Rev. Dr. Devin Strong
Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church
You have probably heard that the governor of Louisiana recently signed into law a requirement that all k-12 classrooms and publicly funded universities display a copy of the Ten Commandments. I know the feeling that drives this. With all the chaos and pain in our world these days, Christians yearn for people to know God.
When the statistics clearly show that fewer people are going to church, we want all the help that we can get. Unfortunately, I am not sure that seeing a poster of God’s laws is going to draw people to the Lord any more than reading a list of city ordinances will make us better neighbors or citizens.
I also feel the desire to “get back to basics.” Maybe you have heard a believer say, “If we just followed the Ten Commandments, we wouldn’t need all these other laws.” I believe that. In fact, I think that if we could all just keep the First Commandment (or the second by Jewish counting), we wouldn’t even need the remaining Nine Commandments! The opening Commandment says, “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” If you and I could truly place the Lord of Heaven and Earth consistently above all other pursuits, life would be a breeze. Of course, we have been struggling to do that for more than 3,500 years!
Moreover, we don’t always know how to live the Commandments in practice. How, exactly, should I honor my parents? What, precisely, is the definition of adultery (Think Bill Clinton!)? Almost immediately the rabbis started writing addendums to the Commandments to clarify them and make them more case specific. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish Law had grown from Ten Commandments to 613 laws, and folks were, and are, still looking for loopholes.
The issue is that rules alone don’t make us behave. God’s words to the people were given in the context of a relationship. The Lord and the Jews had been journeying together in the desert for years. God realized that the people needed some guidance about how to form a healthy community. The Almighty never envisioned the Ten Commandments as an introductory penal code. Rather, they are signposts, the boundaries of a vast field, inside which a great many things are possible. If you and I will observe a few fundamental responsibilities to God and each other, we can have life and joy together. We note that the first three Commandments (by the Christian counting) protect our relationship with God while the last seven protect our relationships with each other. We also notice that not all the Commandments are “Thou shalt not….” The first four state God’s desires for us positively.
Like every other Christian, my prayer is for every person on the planet to have a deep and abiding relationship with our God, a God of grace and love, but I am convinced that we cannot farm out our responsibility to others. We cannot depend on the Louisiana schools or anybody else to teach God’s ways. Furthermore, as important as the Ten Commandments are, if we want people to come to Jesus, we cannot beat them over the head with “Thou shalt nots…” We must first show them with our words and our lives the Savior who died and rose for them.
God Loves You, and So Do I!