The setting matters here - before God gives the Ten Commandments, the people are terrified. Mount Sinai is smoking, shaking, vibrating with thunder and lightning. This isn't a nice moment in a classroom. This is confrontation with the holy, and it's overwhelming.
In my youth group, I once showed the kids a documentary about Vesuvius erupting and then asked them to imagine that experience as the context for receiving moral instruction. It reframed the commandments from boring rules into something else - words spoken from terrifying holiness that demand attention.
I think we've domesticated the Ten Commandments into checklist morality, when they were originally given in a context that said 'This matters so much that God Himself is shaking the earth to communicate it.' That's not about fear, exactly. It's about seriousness.
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