How Should Christians Think about the Public Display of the Ten Commandments? Louisiana's New Legislation

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer. And today what I wanted to address was this bill that has been passed into law, I believe, last week in the state of Louisiana that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in various public settings, including or maybe particular to elementary and junior high, high school, and post-secondary educational institutions. And so let me start out. I wrote an op-ed on this for The Washington Times, and so I have some ideas about what I want to say here. But let me just begin by saying with some general comments regarding America. The United States is not and never has been a Christian nation. I firmly believe that. You know, I argue this in my new book, Serpents and Doves, Christians, Politics, and the Art of Bearing Witness. Christians are a distinct group of individuals united by faith in Jesus Christ, and they seek to point to and glorify the triune God. But throughout history, the United States and the leaders in both the political and religious realms have tended to frame the United States as a Christian nation. Now, I've argued again in my book that Christian does not mean what Christian is not a good descriptor of a nation, that Christian really needs to be narrowed down and kept within the realm of those who are united in Jesus Christ. Christ needs to be essential to what it means to be Christian. And if we look back at our national heritage, there's no denying that the Bible had an influence on our founding documents. There's no denying that Christians had an influence on early America. I think those things are absolutely true. And yet, though that influence doesn't make something Christian, you know, if we were going to say that the Bible has an influence on, when the Bible has an influence on one particular group, we could point to Mormons and Jehovah's Witness and say, well, these are also Christian groups. We don't do that. We recognize the difference between acknowledging the inspired word of God as such and being inspired by the biblical text and using the biblical text to justify one's own aims and interests. And so I would argue that the United States falls in this latter category of recognizing and being inspired by some of the biblical teachings, recognizing and being inspired by some of the Christian morality that may have been available at the time, but that that is a different thing than recognizing the Bible as the authoritative word of God that is going to govern the life and faith of a nation. It's just very different. And until there's a recognition that the triune God, not just some generic higher power, is in charge, the United States can't really be characterized as a Christian nation. In fact, I would argue there is no Christian nation, that the church is the group of people who are properly understood as the covenant people of God. And that's as close to Christian as, you know, a Christian nation as you're ever going to get. And so I don't believe that the United States is the Christian nation. I do not believe that it has a Any theological, as I talk about in the book, I don't believe that it is theologically special or theologically distinct. I do believe that the United States is being used by God as all other nations are to accomplish particular tasks. And if we look at the history of the nations across the Old Testament and the way that God uses different nations, he's going to use nations that are both, you know, let's say, have more and less moral in various ways. He's going to use rulers who are more and less moral in various ways. And so I don't think that the United States is not blessed by God. I don't think the United States is evil in some strange way or something like that. But what I do think is that it is just another nation. It has no special covenant status before God. And thus calling it a Christian nation is very much a misnomer. I would even go beyond that and say that it's not just a misnomer. I think it plays into something that can lead to idolatry. American civil religion is a problem. Robert Bella, who was a sociologist who dealt with American civil religion, notes the following. He says the American civil religion was never anti-clerical or militantly secular. On the contrary, it borrowed selectively from the religious tradition of Christianity in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between the two, end quote. And so by seeing no conflict between American Christianity, that doesn't mean that there's no conflict there, nor does it mean that America and Christianity always have the same objectives. We can see this in a number of different ways. We can see this in just the basic functioning of government. The church is going to deal with, let's say, an issue like immigration in a different way than the government is. The church, who is called to love our neighbors as ourselves, is not going to be worried necessarily about the resources required to sustain a population within a given bounded space. We're going to love our neighbors who's right in front of us, regardless of whether they're legal, illegal, what have you. We're just going to love our neighbor. That's separate from policy issues on immigration. That is the realm