Challenging conversations The Ten Words
F
ormer NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno used to love taking his camera crew onto the streets of Los Angeles to interview random people. The subject matter was
always of his choosing. Sometimes arcane, off-the-wall top- ics formed the questions. Most of the time routine facts about history or culture inspired the interviews. In one episode, Leno asked university students to name the
Ten Commandments. Not surprisingly perhaps, none of them could name a single one. One student ventured a guess: “Free- dom of speech?” No, freedom of speech is not one of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not drink and drive” isn’t one of the commandments either, in case you were wondering. Americans, and this would include a high percentage
of Christians, struggle to list the Ten Commandments. A famous survey conducted some years ago revealed that a strong majority of the respondents could name the seven ingredients of a McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger, but few could articulate more than a handful of the commandments. We are an ignorant but talkative people when it comes to
valuing the Ten Commandments. As Christians, we prize their role. The words delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai form the centerpiece for much of the ethical thinking in our spiri- tual lives. Or so we say. But do they really? If we can barely name individ- ual commandments, how central are their claims to our lives? If they are so important to us, why don’t our actions more frequently back up our words? I think of the businessman who
By Peter W. Marty Thirteenth in a series
Commandments are less rules to be followed than a way of life to be walked
itself to little more than religious tokenism. It mostly constitutes a declaration of power or privilege by a body of people within the republic who happen to be part of the current religious majority. When, in 1955, the U.S. Mint
began imprinting every coin and paper currency with the words “In God We Trust,” it wasn’t as if the citizenry suddenly began trusting God in a new way. A similar indifference could be expected if plaques with the Ten Commandments appeared on public school classroom walls. Wall plaques rarely inspire. They also tend not to provoke any deep moral reflection. So, if not public school classrooms and courthouse door-
told Mark Twain of his dream to visit the Holy Land, ascend Mount Sinai, and loudly recite the Ten Commandments to the vast sky. With great pride, the man had committed the command- ments to memory. Twain’s sardonic response was one we can all appreciate. “I have an even better idea,” he reportedly said. “You could stay home in Boston and keep them.” In recent decades we have seen a clamoring to get the Ten
Commandments posted in more public spaces and chis- eled into more courthouse doorposts. This crusade for more plaques and tablet sculptures seems to grow from the anxiety that some people feel when they see moral decay in America. Our rebellious and sinful ways do make for plenty of ugli-
ness and chaos in the world. But posting the Ten Command- ments is not the answer to moral decline. That gesture lends
However feebly we may grasp the commandments, they are worth fresh attention in our con- gregations and households. We can keep them from becoming artifacts of a distant past.
ways, where do the commandments belong? In our hearts. That’s where they were supposed to reside from the get-go. They weren’t inscribed on stone tablets as laws of the com- monwealth; they were given as laws of the human heart. These Ten Words—or Decalogue, as the Hebrew Bible pre- fers to refer to them—are less rules to be followed than a way of life to be walked. They are what a vision of human community in close rapport with God looks like. However feebly we may grasp the
commandments, they are worth fresh attention in our congregations and households. We can keep them from
becoming artifacts of a distant past. The incredible announcement that prefaces the Ten
Words should always catch our eye. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). This freeing declaration is our clue that the commandments are not burdensome weights shipped with an “OBEY THEM!” packaging label. Instead, they are what preach- ing professor Thomas G. Long calls “wings that enable our hearts to catch the wind of God’s Spirit, and to soar.”
Author bio: Marty is a pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa, and a regular columnist for The Lutheran.
May 2014 3
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52