Why the Ten Commandments?

It’s always the Ten Commandments.  Why is that? 

There is the excep­tion of the 2019 Kentucky law requir­ing schools to dis­play “In God We Trust” promi­nent­ly with­in their build­ing.  Maybe not the Ten Commandments, but still, it holds an air of author­i­tar­i­an­ism.  Christianity is sup­posed to be the New Testament Church, but I have yet to see rul­ings plac­ing the words of Jesus any­where pub­licly. Interesting . . . 

Based on some of my opin­ions and beliefs, I would guess many con­sid­er me a heretic or a hea­then.  On the con­trary, I have always been amazed by the idea of a pow­er and source of cre­ation greater than myself. 

As a young child, I would get up ear­ly on Sunday morn­ings and turn on the tele­vi­sion to watch Billy Graham.  I had no idea what he was say­ing, but at the end, there would be an altar call, and I would go to the tele­vi­sion in my lit­tle flan­nel jam­mies and kneel before the screen, hop­ing to feel clos­er to this God I had heard about. 

Besides reveal­ing me as a strange child, this obses­sion prompt­ed my par­ents to start going to church.  Every Sunday morn­ing, we could be found at the Baptist church singing songs and lis­ten­ing to the ser­mons.  I had thought that church would be where God was and, thus, hap­pi­ness.  But that’s not exact­ly what I found.  It was there I was intro­duced to fear.  Not the fear I already knew, like the dark or ghosts, but the fear of eter­nal suf­fer­ing.  This was new.  I thought Hell was for bad peo­ple; it turns out I am bad peo­ple. Uh oh . . . 

I heard in great detail about the suf­fer­ing of Christ. The blood, the spikes, the beat­ings, the exposed flesh . . . it would turn my stom­ach. I feared dying before I could make my “pro­fes­sion of faith,” which required me to go to the altar and pro­fess Jesus as my sav­ior and fol­low that by bap­tism.  This had to be done! 

But it was scary step­ping out in front of an entire audi­to­ri­um of peo­ple.  I would pray that God would for­give me for being afraid and allow me to live anoth­er week.  You had to make it pub­lic because if you “deny Christ pub­licly,” he may look at you in eter­ni­ty and say, “I nev­er knew you.”  Why is God/Jesus always so mad? 

I even­tu­al­ly worked up the nerve and was bap­tized.  That was a close one!  But even then, the teach­ings left me ques­tion­ing.  Internally, of course, I did not want any­one to know these doubts.  A big one for me was homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.  If Christians want­ed to share the love of Christ, how could you share it with some­one who was gay if you were angry and hat­ed them? 

That is called “love the sin­ner, hate the sin.” It did not feel like love to me.

Back to my orig­i­nal thought: why is it always the Ten Commandments?  The same rea­son that the ser­mons were pre­dom­i­nant­ly about the suf­fer­ing of Christ and the fear of Hell.  There has to be a del­i­cate bal­ance when repeat­ing Jesus’s words. What if we post­ed John 13:34–35: “A new com­mand I give you:  Love one anoth­er.  As I have loved you, so you must love one anoth­er.  By this every­one will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you love one another.” 

Oh my! Does that mean I have to love poor peo­ple? People with an addic­tion? People of oth­er reli­gious beliefs? Or, dare I say, *gasp* homo­sex­u­als?

Well, yes, that is what it means.  If I were to say this in mod­ern, every­day speech, it might sound like, “Love each oth­er, okay? Like I love you, I want you to love each oth­er.  Love each oth­er, okay? Are you get­ting this? When you love each oth­er, they will know that you are of God.  Because you are loving.” 

Sounds like Jesus is try­ing to make a point.  But the church will say, “I love you like God does, so I need to make you more like me.  Get over here and let me change you!” or “I love you with the love of the Lord,” which trans­lates to “I don’t love you, but Jesus is mak­ing me, so . . .” 

You will not find pro­gres­sive church­es forc­ing bib­li­cal teach­ing into a sec­u­lar orga­ni­za­tion.  That will come from the fun­da­men­tal­ists and Christian nation­al­ists. It will always be based on Old Testament law and author­i­tar­i­an beliefs, not on the words of Jesus, because this has noth­ing to do with the love of Jesus but every­thing to do with control. 

Posting John 13:34–35 leaves too much open for accep­tance and sup­port of peo­ple they would rather not be around.  I am a firm believ­er in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state and feel that reli­gion should not be a part of the pub­lic school sys­tem.  Schools should feel safe for every­one and focus on academics. 

But since the Bible has entered the are­na, it is essen­tial to note what they choose to dis­play . . . and why.