What if the Ten Commandments were Still Honored?
January 23, 2024
Sometimes it is helpful to imagine the value of something we have lost by seeing what it would be like if we had not lost it. In this message I will address the question of what our society might be like if the Ten Commandments had not been removed by government misunderstanding of the establishment clause of the Constitution and the principle of separation of church and state.
Let’s start by understanding how the Ten Commandments were slowly barred from the public life of American citizens. In November of 1980 the US Supreme Court decided Stone v. Graham which struck down a Kentucky law requiring that a copy of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. The Court’s argument concerned the first four commandments which deal with religious aspects like worshiping God whereas the second group of commandments deals with primarily how people treat one another.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The word “establishment” was clear to the founders. They had seen the problems that were created when nations establish one religion as the official religion of the country. They had seen this in England and most of Europe and knew that the Constitution should prohibit the establishment of a state religion so that people would not be coerced to be part of one religion.
So, the First Amendment tells the “Congress,” the federal law-making body of the nation composed of the House and the Senate, that it cannot pass any laws that establish a religion. It tells the Government what it cannot do and does not address what the people can or cannot do.
The second part of the religion clause states that the federal law-making body cannot pass a law “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The federal government cannot take any action that prohibits citizens from exercising their religion as they see fit. So Congress is barred from interfering with religion in any way.
People will often respond with the question “But what about the separation of church and state?’ The answer is that the expression “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution. The expression was used by Thomas Jefferson to remind the church that they need have no fear because there is a separation of church and state by which he meant that the state cannot interfere in the affairs of the church. The expression is used by some to claim that there is a separation of church and state in the Constitution. A simple read of the First Amendment will dispel that notion.
Notice that the states are not mentioned in the First Amendment. Some states had established churches such as the Puritans in several states, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, or the Catholics in Maryland. With this background in mind, the Founders left the issue of a state church up to the individual states. Eventually all states moved away from the notion of establishment and it remained the thinking of the nation that any issue of religion was left to the states.
So, the issue of church and state should have been left up to the states in the same way the Supreme Court recently ruled on the abortion issue in keeping with the Tenth Amendment. But for now at least we will have to live with this misunderstanding of the First Amendment which essentially allows the government to do what the Constitution prohibits.
So let’s examine what our country might be like if the Ten Commandments were still part of our lives setting moral standards for behavior.
The sixth commandment tells us to honor our fathers and mothers. Imagine what life would be like if children and young people treated their parents with honor. If they learned obedience and honor at home our schools would be filled with young people who honor their teachers and administrators. As a former teacher I can tell you that would be a game changer for our families, communities and schools. If this kind of honor was being experienced at home, the next four commandments concerning murder, adultery, stealing and lying would be almost unnecessary.
The next commandment, “You shall not murder,” covers the tendency of people to allow their anger to get out of hand. Jesus realized this telling us that to be overly angry with a person is the same as murder because murder starts in the heart (Matt 5:22). Imagine our country without this plague of violence we now experience. Imagine not hearing about the daily shootings and murders in cities like Chicago, LA and other big cities in the country. Imagine if gangs were not forming and anger was not rampant because respect for life was common.
Then there’s that question of adultery. Adultery is having sexual relations outside of marriage. It is the highest human expression of love which leads to the birth of another person with the potential to bear the image of God. It is the result of the very first thing that God did in regard to the human race. Marriage is dear to the heart of God.
Imagine men being faithful to their wives and passing the value of that faithfulness on to their children who then continue the trend. Imagine these men in the inner cities loving their wives and being in the home for their children who would then learn moral behavior from mom and dad. Gangs would cease to exist as young men find meaning in their parents and the home instead of the chaos of the street. Drug dealers would have no market and would find another way of making a living and potential prostitutes would find love instead of sex partners.
Pornography on the internet and other media would dry up like old leaves in the sun when men find pleasure with their wives and their children learn the same. The movie industry would have to find a new way of portraying young love as young people wait for marriage to have sex. Abortion would once again be recognized as murder of the innocent and thousands of children each year would live to see their lives realized. Maybe one of them would grow up to cure cancer or become a great leader.
Stealing would slowly become a practise of the past as people learn respect for people and property. Mob stealing would be replaced with mob charity events as giving began to win out over taking.
Lying would slowly fade away because there would be so few things to lie about as people learn the value of morality properly practiced. Truth would replace falseness as moral values become a part of our lives. Imagine our news media actually reporting the news and analyzing it in an honest way. People would learn the truth about things instead of the spin of a political party.
I am aware of the naivete of this message. Essentially I have been describing moral conditions of the kingdom of God ruled by the King of the universe. But take it from an old timer, there was a time when these moral conditions were more common. I never heard of divorce until as a fifth grader I discovered one of my friends had a different last name then his mother.
You’ve probably heard some old timer reminiscing about not locking the door at night or being able to walk down the street after dark without fear or getting a spanking for using a cuss word. Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end. But they did because some men in black robes decided they knew better than the Founders of our nation who created the Constitution. We’re having to live with that but it doesn’t change the truth as presented in God’s moral laws and expressed in the Constitution of the United States.
If the first commandment were honored and followed all of the rest of them would manifest in our lives. That commandment is “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex 20:3). We have forsaken our God and made idols of everything from the food we eat to the clothes we wear or the cars we drive. We have been lured away from our God and serve other things. The result has been the banning of His moral laws in our schools and society as a whole. We refuse to honor Him by living the way we want forgetting that He is God and we are not.
Jesus said He did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17). Letting Christ lead us through His Holy Spirit is the way to keeping His laws because we can only do so in His strength. He gave us the law to show us that we are incapable of keeping it and need His strength to do so.
One thing is settled. If God’s laws were still honored our country would be in a much better place.
