Yeshua Explored
Relics of the past?
How relevant are the Ten Commandments seen to be today?
As the Ten Commandments entered our world very much through a Jewish context, it is puzzling when we consider how modern Judaism has mostly neglected them, in terms of liturgy, even though they are prominently displayed on synagogue walls. They appear in the annual cycle of weekly Torah portions and are recited at the annual feast of Shavuot, yet are strangely absent in daily prayers. They are implied in the extended Shema, the most important prayer in Judaism, “… these words shall be on your heart …’ (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), but the commandments themselves are not recited. But what of the rest of our cultural landscape?
If you look hard enough you will find them. Many old churches, for instance, display them on dusty neglected walls. There are also many displays on walls throughout the USA. Unfortunately, in the current cultural climate, this has become an issue to some. In July 2017 a monument dedicated to the Ten Commandments was installed in the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol, in the USA. Less than a day later the three-ton structure was smashed into smithereens by 32-year-old Michael Tate Reed II, who smashed his car into it, shouting “Freedom” to his Facebook supporters watching live! Immediately a funding account was set up by the producers of the movie “God’s Not Dead” to pay for the rebuilding.
Why the controversy? Some say it is to honour the country’s religious heritage, others say that it violates the separation of Church and State. A decade earlier a similar monument had been installed in the Texas Capitol grounds and deemed a correct act by the Supreme Court. This monument had been placed in 1961 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, with the support of Cecil B. DeMille, the director of the iconic film, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston in the starring role. In the Arkansas case a defender stated the fact that, since the founding of America, the Ten Commandments have played a historic role in the foundation of law in their free society. Apparently not all agree, or at least don’t consider it relevant in today’s political climate.
In 2018, a Ten Commandments plaque was removed from a park in Ohio, USA after complaints from an atheist group, who stated it was unconstitutional, and that it prohibits the worship of other gods (as if they cared!). This drew a backlash from Hendrik Storm from the Barnabas Fund, who declared:
“The United States of America was founded upon and guided by Judeo-Christian principles and these form the moral basis of the American Constitution. “Furthermore the Ten Commandments were well-known by all the founding fathers, and were assumed to be the basis of morality, and not an endorsement of religion by the State. Consequently it was etched in many places in the building that houses the US Supreme Court. Laws cannot be passed requiring particular religious beliefs as per the Constitution, but this does not negate having a basis of morality anchored in the Ten Commandments. We urge the city to reconsider its decision.”
In the USA the debate has even reached the classrooms. In 1978, the Kentucky state legislature passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school, in order to honour a fundamental legal code of Western Civilization. This law was challenged in court as violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that no law can be made “respecting an establishment of religion.” Supporters of the law pointed out that the system of laws in the USA are based on these commandments and that it is important for students to learn about them. So, is this true? How much do the current legal systems in the UK and the USA owe to the Ten Commandments? A lot. Are they viewed as just relics of the past? Unfortunately, yes.
In 2010, Tina Dupuy, a nationally syndicated columnist, decided to “settle the case against the Ten Commandments” by trawling through the Constitution of the United States and deciding which of the Ten Commandments, if any, are referenced. She ended up with a score of 3.5 out of 10. She totally dismisses the first five Commandments, stating that the Constitution does not favour one God over any other, has no prohibitions over the worship of images, blasphemy is not covered by the clauses regarding freedom of speech and gives a half mark to the Sabbath laws, mischievously downgrading the score because of the change of day from Saturday to Sunday. She also states that there are no clauses protecting the rights of parents. She concedes ground to the Commandments regarding murder, stealing and false witness but suggests that a blind eye is offered to adultery and coveting, the latter surely the oil that greases the cogs of the American capitalist culture!
The secular argument insists that even the three included Commandments are not exclusive
to Christianity and deny that the founding fathers based the Constitution on the Bible. They base this on the fact that the words “God”, “Jesus” and “Christianity” don’t appear anywhere in the document, nor does any language that could be deemed religious. This is a good example of placing form higher than function, concentrating on facades and semantics but neglecting the underlying mindset behind the writing of such an important document.
One way of viewing the Ten Commandments is as an alternative legal system, with just ten laws, to the existing United States law, with over 60,000 pages of laws printed in 45 volumes! The former, set in stone, is unmoveable and therefore intended to be timeless and relevant to all generations. The latter, crafted by flesh and blood, is ever expanding and subject to increasing interpretations. We like to make things difficult for ourselves!
It is interesting that these issues generate a lot of hot air in the USA, where there is a separation of Church and State, creating fault lines between the two, separating passionate supporters of each position. There is barely a glimmer on controversy in England, where the Church and State mix uncomfortably within the hotchpotch of confusion known as the Church of England.
In a 2017 YouGov poll of British people the results indicated that the majority view was that only six out of the ten commandments were principles worth living by. As expected, it was the last six, the man-centred ones, that were voted for. 93% of those polled agreed with not committing murder or stealing, 87% were against false testimony, 73% adultery, 69% against dishonouring parents and 61% against coveting. God got a hammering here, with only 31% against worshiping false idols, 23% against using the Lord’s name in vain, 20% agree to have no other god and 19% keeping the Sabbath (Sunday) holy. Believe it or not even the Christians in the poll agreed that those final four were not relevant today! This is a sad indictment of the current church and something we will examine in more detail in the next part of this book.
But, before we go there, a warning sign. It has just been reported that Chinese authorities are instructing the State-approved “Three-Self” churches to replace the Ten Commandments with quotes from Xi Jinping, the President. Currently this has been implemented in the Luoyang region, perhaps as a ‘pilot scheme’, with the overall strategy of sinicizing (‘Chinese-ing’) Christianity. A lot of the new ‘material’ is to be taken from a speech he made in 2015! Sometimes truth can really be stranger than fiction … and far more frightening.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