of the state. The realm of the state is to shepherd everything underneath their control, really, to govern, to make appropriate judgment regarding what needs to happen in various circumstances. And you could say the same thing about war. The church is not called to go to war. The government has the sword. And so there's all these different distinctions that we just need to keep in mind as we're looking at this. So how does all that relate to the decision in Louisiana? Well, I think that some Christians may be tempted to see the recent decision by Louisiana lawmakers to require the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public schools as an unqualified good. And I want to stress that unqualified. We should be encouraged that our political authorities are trying to align, to some degree, society with God's law. God's law references God's order. It points to it. And yet, I think we should be really cautious in thinking that... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The use of the biblical text by the American government is not intended to reinforce American civil religion as opposed to Christianity. And so Christians need to recognize that the difficulties associated with the assimilation of the biblical text by governing authorities really relates to this idea of what is being reinforced by that biblical text. It's easy for Christians to think, oh good, we posted the Ten Commandments. That's obviously referencing Jesus Christ. That's obviously referencing the triune God. But many times it simply isn't. And I think the decontextualization of the Ten Commandments from their narrative setting almost points to that. There's an abstraction that happens because within a pluralistic society where, you know, one of the main tenets of the United States is freedom of religion. The Ten Commandments almost can't mean, constitutionally can't mean, that the state is referencing the triune God. They almost have to be abstracted from that. And so it gestures towards some sort of higher power, towards some sort of generic God, as opposed to the very specific God of the biblical narrative and all that that would entail. So we just need to recognize and acknowledge that when the Ten Commandments are used by political authorities, there is a tendency for God to become a generic term and that that does not require the triune God of the Scriptures. You know, when you read the context of the biblical story, the Ten Commandments speak against aspects of our nation's constitution.

So when you read the Ten Commandments, God is not leaving room for the Israelites to have any other god. There is no religious freedom. There's an obligation. God has redeemed Israel from Egypt. And so the Israelites are not to have any other gods before him, and they are not to make images or bow down to those images. They are not to worship anything else. They're only to worship the Lord. That is almost the definition of not having religious freedom. There's no choice there. This is the obligation that is entailed by God's previous acts for the nation of Israel. And within the covenant, they are only supposed to worship God. That runs against our notions of religious freedom. And so the first three commandments, really, or first three words, require an unreserved commitment to the Lord as God. It's not a generic higher power, but the God who liberated Israel from Egypt and would later raise Jesus from the dead. And this specific exclusive claim is, at best, pushed to the background, and at worst, denied by reconceptualizing God as a non-specific higher power when the state picks up the Ten Commandments. I would just say, second, the commandment in both Exodus and Deuteronomy begin with a reference to what God did for Israel in Egypt. Detaching the commandments from that story of God's redemption, which the Louisiana law does, the required posting does not require that the first, really the first word in Exodus, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt, that isn't included in what the Louisiana state is requiring to be posted. And so it allows a specific portion of the biblical text to be incorporated into American history or civil religion. So when you look at the law, if you actually pull that up online, and I've linked it here in the description of this bonus episode, take a look at it. There is no reference to any sort of biblical authority. There's no reference to any sort of, you know, honoring the triune God, fearing the Lord, anything that would be specifically Christian and truly exclusive to this triune God doing these things. Instead, what you have is a number of references to the way that the Ten Commandments informed historic American documents. And so what we find is that we're cultivating a civic morality based on these Ten Commandments that are rooted in a American heritage. But that American heritage is by no means authoritative. I mean, we could do this almost the same way for various Greco-Roman documents. We could do this for a variety of like, we could do this for English documents that were used to help craft the Constitution. The Ten Commandments were not necessarily the only reference used to craft our historic documents. And so what we find in this law is that there is a reference back to a time in American history where some of these founding