My grandmother taught me the Commandments at her kitchen table when I was small enough that my feet did not reach the floor. She had no poster. She had a worn Bible with a cracked spine and a voice that did not rise. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. She said them the way you would tell a child where the stove was hot. I have never forgotten a word.
I believe in those words with my whole heart. I believe they are the foundation of every decent law we have. So I was glad when the Legislature required that the Ten Commandments be posted in public-school classrooms in Texas, and I have been grieved to watch federal courts block it in some districts. I want to explain why I think the posters matter so much.
The Word of God is strong. I do not doubt that for a moment. But I have come to believe it needs our help in a way it did not used to.
Look at what the Commandments are up against. A child today walks into a world of screens and noise and a great many voices telling him what is right. In that world, a quiet woman at a kitchen table does not seem like enough. Families are busy. Our own church is half empty on a Sunday night. If the Word is going to reach a child, it has to be where the child is, and the child is in a classroom, under fluorescent lights, looking at whatever is on the wall.
Some people say the Commandments belong at the kitchen table and in the pew, and that they have done fine there for a very long time. I understand the sentiment. My grandmother would have agreed with it. But I think she lived in an easier time, when the Word could stand on its own in a house and be heard. I am not sure it can anymore. I think it needs the weight of the state behind it, a frame and a mandate and the full seriousness of the law, before a child will take it to heart.
I have been asked whether the posters will make children kinder, or more honest, or more likely to love their neighbor. I do not know. I have not thought much about the neighbor part. I am mostly thinking about the wall. A wall with the Commandments on it is a wall that says this is a Christian state, and that is a thing I want said, plainly and often, in a building paid for by the public.
When the courts block it, I do not feel that God has been defeated. God cannot be defeated. I feel that He has been left without help, and I find that hard to bear. He has carried us for a long time. It seems only right that the Legislature carry Him a little in return.
This fall I will vote for the Republican for Senate, because I want the state to keep carrying Him. My impression is that the other side would rather leave the Commandments to the families and the churches, and I do not think the families and churches can manage it alone.
My grandmother managed with a kitchen table and a quiet voice. I love her for it. I just don’t think the Lord should have to manage that way anymore.
D. M.