A new law requires Louisiana to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state, and as a father who sends his children to Christian schools, you won’t be surprised to learn that I agree with this message.
To be sure, there are legitimate concerns about the blurring of church and state, and legal battles will no doubt ensue. Likewise, the same people who applaud this decision would no doubt be outraged if, say, a school district in Dearborn, Michigan, decided to display a similar verse from the Quran.
But it is difficult to imagine that posting this statement (which contains both moral and historical elements) constitutes a serious offense to the sensibilities of Louisiana families, much less the Constitution. And even if it does, doWe should acknowledge, then, that this revelation is a relatively new development and that our past leaders (including liberal Democrats) would be shocked by this secular interpretation.
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“The most important job in this country, or any country, is raising and educating our children,” declares televangelist Pat Robertson*, adding: “The basic foundation of our laws was given to Moses on the mount.” (*Just kidding.) Harry Truman said!)
In addition to conveying values ​​such as “Thou shalt not kill,” supporters of the Ten Commandments claim that they also have “historical significance.”
It’s hard to argue that they’re wrong.
President Franklin Roosevelt stated in 1935: “The history of our rise and progress as a nation cannot be understood without considering the place which the Bible has occupied in shaping the development of our republic.”
Conservatives who claim that the secular left has fundamentally changed America could do no worse than to quote these quotes. To modern secular ears, the words of liberal heroes like Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Truman sound as unkind as I know them to be: Mike Huckabee.
But it’s hard to ignore the blatant hypocrisy shown by many on the right when it comes to a man who supports posting the Ten Commandments in school classrooms but openly ignores many of the same commandments: Donald Trump. (Louisiana’s law was pushed by Republicans.)
Related to this, I also think it is suggestive that many Christian conservatives today seem to be very interested in the Old Testament, but not so much in the teachings of Jesus, including the new commandments he gave us.
As Kurt Vonnegut said in 2005: A man without a country“For some reason, the most vocal Christians demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. Of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I’ve never heard any of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes be posted anywhere.”
It seems that the modern right is much more comfortable with a more judgmental God who strikes down his enemies than with a God who commands us to turn the other cheek, welcome the stranger, and care for the widow, the poor, and the hungry.
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Now, to tell you the truth, Several This criticism is overstated. There is a common perception, for example, that pro-life conservatives don’t care much about life after birth. While this lament certainly has merit, the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently investigated and documented the “Support for Mothers, Babies, and Families” that states implemented in the wake of the Constitution’s overturning. Roe v. Wade. There are more initiatives (such as those to support mothers) going on than you might imagine.
And yet anyone who pays attention to the words and actions of today’s right-wing activists and politicians knows that Jesus’ teachings are deeply at odds with the zeitgeist we see on Fox News, in Congress and even in our church pews, so it’s no wonder that the opening passages of the Bible are more popular with the political right.
For example, last year, editor-in-chief Russell Moore Christianity TodayMoore recalled that several pastors told him that when they preached on the theme of turning the other cheek, their congregations would ask, “Where did you get that liberal talking point?” When the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,” Moore recalled, “the answer was, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. It’s weak.'”
Anyone who pays attention to modern politics knows that to be true.
As I wrote in 2018, “We all have our shortcomings, but Christians strive to bring about the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). These virtues are not only out of place in today’s society, but are downright counter-cultural in the Trumpian Republican Party.”
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So I worry that many of our children in school are not learning the moral lessons found in the Ten Commandments. But I also worry that many of our children are not learning the moral lessons found in the Ten Commandments. leaderThose who are ostensibly fighting to restore traditional values ​​are not very familiar with the new covenant that Jesus brought about.
Perhaps we could mandate that the Sermon on the Mount be posted in the green rooms of the Republican National Committee, Mar-a-Lago and Fox News.
What’s the harm?
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