A little Bell in the morning

Slavery is a fundamentally inhumane condition. Being owned and treated as property robs people of the dignity and honor of being a human. This has deeply affected how these [post-exodus] Israelites see themselves and the world around them. What God begins here at Sinai with the Ten Commandments is the long process of teaching them how to be human again (see Exodus 19-20). These commands are vital truths about what it means to live in authentic human community.

The first commandment instructs the people to "have no other gods." Their humanity is directly connected to their ability to remember their liberation, which was a gift from God. If they forget God — the one, true God who freed them — they are at that very same moment forgetting their story. If they forget their story, they might forget what it was like to be slaves, and they might find themselves back in a new sort of slavery (see Romans 6:15-18).

From Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile
by Rob Bell and Don Golden