A few more thoughts on the Ten Commandments

I'd like to flesh out my feelings on the Supreme Court's hearing the Ten Commandments issue. It struck me that my friend Kurt would be very confused if he were to read my blog post and comments from a few days ago. You see, in the context of a Sunday School class that he was teaching I defended the civil liberties side of the argument quite convincingly. I did this mainly because he was coming off a little heavy handed and I knew there to be some liberal folks in the class that were not likely to speak up. I wanted to say what I knew they were thinking. Now, Kurt knows me pretty well, and was a bit confused by my stance, so we talked about it at some length. He sympathized with my nod toward our shy liberal friends, but, as he's done many times while talking to me, he pinned me down and asked, "Rich, what do you think?" I hate when that happens. After chatting for a while we both agreed that God was probably not much impressed with our monuments. And, like our tithes, God doesn't need our money or our symbolic gestures. What He wants is that which transforms us when we tithe or praise Him. If you can accept the ethical commandments such as Don't Murder, or Don't Steal; but not the religious ones like, Have No God Before Me, I ask you: why? what's wrong with murder and stealing? If there's no God, then you can't tell someone else that stealing or adultery is wrong. That would be enforcing your moral code on them. We live by the code of law in this country. A code that seems to be common sense, taken for granted; at least when it comes to Don't Murder and Don't Steal. But it's not. It comes from the same Well as the wisdom that brought us One God opposed to many gods. It is a religious concept. We shouldn't break with the spiritual side of life, we can't live that way; we weren't built that way. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Freedom of Religion is a religious concept brought to you by the Reformed Christian Church. Having said that, I can live without the Ten Commandments in our Civil Courts building or where ever else it bothers the so-called non-religious people who aren't really non-religious.