The Ten Commandments in a Secular Society (Lent 3B/Ex. 20:1-17)

I find it very interesting to watch the way Christians handle the ten commandments. On the one hand, they have become an icon of our Christian culture, so that nobody wants to claim that they don’t keep them. They’re regarded as a foundational and basic icon, so we keep trying to make them the firm foundation of something, even if we’re not sure what. Indeed, many Christians are certain they keep all the commandmenst, but are not sure just what those commandments actually are.

The problem is that very few, if any Christians keep the commandments in the way that they were intended.  I grew up as a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Adventists have one of the best claims to actually keep the commandments, yet still they are somewhat less strict than Orthodox Jews would be, and probably less strict than ancient Israelite priests would have been.  Most importantly, we probably all fail through the use of religious imagery.  Our use of pictures of Jesus, for example, would have looked much too much like idolatry to that early generation.

I think it is important to remember that the ten commandments were given to a group of Israelites escaping slavery and beginning to learn about God.  If you read the Pentateuch carefully–something few Christians do–you’ll find that the ten commandments are quite fundamental, but they are neither the constitution of the government of Israel, nor are they designed to express a fundamental moral law in a broad sense.  Those elements are scattered through the Pentateuch, and are reflected in the ten commandments.  Of those two elements, the fundamentals of morality are most reflected, while the constitution of the nation is reflected only in the key statement of the theocracy.  How this functions is left for other places.

Thus from the start, the ten commandments cannot directly provide the foundation for a secular government.  Rather, they provide a moral foundation for living well.  This moral foundation is set in a particular set of cultural circumstances.

Now some will think I’m trying to diminish the value of the ten commandments or dismiss them in this way.  But recognizing what something actually is, and also what it is not is not to dismiss it.  Rather, it provides us an opportunity to apply it successfully.  Christians worship on Sunday, for example.  Why?  I frequently hear this expressed as “keeping the fourth commandment.”  But the fourth commandment doesn’t tell you that.  It doesn’t say you should go to church on Sunday.  It doesn’t even say you should go to church–or even the Synagogue–on Saturday.  What it tells you to do is to rest and refrain from labor on the seventh day.

I used “you” there, but that is another point of understanding.  The fourth commandment was first expressed to those Israelites.  It is quite proper to ask just how it applies to you and me as opposed to them.  One starting place is to note that, by connection with creation, the fourth commandment expresses God’s sovereignty over time.  That means over your time–over all your time!

The earlier commandments express exclusive worship of one God, and ask us not to misrepresent that one God.  (I’m not going to expand on this today, but I might later in the week.)  This orders that we don’t portray God as an idol.  When I read the ten commandments in their historical context, I know this means that the Israelites are not to make idols and bow down to them.  One reason is that God is much bigger than this.  In your normal temple of the ancient near east when you got to the inner sanctum you would find an image of the God.  In Israel’s temple, you found an empty space.  God could not be so portrayed.

Might this say something about some of our confident systematic theologies?  I’m not calling systematic theology idolatry.  But overconfidence in one’s theology might well be idolatry.

But finally, when we try to portray the ten commandments as a sort of constitution, we show that we either don’t know what a constitution is, or we don’t know what the ten commandments are.  The basic law of Israel was already established at the time.  God is in charge.  Period.  Over time we see different ways of that rulership being expressed, and the elements of a constitution do occur in the Pentateuch.  But only that one element is expressed in the ten commandments, and that one element is not an element of a secular constitution.

At the same time, it can be the fundamental moral statement of God’s people living in a secular society, and in fact I would suggest it should be.  But first we’re going to have to know what it actually is.  Let me suggest something:  Narrow the principle, then broaden the application.  Try to find the key to what is being taught in the commandment, defined narrowly.  Extract the basic principle(s) from it.  Then apply it broadly.

God is in charge of time.  There is one authority in the universe, not many.  The family is a fundamental unit.  Those are things we can use in life, as God’s people living in a secular society.

Note: I’m presenting a series on this topic on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, starting here.