Posting the Ten Commandments in Public Places
Congress voted this past week to allow the Ten Commandments to
be posted in public schools. I have some different feelings about it, some good
and some not.
It will do absolutely no good by itself. I can well imagine some of these being
vandalized in mockery by some of the students. I cannot imagine that posting the
commandments would stop the violence. They're not magic words. Some suggest it
is only a first step back to moral sanity. It might be a good first step, but it
is not much more than that.
There was one news woman on the CBS Evening News that could not resist a little
editorializing along with her report on this story. She ended her report with a
statement suggesting that none of the representatives ever explained how they
could pass a law that violated the constitution on the separation of church and
state. Its too bad she never took the time to read the constitution. If she had,
she would realize that neither the phrase "separation of church and state" nor
the idea is in the constitution. There is nothing even similar to it. The thing
the constitution does is protect religion from governmental intrusion, it does
not isolate the government from the influence of religion. It was not intended
to.
Another fellow interviewed was saying it was a bad idea. He said, "Whose Ten
Commandments do we post? The Catholic version? The Protestant Version? The
Jewish Version? They're all different, you know." No, we don't know. There are
ten commandments, and they are the same. These people are just ignorantly
spouting things they have heard without bothering to check if they were so.
Certainly our nation needs a return to moral and spiritual principles. People
need to know that there is right and wrong. Someone may object, "Well, then
whose right and wrong do we teach?" What they fail to realize is that no one has
a monopoly on right and wrong. Its not mine nor yours, but it is real and our
society will be better off when everyone recognizes it. If we reject it, we will
continue to pay the price. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps
(Jeremiah 3:23).
By Jon W. Quinn
The Final Page
From Expository Files 6.7; July 1999
