Ever since the notorious 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rendered its controversial ban on the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a temporary stay upon that ban (prompted by public outrage), the ‘kick God out of America lobby' has turned up the heat on finishing the job.
Some of the hell raising, sadly, comes from purported friends of the faith.
One example: A self-proclaimed ‘believer' lawyer declares in a legal commentary that the hanging of the Ten Commandments in a public place is unconstitutional.
Essentially, her rationale is as follows: ‘Those who believe the commandments are the foundation of our laws are misguided,' and by way of proof, ‘a number of the commandments are purely personal.'
Story Continues Below
The believing side of her concedes, "To be sure, the principles expressed in the last six commandments – honor thy mother and father, don't steal, don't kill, don't covet, don't commit adultery, and don't lie – can be found in many laws in the United States."
Yet, she continues, "The first four commandments ... contain directives that no government official in this land of religious liberty may say or endorse on behalf of the government." (emphasis added)
The first four commandments – which are by her decree, ‘taboo,' are the ‘personal' ones. With the exception of her brief concession to the last six commandments – though not much of a concession, since her plan still publicly bans all Ten Commandments – none of this washes. Here's what she didn't say:
The Bill of Rights prohibits the government from making ANY law that abridges freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Yet such a court imposed prohibition on expressing our "personal" beliefs, whenever and wherever we please, in public and in private, is just that, a law that abridges religion and speech. No mention.
By banning Judeo-Christian morality from the public sphere, we give preference – by default – to lawmakers, judges, and executives (with powers over life and death, prosperity and poverty, freedom and servitude) to act without conscience; and to educators (with powers over the hearts and minds of our children) to mold the rising generation without any rock solid guiding principles – a frightening prospect. No mention.
A "say" and "endorse" ban against public discussion of religious and moral speech – which is bad enough – is but the tip of a judicial iceberg that hides beneath its surface a far more pervasive prohibition that has struck, and is still striking a deadly blow at ALL religious speech, at ALL levels of society – for let's face it, the state in our day is everywhere, its money and its agents involved in almost everything, its judges found nearly everywhere legislating elastic definitions of "public" and "endorsement" (such as "implied" endorsement) so as to extend a supposedly narrow abridgement of religious speech to nearly every person and activity in the country. No mention.
On the other hand, were we to reverse field and again fully protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion rights for public employees, and all others directly or loosely affiliated with the state – as our forefathers did – here's the question: How is it that freedom to speak one's conscience equates to the state "forcing" faith on others – since speech is but a form of persuasion? No mention.
Besides, a double standard applies to this ‘off limits' approach to ‘private' morality. The reality: If the moral standard under consideration supports the Judeo-Christian ethic, it is "private," and MUST BE BANNED. Yet, if the moral standard under consideration supports the moral paradigm of humanism, socialism, communism, or any other revolutionary ‘ism,' it too is "private," yet because it is "private" it MUST BE PROTECTED, FAVORED, CHAMPIONED, AND SUBSIDIZED. Think about it. No mention.
Last of all, The Ten Commandments, put in proper context, is a liberty document – perhaps the greatest liberty document of all – a point we will discuss in the next several columns. No mention – until now.
For the Ten Commandments are about liberty – true liberty. The first of the Ten Commandments – the preface to all that follows – begins thus:
"I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
A revealing introduction. A reminder from the Lord, who declares in essence, ‘I delivered you from political, economic, and religious bondage, ergo; I am the Author of your Liberty. If you expect to stay free, listen up, here are the rules.'
A farm boy, unschooled in the law, can see it – the ‘believing' lawyer, schooled as she is in a study of words and phrases, of clear and implied meanings, couldn't – or wouldn't.
But let's dig deeper.
Israel was delivered by the Lord of Hosts from a 400- to 430-year-long bondage – yet Israel was once free, prior to their settling in Egypt, and for a brief period (we're not sure how long) while in Egypt.
Or to put it another way, for an unspecified period the laws in Egypt were so written, enforced, and interpreted to permit the Israelites to have their families, raise their crops, practice their religion, and happily live out their lives with minimal interference from the state. To do so, those laws respected – at least minimally – the Ten Commandments (even if that respect was simply defined as follows: ‘Let Israel govern itself according to its own laws'). Unremarkably, as Israel's situation became "bitter with hard bondage," each step toward tyranny came in violation to one or more of the Ten Commandments – the ‘personal' ones included.
Here's the list:
Pharaoh decreed that every male child born among the people of Israel was to be slain. This, a violation of commandment 6, "thou shalt not murder"; and commandment 5, "honor thy father and thy mother" (which in legal terms means, parents, not the state, are in charge of family matters).
Initially, Pharaoh ordered Israel's midwives to murder the babes, compelling them to act contrary to their faith and conscience – establishing the legal premise that ‘when God's and man's law clash, man's law reigns supreme.' By contrast, ‘personal' commandments 1 and 2 charge to "have no other gods before me … [nor] bow thyself down to them," acknowledging the reality of a Higher Law to which men may look to guarantee their rights – when the state would abridge them.
