It Sounds Like A Good Idea, But . . .

Louisiana — famous for mud bugs, Popeyes Chicken, bayous, beignets, Huey Long, and Justin Wilson is now famous for something else; it is the first state to pass a law requiring classrooms from kindergarten thought to state funded universities to post The Ten Commandments. For a pretty straight forward accounting of it, click here to read the article from New Orleans Fox Affiliate.

But First, a Review

Let’s start by refreshing our memory. There are two tables to The Decalogue — the first one is God focused and contains the first four commandments. We can summarize them as:

Have no other gods.Make no graven images.Do not abuse the name of God.Keep the Sabbath

As a deeply committed Christ-follower, I love these. Or to be more precise, these commandments go a long way to informing the way I live my life. I would wager, when most people think of The Ten Commandments, though, these are not the ones they think about. They think of the second table, the moral code. Again, summarizing:

Honor your parentsDo not murderDo not commit adulteryDo not stealDo not perjure yourselfDo not covet

These are the commandments people think of when they mention The Ten Commandments.

Again, I affirm these very much because they are wonderful and a marvelous gift from God to help us structure our behavioral ethics.

All ten of these commandments were given by God to Moses as the terms of the covenant between Yahweh and his people. They are found in their original historical context in Exodus 20 and are repeated by Moses in a sermon in Deuteronomy 5.

But our question is concerning the wisdom of the esteemed lawmakers of the State of Louisiana in advocating for these to be posted in classrooms. Should it be done? I understand the sentiment and I am sympathetic, but for me, it is a hard no. I do not believe we should be posting The Ten Commandments in public education classrooms. I present you three reasons.

Three Reasons Why Louisiana Is Wrong

The first reason is that I don’t want the state interpreting the meaning of these commandments. Do you want, and I mean this literally, do you want a high school football coach who is working on his third divorce, can’t say a sentence without taking the Lord’s name in vain, and who is a lapsed Roman Catholic teaching an impressionable young boy or girl the significance of The Big Ten? Do you trust him to differentiate between the words ‘kill’ and ‘murder’ and just war and the death penalty and why is it okay to kill animals for meat? There are a thousand pitfalls here. A thousand. Do you want a radical leftist communist telling your children the only way to not steal is to adhere to Marxist collectivism? Me neither.

The second reason is I do not believe these should be posted is that the language of the law seems to relegate them to ‘historical’ significance. For those of us who love The Ten Commandments, these are not like The Declaration of Independence or Mayflower Compact or Gettysburg Address. The move toward historicizing the Bible creates the idea in our children that it is about the past and not their future. The Declaration of Independence is specific to a people and a time and place. We don’t believe that about The Decalogue. We believe it is universal.

The third reason is for fear of hypocrisy and disagreements about what these mean. What mean I of hypocrisy? The state posts The Ten Commandments which says keep the sabbath holy. Yet, the local NFL team will play on Sunday, restaurants are open, and the government will continue to function in part on Sunday. The state is hypocritical. That hypocrisy then further drains the commandments of power because the answer is ‘well, that was for Ancient Israel but not for us’ which then leads the student to think, ‘so too is adultery, and lying, and maybe even murder.’

What mean I of meaning? Let’s keep with the Sabbath theme. I am a Christian, and I heartily endorse the New Testament tradition of meeting on the Lord’s Day, which is Sunday, the day Jesus rose from the dead. The Christian sabbath is Sunday, but Moses meant Saturday which is the technical meaning of Sabbath. If a Jewish person or Seventh Day Adventist is teaching the class, he or she will, and understandably so, heavily emphasize that understanding. The children will have questions. The teens will have squabbles. The college students will rebel. Does the State of Louisiana want to endorse Saturday as a holy day?

I could go on forever, so allow me to give you another example. I believe the second commandments that prohibits graven images, or more specifically, any likeness of God, carries forward to Jesus. I believe it is a violation of this commandment, and therefore a sin, to paint a picture or carve stone or wood, that is intended to look like Jesus. If Jesus is God, and he is, then making his image is a sin. Jesus has already given us his image — it is other human beings, for we are made in his image and he became flesh and blood like you and me. I reject images of Jesus in favor of seeing Jesus in the man or woman across from me, the little child in the park, or the dying man in the hospital. That is what Jesus looks like.

And there, that is the main point I urge you to consider: The Ten Commandments are beautiful and wonderful, but they must be taught from the convictions of our faith and not from the desk at the classroom because to understand them in a modern context requires theological reflection and biblical education; public schools have neither these.

One more random thought: I doubt many churches, certainly not mine, even have Ten Commandments posted in every classroom and most likely not even in the sanctuary. This causes me to think this issue is not about faith, education, or even good public policy. It is election year virtue signaling and that, that makes me a little more nauseous, for God is not mocked. To use him and his word for votes is really distasteful.