The Ten Commandments

The creator of the show, Barbara Hall, wrote a list of rules for the writers to follow when crafting the stories for JoA. She called these rules The Ten Commandments. And they are:

1. God cannot directly intervene.

2. Good and evil exist.

3. God can never identify one religion as being right.

4. The job of every human being is to fulfill his or her true nature.

5. Everyone is allowed to say "no" to God, including Joan.

6. God is not bound by time. This is a human concept.

7. God is not a person and does not possess a human personality.

8. God talks to everyone all the time in different ways.

9. God's plan is what is good for us, not what is good for him.

10. God's purpose for talking to Joan, and everyone, is to get her (us) to recognize the interconnectedness of all things - i.e., you cannot hurt a person without hurting yourself; all of your actions have consequences; God can be found in the smallest actions; God expects us to learn and grow from all our experiences. However, the exact nature of God is a mystery, and the mystery can never be solved.