Pharaoh's mandate for midwives to take life, rather than preserve it, was a back-up plan to something more sinister. We read of Pharaoh: "The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end that they might not live." (Acts 7:19) We don't know the details, but deception was used (violating commandment 9, "thou shalt not bear false witness") to convince fathers to shed the innocent blood of their newborn children, in violation of commandments 1, 2, 5, & 6. Perhaps Pharaoh and his minions made false political promises, or even preached a doomsday over-population gospel (e.g., in reference to the limited water supply) via Egypt's world renowned school and library system.
Taking further aim at the heart, mind, and soul of Israel, Pharaoh forbade Sabbath worship, in violation of ‘personal' commandment number 4's invitation to "Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy." It is far easier to subdue moral weaklings than men of principle motivated by faith. Smart thinking. In the 21st century, Stalin did the same, and then mandated shift work to make it tougher on those who still kept the Sabbath secretly.
‘Personal' commandment number 4 not only invites Sabbath worship, but grants every man, even every beast a right – the right to rest. "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day … in it thou shalt not do any work." Pharaoh forbade this as well. Surely he believed that yet another way to break the spirit of a man, and a nation, is to keep him too busy for reflection, and too tired for action.
Back to faith – Pharaoh wasn't just out to destroy Israel's faith in the God of Heaven – he had a replacement god in mind – himself. Israel was forced to erect vast monuments to him – their new God. But ‘personal' commandment 2 prohibits the making of "graven images" to worship in the place of God Our Heavenly Father – and ‘personal' commandment 3 commands men not "to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (which happens when the state takes it upon itself to act in religious affairs "without authority" from God).
‘Personal' commandment number 3 was put on the chopping block in yet another way. The primary legal definition (there are several) of taking the name of God in vain pertains to lying under oath, or violating an oath. The previous Pharaoh solemnly promised Israel – before God, his prophet, Egypt's chief ruler, and the people of Egypt – that they might "sojourn" in the land of Goshen. To ‘sojourn' means to "stay temporarily," implying that Israel would be free to leave when the time came. When the time came, however, a later Pharaoh decreed Israel would stay – like it or not – oath or not.
Not only did the later Pharaohs break the oath, but the last one broke a series of oaths. Repeatedly, he promised Israel freedom to go and worship in the wilderness if certain conditions were met. When they were met, he still would not let them go.
Commandment 9 reads: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Pharaoh was quite inventive in disobeying this commandment. Employing the same fear-mongering tactics of 21st century interventionists, he accused Israel of crimes they MIGHT commit in the future if left unchecked in their growth and progress. Said he: "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when [war comes], they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land." Israel had done nothing wrong, was not allied with their enemies, but in theory, might, some day. What followed, was in essence, an offensive war (yet another violation of the commandments of God) based on assumption of future guilt rather than proof of present guilt.
It goes without saying, slavery implies other violations of the commandments of God and the Rights of Men, such as: taxation without consent (violating commandment numbers 8 and 10, "thou shalt not steal," and "thou shalt not covet"); loss of career choice (violating the God-given agency of man), loss of freedom to reap as we sow (violating the Lord's Law of the Harvest), and loss of the right to self defense (violating the implied rights found in commandment numbers 6, 8, and 10).
Now note: All of these tyrannical abuses were put solely upon Israel's backs, not the Egyptians. No wonder then the Lord teaches us in ‘personal' commandment number 4, the equalizing principle that "the stranger within thy gates" possesses the same rights as the citizen – or as expounded elsewhere in the Old Testament, that there ought to be "one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for your own country." Had the Egyptian people believed and practiced this, Israel would have remained free – but they didn't.
Revealingly, Israel was the intended, exclusive victim of Pharaoh's persecution. But revelation also teaches us, that "when the wicked rule, the people mourn;" – all of the people. Pharaoh's persecution of Israel eventually led to widespread plague, poverty, death, and misery in Egypt, to the extent that there was again "such a cry" that came up out of Egypt, but this time it wasn't out of Israel. In the end, Pharaoh loyalists followed their crazed leader in a mad dash into the Red Sea where they drowned.
Before that, Pharaoh's efforts to crush the Israelites culminated in a diabolical plan to ravish their women, and then kill every Israelite, man, woman, and child, in violation of commandments 7, "thou shalt not commit adultery," 10, "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's … wife," and again, commandment 6, "thou shalt not murder."
It is clear, every abuse meted out upon the Israelites, are the very abuses that dictators of every stripe have always meted out, and still mete out today. Equally transparent is the fact that all of these abuses were violations of one or more of the Ten Commandments – the "personal" ones included – the very commandments that ‘the anti-God lobby' would prohibit in all public discourse.
Therefore, morality matters – and thus, public "say" and "endorse" bans against the people's first amendment right to post and publish, discuss and consider the Ten Commandments and other moral principles – commandments and principles that have the potential to persuade men in power to do good rather than ill, to liberate rather than enslave – miss the mark with religion, as did Pharaoh of old.
NewsMax pundit Steve Farrell is associate professor of political economy at George Wythe College, the editor of The Liberty Letters (libertyletters.blogspot.com), and the author of the highly praised inspirational novel "Dark Rose" (available at amazon.com).
Print Page 
Forward Page 
