The Ten Commandments as lawn ornament

So here in Oklahoma the legislature, apparently having solved the economic, traffic, education and environmental problems, have spent some good time on a bill to erect a monument to the Ten Commandments on the capitol lawn as a - get this - shrine to the law. That's kind of like saying the Lincoln Memorial is a tribute to beards.

It is pretty clear what the monument is intended to do, regardless of the careful and deliberate wording used by the proponents of this bill. Unfortunately the only legislature in the country to gain GOP seats during the last election apparently feels like its duty is to be the sole bastion of far right wing politics in the nation. Oh sure, there's the Rush and Cheney tour coming to a theatre near you, but they (thank God) can't make legislation.

The bigger issue is not separation of church and state, although that is a biggy. The bigger issue for me as a follower of Jesus and a person who values scripture is that this effort to establish monuments to the Ten Commandments does two things, neither of them helpful. It actually violates one of the Ten Commandments - you shall make no idols for yourselves. It also takes the sacredness of such a covenent and completely trivializes it.

The Ten Commandments are part of the covenental language between God and the people of Israel, the ancestors of both the Jewish and Christian faiths. In an effort to get what they want, the people who are pushing for this have so lost sight of the sacred nature of this covenant that they are willing to say that it is simply a legalistic model for us.

While we can certainly argue that point by itself (frankly we'd be better off with a monument to the Magna Carta if we're looking for our legal basis to be memorialized), I prefer to simply say that the Ten Commandments have a far better home on our hearts than they do on the lawn of the capitol. Let's worry about actually living the Ten Commandments more than memorializing them.