a violation of private property ownership. If stealing is allowed, then there exists no incentive for people to work or do anything productive because the fruits of their labor might just be stolen at a moment's notice. Essentially, a society that doesn’t have rules against theft can’t even exist. It would devolve into a power game once again where people would steal from each other and then simply fight it out.

Nine: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Bearing false witness, or lying, is disastrous on the personal front. Every lie you tell requires more lies to cover up. Eventually, everything comes crashing down, destroying your relationships and your reputation. Even deeper down, lying causes you personal anguish by causing misalignment between your narrative and reality. This state will drive you crazy until you eventually tell the truth or the truth comes out on its own. Every lie you tell will be a source of problems in your life.

At a societal level, a society without trust can’t function. It devolves back into continuous murder once again. If people constantly bear false witness against one another, no one knows who to trust. No one can believe anyone. As a consequence, the whole system falls apart.

Ten: You shall not covet.

Coveting is also disastrous on the personal front. It’s defined as yearning to possess something and it’s the enemy of contentment. Coveting usually occurs when you compare yourself to your neighbors and peers. You see what they have and then you end up feeling bad about your own situation. It’s damaging to your self-image and your mental health.

At a societal level, coveting is a force that has the potential to tear society apart. Many people don’t think through the underlying factors that go into their neighbor’s possessions. A good example is the tendency of people to covet being in shape without taking into account how much work and suffering goes into getting fit. At the societal level, people who have less than others covet the possessions of their neighbors and eventually are at risk of trying to steal from them. This results in all the consequences of stealing and so on and so forth until the whole system falls.

Conclusion: Sin Has Consequences

In conclusion, every sin carries with it a consequence. The Bible has rules to prevent you from having to experience the consequences of your sins. A sin-free life would be the best life. We, as flawed humans, are not capable of achieving that, so we’ll always suffer from the consequences of sin. However, we can greatly minimize the consequences by trying to live in accordance with the rules of the Bible. God’s prohibitions in the Bible are for your own benefit.