The seventh of the Seven Tenets is:

Tenet 7: Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

As with all of the tenets, the seventh tenet is not a “commandment” nor is it rule to be forced on other people. The tenets are fundamental ethical principles that we strive to embody in our own thoughts and actions. Satanists interpret and apply the tenets differently. It is fundamentally unsatanic to use any tenet either to rationalize a decision or to try to coerce or manipulate the behaviors of others. For more general discussion of the Seven Tenets and their role in the religious beliefs of The Satanic Temple, see: What are the seven tenets?

Words can be twisted, manipulated, and misunderstood. When people get hung up on words, phrases, and the technicalities of a tenet it can be a sign that the deeper ethical principle of the tenet is being lost. There are many ways the tenets can be manipulated to justify self-serving, oppressive, bigoted, or anti-science actions and decisions. The Seventh Tenet is a reminder that our values arise as from the spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice–not from a particular choice of words on a page, or the placement of a comma in a sentence.