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restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations
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We Decry the Removal of the Ten Commandments, But Can We Even Name Them?
Are you infuriated yet? Have you had it up to here with political correctness in Alabama? Are you put out yet with those evangelical leaders who have failed to close ranks with Judge Moore? If not, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be motivated to do anything about the current constitutional and biblical crisis in America.
When Paul came to Athens (Acts 17) he was so upset by what he saw that he could not rest. The Scripture says, “It disturbed his spirit within him to see the city so full of idols.” He was stirred in his deepest being over a city so entirely dedicated to false worship.
Thankfully, more and more stout-hearted Americans are growing justifiably disturbed over the “monumental” debacle in Montgomery. Judge Moore is absolutely right for defying a federal court order for the sake of a more fundamental “Court Order”: obey God rather than man! The tragedy is that most supporters of the Ten Commandments couldn’t name them if their life depended on it!
Could any of my readers state the Sixth Commandment?
Which commandment forbids greed? Which decries Sabbath breaking? If you
could name even five of the Ten Commandments you would be far ahead of the
crowd. And
Americans
are not the only ignorant church-goers. According to a Sunday Times of
London poll of 200 randomly-selected Anglican clergy, a mere 34 percent
surveyed could cite all of the Ten Commandments, and some could remember
only two.
The tragic truth is this: functional biblical illiteracy plagues our churches today. It was not always so. Our Founding Fathers came from an era when literate men and women knew their Bibles. James Madison, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, could read the Scriptures for himself in both the original Hebrew and the original Greek. Thomas Jefferson devoted long hours of his retirement to compiling—in four languages!—the basic teachings of Jesus Christ. Other founders such as Benjamin Franklin and John Adams possessed a fundamental faith while decrying any form of established religion.
University of California historian Edwin Gaustad says of that period, “The Bible provided a common core of ethical teaching, of cosmic understanding, of historical unfolding, of metaphysical or theological underpinning.” Throughout the history of America, Christianity has been at the heart of the civilization it inspired. Even the atheist is still a prisoner of an ethic and a mentality that is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition—as is shown every time he writes a date on a check!
C. S. Lewis once said that there were only two kinds of people: those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Very well, then, thy will be done.”
My friends, if a nation can’t even cite, let alone obey, the divine Commandments that are at its very foundation, whose fault it is for that nation’s demise?
September 1, 2003
David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.