What is it with the religous Right & the posting of the 10 Commandments? I want to make clear I am not attacking the 10 Commandments. Even if you are not religous, you should admit the 10 Commandments are a important historical document, along w/ the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the code Napoleon, Declaration of Independence, ect.
BUT, the 10 Commandments are not even Christian Law. Did not Jesus say He was the new Covenant? Is not one of the main differences between Judiaism & Christianity is that (most) Christians DON’T follow the 4th C(Keep the Sabbath)? And is not one of the big schisms caused by most of the Chritians not following the 2nd C.(graven images)?
So why all the big to-ro from the Chritian Right about the 10 Commandment? Why not the Sermon on the Mount? Or the Lord’s Prayer?
I would think it’s cause they can get away with it a little more easily. If they wanted to post somethign from the New testement or the lord’s prayer it could more easily be seen as religious. This way they can hide behind the veil of important historical document.
In addition, the fact remains that the Ten Commandments do retain a place in Christian thought and belief, even if a couple of the commandments have fallen by the wayside or been reinterpreted, such as the 4th (from “keep the Sabbath” to “go to church every Sunday”). Many Christians still feel that these form the basis of their moral code, and so the fundamentalists want to put them in public schools.
As for me, I say “You wouldn’t put up multiplication tables in your churches, so don’t put up the Ten Commandments in the schools.”
Heck is where you go when you don’t believe in Gosh.
First off, let me point out that not all Christians number the commandments the same way. As a former Catholic, I think of the “Sabbath” commandment as #3, and the “graven images” is rolled into #1. Catholics have separate “wife coveting” and “goods coveting” commandments, while Protestants generally roll them into one.
Also, I think it’s a bit presumptuous of you to say that many/most Christians are worshipping graven images.
The reason that the Religious Right is so gung-ho about getting the 10 commandments into schools is because they believe that a “moral crisis” is occurring in america, which can be directly traced to lack or religion, and what they view as the morality that religion provides. They believe that the Ten Commandments can be presented objectively as a moral code, separate from religion. The Religious Right is somewhat correct that the Ten Commandments do form the basis for traditional Jewish morality, but it is not the Commandments themselves that are anything to write home about (“thou shalt not kill”? That’s kind of a no-brainer when it comes to moral codes, isn’t it?). The reason that the Ten Commandments are significant is that they are Commandments, rules given by God telling people how to live, i.e. they are totally worthless without a religious context, so the Religious Right is basically wrong that they can be presented as a valuable moral code in-and-of themselves. That probably won’t stop them, though.
I’m against posting the Ten Commandments in schools. Proponents of posting them have asked me what problem I have with rules like ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not kill’, as though by opposing the posting of the Commandments, I’m also opposing telling people that they shouldn’t lie, kill, and steal. I like to respond, ‘My problem’s not with the last six commandments; it’s with the first four’. While the last six commandments admittedly are a pretty good guide for conducting interpersonal relationships, the first four are particular to Judeo-Christian belief, and it would be offensive (not to mention unconstitutional) to imply that people of other faiths should follow them as well. How would an atheist obey the commandment to ‘have no other gods before me’, or a Hindu obey the prohibition against worshipping idols?
TMR
LETS RIDE THIS SAUCER FULL OF SupErlovE INTO OUR FORTOLD UTOPIAN MILLENIUM…
Erratum: It’s not “worship” it’s MAKE, ie King James ver, Ex20: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (the next verse goes into worshipping them). One of the causes of the schism between the Roman Catholic & the Orthodox churches is that the Orthodox church believed in following this, ie no crucifixes, no statues of Jesus or the saints, etc.(icons are OK). The Roman Church believed such images are OK. Most Christians have no problem with this. (not worship, make).
Trout: I personally agree with you, except as another great historical document in a series of such. BUT, the thread here is WHY is the Religous right so hot to have them posted, not should they be posted (there is another thread for that issue).
I think the push for posting the Commandments, along with such things as school-sponsored prayer and the teaching of creationism in science classes, is a part of the RR’s campaign to Christianize the public schools. An argument I’ve heard a few times in favor of the above goes something like ‘We need to have our religion in schools, because for some kids it may the only place they hear about it’. I think this belies the RR’s true purpose: they want a captive and impressionable audience for proselytizing their religion.
TMR
LETS RIDE THIS SAUCER FULL OF SupErlovE INTO OUR FORTOLD UTOPIAN MILLENIUM…
Sorry, flip comment. But there was a time when Judaism was not a wide-spread religion; its members were a minority, and perhaps seen as unusual and weird by their neighbors.
Unlike now…
(While Christianity certainly started out as a “wacky-cult” I don’t really think that Judaism ever really fell into that catagory. Admittedly, the tribe in question was pretty small, but it wasn’t a cult so to speak-it was just the tribal religion of a small, and rather insignificant at the time, group of people.)
Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker.
IMHO, the point behind the Ten Commandments in schools was pretty well summarized by previous posters, particularly Erratum, who did an outstanding job. The entire idea is that “most of the problems that afflict our great country are caused by a lack of values’ of the sort WE had when we were young, and we need to instill in the kids those values.” Since in the opinion of the Religious Right (which is neither), the proper basis for moral behavior is the Bible in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, one must therefore force-feed them the Ten Commandments, as the basis for getting them into a moral lifestyle. [Please note that any similarities between the opinions of the poster and those of the preceding paragraph are purely coincidental.]
Needless to say, no good Christian should think of attempting to impose these Old Testament rules on our kids. However, there are a lot of people who don’t make the connection between what Jesus said and their own lives, and so think that they have the right to legislate others’ morality.
Actually Jesus said, "I did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill the law.’ (my paraphrase)
He also said, ‘the Law can be summed up as love the Lord God with all you mind, heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ (again paraphrase mine)
It seems no one has a problem with the latterpart, but the first part is the ‘sticky wicket’.
As I expressed to Adam elsewhere, I feel that the core element of Christianity as defined by Paul was freedom from the Law – not just the dietary law but the entire structure of shalts and shalt-nots… that from being the subjects of God seen as King, we become the loved children of a Heavenly Father. Whence, while the Decalogue functions as guidelines to living a moral Christian life, the commandment aspect is non-applicable. In short, the tongue-in-cheek remark that they werent named “The Ten Suggestions” gets turned on itself – for Christians, they are just that. Maybe 99.44%-of-the-time-valid ones, but only that.
Freedom, from the letter of the law, but not from the Spirit of it. Jesus was pretty clear on how He wanted us to behave both in relation to Him, and to our fellow man.
To say we can toss out the moral law with the ceremonial and sundry laws I think is a bit of a stretch.
Perhaps they’ll let us post the ‘Golden Rule’, that way we at least get the bottom half.
