"Do not covet your neighbours ass"

 Yes, it is hilarious. To clear my mind of the humour in this, I had to explore what this actually said in Exodus. And it did prove interesting.

The list of things we are told not to "covet" are our neighbours house, animals and wife and other possessions. Yes, as we all know the wife was considered a possession.

So I will come back to that in a moment. Firstly, the word "covet" - it means desire, lust, unhealthy passion for. It is not just about wanting things, it is about obsessive desire for things. And, in this case, it is based on an obsessive desire for things because someone else has them.

The other word is "neighbour" - something there has been so much written about I cannot really add more. But it refers to others in the community. Our neighbours are those who are part of our community - whether we like it or not. They are those around us - whether we like them or not. People we live in the same area as us, people we work with, people we are at church with, people in our community. Not just people we like or respect - the point of the word "neighbour" is that they are near us, and may have no more in common than that.

But, to return to the passage about coveting these things are all about wealth and status. They are about not seeking the status of others, their position in society. The reason for this is because such jealousies are damaging to community. The call here is to work together, build together the community, the society we live in. To work all together to make the neighbourhood better.

I can only think that we in the UK might be in a better position, a better state in the world, if we had all - right the way to the top - followed this idea.