Can you help us understand what is wrong with having a punishment-based world as implied by the Ten Commandments in the Bible?

The use of punishment as an answer for people out of alignment and making poor life choices, even at extremes where they cause great harm to others, is a denial of the true divine source of life itself—that love is the currency of the Divine, and the absence of love is evidence of divinity being absent as well. All humans have this choice to be in alignment with the Divine or not. It is inherent in the scope of possibilities to love or to hate, to nourish or to deny, to reward or to punish. Punishment, by its very nature, is denial of love. If the offering of love, and experiencing of love, and sharing of love, and living through love is the essence of being in divine alignment, to turn to punishment of someone for any reason is stepping away from spiritual alignment and is non-divine in its very nature. This is why there is not a judgmental, punishing God above, and why that is a corruption of thinking imparted by humans themselves, subjected to manipulation and inner corruption, to come up with the vision of the Almighty being a taskmaster, a ruler, and a judge and jury all in one—to rate and rank people for their conduct, and mete out punishment in proportion to fault and wrongdoing, and thereby, provide a lesson to correct their conduct. But what does punishment teach compared to love? Punishment teaches all the wrong lessons. It teaches that the absence of love deserves more absence of love, and subjects the person identified as being deserving of punishment to become a target for a non-loving, non-divine experience that can only drag them down into a lower vibration and a lower experiencing of existence. How are they to find their way back into loving alignment with the Divine and the harmony of the human family, living through love according to divine energy bestowed to them for that purpose? Someone demeaned and diminished through being singled out for punishment by society becomes tainted and will be wounded by having a label with this branding. And through the experiencing of the contempt and hatred of society through its representatives, often in the legal system meting out the punishment, will be tarnished, and will be harmed, and their lives altered through being lowered to a new level of distortion and inner corruption—where they lose the ability to believe in others, to believe in society, to believe in the possibility of even reaching an equal status enjoyed by others, and will act out that inner contempt and hatred both, to harm themselves further through doubt and self-loathing, or projecting that outward to blame everyone else around them. This causes an inevitable backlash. Whether it is internally or externally directed, such negativity will compound over time and worsen things. When people are shunned from society, they will never be the same, and never regard others in the same way. This will create a rift that cannot be repaired in most cases. The experiencing of punishment separates individuals and drives a wedge in between that may well be permanent. When people are locked in cages, the consequences are greatly intensified. This inhumane treatment always worsens the criminal. It hardens their heart, it increases the resentment and hatreds, as well as any self-directed negativity. In its most extreme form is the reality that solitary confinement can completely disable a person and create a permanent disability. Confinement with other human beings is more merciful but is still on the spectrum of love deprivation and will be extremely harmful in its own right. This is not to say that bad deeds should go unpunished in the sense of allowing people to run riot with no rules, no limits, and no checks and balances. There must always be means to reign in faulty conduct. This can start with having individuals tasked to enforce rules of proper conduct and boundaries, so people can be free to live their own way and not be bothered or intruded upon, and to have a basic level of respect for others in what takes place through human interactions at all levels. And when there is a departure, there is a means to make people aware their conduct is unacceptable, and from there, ways to provide teaching and a level of enforcement of the lessons through a direct involvement requiring participation and a careful reassessment of the person’s conduct by themselves, through assistance of others in a teaching mode, not in a punishing mode. Those who seem beyond the pale, and have become refractory to reason and logic functionally, because they are unbalanced, or devoid of compassion and lack of conscience, as with the psychopath, require deep healing. And there may be a need to have a separation for a time from society in general to preserve the peace and to give them an opportunity to experience a different setting free from the pressures of life—to relearn how to be a part of things without causing harm to others, and to have steps to regain one’s standing that are meaningful, that are helpful and supportive, and not simply stripping them of their freedom to only languish in a cell where they will degrade emotionally, and often physically, and move backwards instead of making progress to change for the better. These are choices of an enlightened society to implement, and this is not easy to do at present because of the many prejudices, and political roadblocks, and corruption of thinking that is rampant. But this sets the scene for the reasoning behind a love-based perspective versus a punishment-based perspective in terms of both the goal of life, and the solution of whatever problems arise through human differences of opinion, or conduct resulting in harm to someone. There is always a high road and a low road to choose between.