Ten Commandments (Part 1)
By Don Campbell
The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that posting the Ten Commandments in schools violates the Constitution’s ban on government-established religion. Many school districts in Kentucky—and perhaps elsewhere—are challenging this ban by allowing the Ten Commandments to be paid for and posted by volunteers.
It is my guess that most Americans have no objection to the posting of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. It is also my guess that most Americans can’t list all ten of the Commandments. Perhaps this is the reason some are so eager to get them on the schoolhouse walls. When the Commandments were posted and the Bible was read in the classroom, the biggest discipline problems teachers had were chewing gum and talking in class. Today it’s guns, gangs, and drugs. That the rise of the one coincided with the decline of the other is not really difficult to demonstrate. However, is there a cause and effect relationship? If there is, then it would seem that the solution to all of our school problems—and ultimately to all society’s problems—is to post the Ten Commandment in public places. Such is too simplistic.
The speed limit on I-24 is 65 miles an hour. Periodically, one may be passed by a speeding motorist, only to see that same motorist receiving a ticket a few miles down the road. Yet, in spite of the clearly posted signs and the occasional ticket, most vehicles are running from 5 to 15 miles an hour over the limit. The fact that most of us slow down when we see a police car setting in the median shows that we know what the law is.
I have said all that to say this: Posting laws—even God’s laws—in public places would be beneficial only if those laws were unavailable to the people and the people were hungering and thirsting for a knowledge of those laws. If that were the case, people would crowd around to catch a glimpse of them. The principles of the Ten Commandments were erased from a lot of hearts before the letter of the law came down from the schoolhouse walls. If this were not the case, it wouldn’t matter one iota whether or not they are posted anywhere.
The entire Bible is readily available to anyone wishing to read it. Even if the Ten Commandments were taught in the public schools and each child had to correctly write down all ten before being promoted from one grade to the next, things wouldn’t be much different. My proof for this is in the fact that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day knew the Ten Commandments backward and forward, but Jesus says of them, "These people draw near to Me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me" (Matt 15:8).
It was not the removal of truth from the walls of public building that has caused the problems that plague us in the home, the school, and society at large. It was the removal of truth from the human heart that prepared the seedbed for the harvest we now reap. (to be continued)