Why Post the 10 Commandments if you Treat them like Trash?

But God says to the wicked: “Why bother reciting my decrees and pretending to obey my covenant? For you refuse my discipline and treat my words like trash. When you see thieves, you approve of them, and you spend your time with adulterers. Your mouth is full of wickedness and your tongue is full of lies. You sit around and slander your brother.

Psalm 50: 16 – 20a

Louisiana’s legislature recently passed a law requiring the public schools in that state to display the 10 Commandments in their classrooms. 

Much of the outrage that followed, conflated hanging a plaque the 10 Commandments on it in classrooms with the total destruction of Separation of Church and State. Opponents of the new law saw it as the beginning of  oppressive state religion like the ones you see in most Muslim majority countries today and throughout Europe several hundred years ago. 

This has two problems.

First, it isn’t true. While there absolutely is an organized and well-funded movement to create a government-owned state religion and suppress all others, this isn’t it. 

Second, these over the top hysterics turn people off and blinds them to the very real threat of the destruction of our religious liberties that is right in front of us in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a blueprint for a fascist takeover of our government at every level, from top to bottom. One part of this plan is to create and enforce a state-controlled church much like the state-controlled churches in Communism.

The reasons for doing this are obvious. One of them is simply to use the state-controlled church to control the population. This leads like a plumb line straight to the conclusion that all other faiths, including Christians who want to follow the Gospels, would be suppressed ruthlessly.

Project 2025 is as real as Mein Kampf. It is terrifying.

But putting the 10 Commandments on a plaque and hanging those plaques on school room walls is not Project 2025.

I don’t have any big problems with putting the 10 Commandments on plaques and hanging them on walls. When I was in office, I voted to put the 10 Commandments in courthouses. I didn’t and I don’t see that as a threat to our democracy. The 10 Commandments is the basis for Western law. That alone provides a legitimate reason to post it.

What bothers me about this whole 10 Commandments in classrooms deal is not the 10 Commandments. It’s the revolting hypocrisy of the right wingers who are pushing it. 

What is the point of putting the 10 Commandments in classrooms when right wing whore clergy are preaching and teaching that lying is ok if Donald Trump does it? 

Where in the 10 Commandments or the Scriptures does it say that adultery is ok so long as Donald Trump is the one committing it?

Where does it say that grift, stealing and corruption are good when Donald Trump is the grifter?

I must have missed it, but I haven’t found the Scripture that says it’s ok for Donald Trump to rape women. 

I literally read the Bible morning and night. I read it through, cover to cover, and then I read it through, cover to cover, again. I’ve done that for decades.

I’ve never found the Scriptures that say that rape is ok, greed is good, lying is fine and taking bribes is holy so long as the person doing these things is Donald Trump. 

I’ve searched the Scriptures and I never found anything that said that God’s Chosen One would be a rapist, adulterer, compulsive liar, swindler, grifter, racist, woman-abusing scumbag. There are people who do these things in the Bible, including in Revelations, but they are most emphatically not God’s Chosen. 

The 10 Commandments condemn this behavior. The rest of Scripture condemns it to hell. The Gospels teach behavior which is the exact opposite — the exact opposite — of what right wing preachers, priests and bishops are teaching today. 

I have never found the commandment that tells us to fall down and worship any human being. There is no teaching proclaiming that any political party or affiliation of any sort, including the Church itself, comes before God in your life. I do not see the Scripture that says You shall put the Republican Party ahead of me and my Commandants and fall down and worship evil men. 

When I voted to allow the 10 Commandments posted in public buildings, I didn’t see posting those commandments as anything like actually obeying them. I knew at the time that performing fake religious actions like getting all self-righteous about posting the 10 Commandments was a political action, not a Godly one. 

Performing Christianity to get votes and control the religious block of the electorate to gain power is not following Christ and it is not obeying God. It’s a terrible, God-mocking sin. 

Psalm 50: 16-20a 

But God says to the wicked: “Why bother reciting my decrees and pretending to obey my covenant?

For you refuse my discipline and tread my words like trash.

When you see thieves, you approve of them, and you spend your time with adulterers.

Your mouth is full of wickedness and your tongue is full of lies. You sit around and slander your brother.