documents or historic documents, not all of them were officially founding documents, but historic documents were referencing or using the Ten Commandments as sort of a source. But not all of those even referenced the Ten Commandments as the authoritative word of God. And so what we're seeing is that working out, not of this is an issue of, you know, the United States used to believe that the Bible was authoritative and the final authority for life and faith. What I think we're seeing is that the Bible provided some level of inspiration for the way people thought about how they could govern themselves. And let's just key in on that for a moment. How they could govern themselves. The Bible seldom talks about how we govern ourselves outside of terms that would convey sin. When we start to run things, when we decide what we should or shouldn't do on our own terms, that's usually called sin. We are not good at governing ourselves. And so when we think about this, God is governing. We are to be following him. He is the authority that we are following. He puts in and delegates certain authority to other people, but even they are to sort of flow up to him. The hierarchy is always from God to others. And we never have to obey intervening structures that aren't also obeying God. And so by putting up the Ten Commandments, my argument would be that we're running the risk of confusing who's in charge here, as opposed to reinforcing who's in charge here. So I think it's probably motivated to some degree by a religious zeal, but I would not say that it is a Christian zeal. Christians just need to be wary about celebrating the law without at the same time acknowledging that the law is not advocating that all public school children become disciples of Jesus Christ. Instead, the law is seeking to create good citizens of the United States and active petitioners of America's civil religion. So finally, what I would say is just encouraging people to follow some moral code is a good thing. Right. And on the broad sense of good, it's a good thing. It's aligning people more with God's order. I think it's an appropriate thing for the government to do. I think that doing that in religious language is problematic because it tends to gesture toward a civil religion, in this case, the American civil religion. Yet that isn't all that, you know, this sort of gesturing toward a moral code isn't all that displaying the Ten Commandments in schools is actually doing. And so the moral code is really embedded within a story about our nation that is going to compete with the Christian story. It's not so much that Christianity and the United States are at odds at every turn. As I said, I don't want to set this up as an economy, like you have to be a Christian or you have to be an American. And the two can't ever cooperate or collaborate. I think there are many times when we see this biblically where we see nations doing things that lean into God's order and that can align with the people of God as we seek to gesture toward that order or point people toward that order and acknowledge God in that order. But what often happens is that this overlap between the aims of the church and the aims of the political regime or the state, let's say. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579 in pursuing peace and justice. That overlap does not mean that the ultimate aim of the church and the state are the same. And so even though the two may converge at certain points, may touch, they're ultimately leading to other places. They have to diverge at some point because the United States is not interested, has no vested interest in making disciples for Jesus Christ. The church, that is our sole mission, making disciples for Jesus Christ, being and making disciples for Jesus Christ. So they will at some point part ways because the church is just recognizing the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the governing authorities aren't. I think incorporating the Ten Commandments in schools is really a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you know, the desire to encourage a general morality aligned with God's order is actually encouraging. And I think we should recognize that Christians and governing authorities share this desire to curtail or restrain evil. We don't want to see murder and theft and, you know, bearing false witness. We want to see the integrity of families. We want to see a general contentment with what one has as opposed to coveting what a neighbor has. All of these things are places where we can quasi-align, where we can generally gesture toward God's order in the same way. But Christians have to recognize the gap between affirming a moral principle or a general idea of the good and being transformed by the Holy Spirit. We have to recognize that this idea of the good won't necessarily lead people to becoming Christian. And so how should we think about the law regarding the Ten Commandments in Louisiana? I would say this. We should just recognize that displaying the Ten Commandments in schools can and probably does reinforce American civil religion rather than Christianity. I don't think this is a moment where Christians really have a win. What we have is we have a quasi-alignment with the governing authorities that could and probably will at some point go bad.

