POOR old Moses is probably stroking his beard in a rather perplexed fashion.

After struggling down Mount Sinai twice with stone tablets after God had a word in his ear about human behaviour, he must be wondering if all the muscle straining effort was worth it to deliver the Ten Commandments.

Twice? Well yes. The first time he was gone for such a long time that the crowds gave up waiting and went off partying in rather unseemly fashion. So on his return Moses broke the tablets in a fit of righteous anger and had to trudge back up the 7,497ft mountain to get a new set.

Anyway it seems that sin in cyberspace has prompted the church to deliver another set of ten commandments to temper some of the dodgy ramblings of what are known as God bloggers.

It appears that these blogs have also become forums for foul language, hate-filled comments and some questionable motives. As a consequence the Evangelical Alliance, an umbrella organisation that represents thousands of churches from most denominations in this country, has come up with a set of guidelines.

Its ten commandments include: You shall not put your blog before your integrity. You shall not make an idol of your blog. You shall not misuse your anonymity to sin. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings. You shall not use the web to commit adultery in your mind.

They also say you shouldn’t blog on the Sabbath as it’s a day of rest, so that should keep Moses happy.

Of course the problem with blogs is that virtual readers are free to post opinion, so your politely put views can quickly and rudely be taken apart and the whole argument spiral downwards into ever-increasing vitriolic polarisation.

The point is that outside the shrinking church-going community does anyone really give a fig?

I caught the tail end of a discussion on the radio a few days ago in which someone said that since the 1950s church attendance in this country had shrunk by two thirds.

“We are trying to make churches more welcoming and less cringe making to attract people through the doors,” said the speaker.

But I didn’t think the Christian church was about being attractive. Surely it’s about an uncompromising message that challenges our individual spiritual status – and therein lies the problem.

We have become a largely hedonistic and materialistic nation and our spiritual awareness has dulled under such pressures. All we largely see of the church are damning headlines and in-house squabbles over women vicars, gay bishops and child-abusing priests.

The original Ten Command-ments served to underline the parlous state of man. All these cyber ten commandments serve to do is underline the sorry state into which our churches have shrunk with their intemperate and sometimes harsh in-fighting.

Why else would one of the new commandments state: you shall not covert your neighbour’s blog ranking.’ It doesn’t present an attractive front and I’m not sure even a third trip up Mount Sinai by Moses could rescue our nation from its current spiritual poverty.