The Ten Commandments: A Baseline Commitment
Imagine a future in which it is necessary for most counties in the United States to post the Ten Commandments at the county line right under the sign with the county’s name.
WHEN ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF GENERAL GEORGE CASEY expressed fear that diversity in the military would suffer in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting, the public was rightly outraged. It was perfectly obvious that military officials, to avoid appearing to descriminate, had placed diversity above the safety of soldiers.
That a terrorist got inside the gates of a military base and killed illustrates how the false morality of secular society has caused our officials to ignore true morality, which protects people. In the guise of secular values like diversity and separation of Church and state, false morality is a danger not only to our nation, but to local areas as well.
A time may come when Americans no longer can afford such luxuries, when times are too dangerous to trust anyone who does not first submit to a baseline of biblical morality. Civil war has been fought in this country before and could be again. Or chaos may result from a catastrophe.
The answer to public disorders is not giving an amoral government power to declare martial law. Rather, it is to allow an armed and moral citizenry and their local law enforcement officials to defend themselves against violators of public morality and law.
Allow me to pose a hypothetical suggestion here that may seem out of place in modern America. The reason it is out of place is that we have not yet seen circumstances that demand it. But it will not be out of place in a more dangerous and chaotic future.
Some day people living in an area might need to inform people coming in of the need to follow certain basic conduct. Speaking especially of a society with roots in Judeo-Christian culture, I know of no better standard of generally agreed upon conduct than the Ten Commandments.
The Law of Moses commanded the Israelites to write the commandments upon their door posts and gates. Similarly, in a society that must depend on the goodness of its people for the maintenance of peace, it will promote the public good to write the Ten Commandments at the gateways of our territories and communities. This is as much as to say, if you come here, commit to keeping these rules, or be regarded as a criminal.
However one interprets the first amendment of the Constitution, it’s certainly undeniable that, in America’s beginnings, public displays of the Ten Commandments would not have been prohibited, but encouraged. In fact, in our early history, Puritan laws were based on the Law of Moses, and they often cited it verbatim. God’s Law was certainly an important part of American history and law, and as long as it was, it promoted the public welfare and security. But the modern move to a secular society has led to a loss of public morality.
Posting the commandments at the gateways to our communities would as much as say, when you enter our community, you enter into a covenant with the people to conduct yourself in a given way. There is a baseline of morality here. The Ten Commandments at the county line would say in effect, “Thieves, adulterers, murderers, and worshipers of false gods are not welcome here.” If this was backed up with a commitment to arrest and prosecute violators, people would be safer in times of crisis and chaos.
In our lifetime, we have never been in a position to have to defend our communities. That is not to say that this will always be the case.
In dangerous times, people have to live in covenant with one another on a local and area level, or it is impossible to trust anyone. Apart from this baseline commitment, everyone is a potential enemy.
Times of peace and prosperity enable human beings to insist on such luxuries as “a high wall of separation between Church and State” and diversity. These secular values don’t help people survive in times when we all need to be able to trust our neighbors. Secular values must inevitably give way in times of great danger, because people have a need to live with each other in a covenant and to trust in God. A covenant surrounding the Ten Commandments would necessarily be religious. And these ten laws would ultimately be based on a belief in the one true God of the Bible. Only the worship of the Judeo-Christian God, therefore, would do. And only those who live by His baseline morality would be regarded as safe people to have around.
The secular alternative to this is simply a fantasy. It is impossible that secularists would agree on morality, and we cannot hope to maintain public order through troubled times without a moral baseline. Nor can we fail to inherit a violent world, if we reject “thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery”.
The Judeo-Christian God has given us a moral baseline. This is fodder for skeptics and scoffers until the time when it will be needed. And then no one will be able to deny its effectiveness for promoting public order.
Secularism has thrown open a door to Islam, the practice of which ought to be forbidden in every corner of America, along with any religion that promotes murder as Islam does. The false god of Islam commands his adherents to commit acts of terror. If we therefore reject the God of the Bible while allowing the worship of the false god of Islam, we are rejecting the source of our security. We cannot hope to have peace while worshiping a false deity. It is not as though simply any god may do. Worshiping the one true God is an act of patriotism and self-preservation.
In times of trouble, diversity must be set aside for the good of the people and of the covenant they live by. Those who wish to protect diversity at the expense of covenant will eventually be guilty of creating a society favorable not only to murderers and thieves, but terrorists as well. Indeed, we have this problem in the United States already, where leaders sometimes sacrifice homeland security for diversity.
Instead we must protect the Ten Commandments against making diversity a higher priority; and then we will have safety.