Because ultimately what we're going to see, I think, is that the 10 commandments, even if they're displayed in Louisiana, people are not going to want to legislate based on those moral principles, and they're certainly not going to want to legislate based on the full and authoritative word of God. So the intermingling of these Christian ideas and biblical passages and, you know, even Christians themselves throughout America's history isn't trivial. And I think that's what's being gestured toward in these 10 commandments. And there are positive benefits that we reap every day from governing principles inspired from the Bible, even more generally than just the 10 commandments. At the same time, however, I think that Christians have to take care to distinguish between that being inspired by God's word and living under the authority of God's inspired word. And the former draws the elective free from the Bible and Christian tradition to serve a broader American project. There are certain aspects of the text that simply would never be displayed in a public place. And so, you know, we have to recognize that this is a selective pulling, that there's a reason the 10 commandments are sort of being pulled in and that we just need to acknowledge that. They are convenient. We're not asking, you know, the state of Louisiana is not asking for John 14, 7 to be displayed all over the place. It's, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me. I think that when we live under the authority of the biblical text and we recognize that that is God's inspired word, you know, we're recognizing that America's governing authorities are subject to the triune God, whether they acknowledge him or not. And so the Louisiana law may be the latest shell fired in America's culture war. And it may seem comforting to think that there's a state out there and governors that are willing to fight this battle to try to reinstitute what we might refer to as Judeo-Christian values or Judeo-Christian morals. But I think we also have to recognize that making people less lost, as I've argued elsewhere, it is not our goal. Our goal is not to leave the world less lost than it was or more moral than it was. Our goal is to have people living under the authority of Jesus Christ as disciples of Jesus Christ who have come to him through faith. And so these two things are not always going to align as aims. They can, but they won't always. Christians just need to remember that we're not responsible also for fixing this broken culture. I say this all the time and in a variety of different ways, but I think we're responsible for living as a distinct and faithful people within a culture that is broken and that we are waiting for the culmination of God's kingdom. You know, as we wait, we need to resist the temptation to adopt American civil religion and American civil religion confuses the message of the gospel by substituting wholesomeness for holiness. In other words, we're willing to settle for wholesomeness as opposed to striving for holiness. Its aim is to retain sort of the baseball and apple pie idea rather than acknowledging the authority of a crucified savior. And so as Christians, we just need to recognize that American civil religion presses truth into service of a false narrative in which the United States assumes the status of the people of God without accepting the obligations associated with being the people of God. It's a false religion. And as such, Christians have to just take care, exercise caution in distinguishing the church from the state so that God's people may point to and glorify the triune God in the midst of a world that does not acknowledge him. So as we think about the 10 commandments in Louisiana, I'm not encouraging us to see these as an unqualified bad either. I just don't wanna see them as an unqualified good. We need to recognize really what this is and what it isn't. It probably isn't Louisiana stepping up and advocating for Christianity. It probably is Louisiana stepping up and advocating for an American civil religion that is rooted in values that are in many ways shared across or there's deep overlap between Christianity and the civil authorities on these issues. But the crux is always going to be Christ. He's always going to be the stumbling block. He's always going to be the challenge. And for Christians, we don't just want general abstracted principles. We don't just want a more moral world. We want a world transformed by Christ. We want to imitate Christ in all that we do and we want a world that is remade by God. And so it's not just a question of are the 10 commandments good or not good? Are they a good set of ideas, maybe even moral principles that people can look to and say, yes, I think we should do these things and I think we should not do these things. Certainly they are. And I think that it's great that people are inspired by the biblical text if they wanna try to live a better life. But ultimately, I think if that better life becomes the end toward which they're living, they're still lost. And so we've got to be really careful about seeing these kinds of laws and this kind of legislation as an unqualified good because RNI needs to stay on the ball of what are we trying to do? We're trying to proclaim the gospel to people such that we can make disciples by helping them understand what it means to live under the authority of Jesus Christ, not keep the 10 commandments. So let's keep our eye on the ball. Let's think about our mission. Let's keep our central tenets of the faith in mind and help others come to faith in Jesus despite what laws are being passed. Let's be careful about the way that we talk about these 10 commandments and this 10 commandment rule in Louisiana. And let's not get so obsessed with retaining some of these aspects of American culture because at the end of the day, American culture will fail us. And what we'll be left with is we will be left with what God has given us, the perpetual continuation of the church of God who have been made in the image of Christ through discipleship. Let's focus there and allow all these other things to sort of sit by the wayside and judge them appropriately. We don't need to condemn them, but we also don't need to embrace them without critical thought. Hey, everybody, that's my take on the 10 commandments law in the state of Louisiana. Hopefully you enjoyed this bonus episode and we'll catch you next week on Thinking Christian. I just wanna take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. 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