Then God gave the people all these instructions: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. You must not have any other god but me.” Exodus 20:2-3 (NLT)]
On June 19, Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry signed legislation requiring all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities to display a poster-sized version of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” in every classroom next year. As expected, a lawsuit has been filed to block what some say is an unconstitutional requirement. I’ll leave the arguments about civil liberties and constitutional law to the lawyers and courts; Louisiana’s law is troubling for other reasons.
For the poster’s required wording, Louisiana’s legislators didn’t look to the original Hebrew or any of the more than 60 accepted Christian Bible translations. Instead, they canonized their own version of the commandments by using the same words placed on a Texas monument the U.S. Supreme Court found to be “on the permissible side of the constitutional line.”
Although the “approved” commandments appear to be from the King James, they are more like a Reader’s Digest version than the real thing. While the prohibition about graven images (Ex. 20:4) is included, verses 5 and 6 with the rest of that commandment along with its warning for disobedience are omitted. The 3rd commandment’s warning of punishment if the Lord’s name is taken in vain also is omitted. Although the commandment to remember the sabbath and keep it holy is included, its prohibitions of work and the reason for the commandment (Ex. 20:9-11) are not. Governments are designed for writing laws, not re-writing Scripture, and God made it clear that His words were not to be edited or abridged in any way!
While Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians observe the Ten Commandments, their commandments are not all the same! Disregarding the 16% of their population who are not Christian and the 26% of Louisiana Christians who are Roman Catholic, the required poster uses the Protestant version of the commandments.
In the Texas case, because the monument in question was one of 38 monuments or historical markers on 22-acres of the Texas Capitol grounds and had been there for more than 40 years without objection, the court considered it “historical.” Latching onto the word “historical,” Louisiana’s law doesn’t put the commandments in the Biblical context of who gave them, when and why they were given, and where they are written. Instead, they put the commandments in the context of an historical document. The poster must be accompanied by a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.” Along with the Ten Commandments’ poster, the law also requires the posting of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance.
The Ten Commandments do not get their authority because they’ve been printed in schoolbooks since the 17th century nor do they get their significance because they were written thousands of years ago! While they have existed longer than the New England Primer or the Mayflower Compact, Scripture is no more an “historical document” than the Declaration of Independence or Webster’s The American Spelling Book are sacred ones! Treating the God-breathed Ten Commandments as an historical document diminishes them by placing them on equal footing with McGuffey’s Readers and a 1787 ordinance laying the basis for the government of the Northwest Territory. As well-written as they may be, theirs are secular words written by men; the words of the Ten Commandments, however, are sacred words spoken by God! Moreover, placing God’s law alongside the teacher’s rules about raising your hand or working quietly further diminishes them.
We could post the Ten Commandments on the walls of every building but that would make no difference in our world today because we can’t legislate God. We can, however, display Him. If we’re to make the world a better place, we won’t do it by posting the Ten Commandments in schools, courtrooms, billboards, or anyplace else. We will do it by posting God’s commandments in our hearts and obediently living God’s way every day!
Devotions of the Heart 