Exodus 20:13–16

“You shall not murder.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Many courthouses in America have the Ten Commandments chiseled into the walls or otherwise posted. This gives the secularists fits. They see this as a violation of the establishment clause. They miss what makes the Ten Commandments so foundational to our legal system.

Prior to the Ten Commandments, the law was whatever the king said. There was no continuity; when the king died everything was up in the air. If the new king had different preferences, the law changed. That’s what happened to Israel when the new Pharaoh came in who didn’t know Joseph. And the king could ban something you’ve already done and then punish you for it. The system was unreliable and capricious.

The Ten Commandments changed all that. Here was a fixed system of laws that wouldn’t change at the drop of a hat (or a king). This is one of the foundations of the American legal system; laws are permanent. Furthermore, you can’t break a law that hasn’t been written yet. You can only be charged with violating a law that existed at the time you committed the “crime.” Nothing is more central to our legal system, and it all began with the Ten Commandments.

We post the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls to celebrate the invention of fixed law.

Americans bear false witness more than they realize. We live in a naturally deceptive society, so much so that we don’t even notice. I can’t explain this except through a long story.

The weekend after 9/11/2001 my wife took a troop of Girl Scouts camping. On Sunday, the leaders felt it appropriate to take the girls to a church service on the campground. Unfortunately, the sermon was way, way over the top—spouting apocalyptic visions of God punishing America. The leaders hustled the girls out of there in the middle of the sermon.

One leader stayed behind and afterward told the preacher, unsolicited, that the girls left because they had to pack. That sounds normal until you consider that it was false and erased a lesson the preacher probably needed to learn. Silence was clearly a better option in that situation. Yet lying was the natural choice.

These “white lies” are so common in America that we’re blinded to them. We’re better story tellers than truth tellers.

Ask God to open our eyes to being more genuine.

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These weekday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. Saturdays' by Matt Richardson. Subscribe here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/community

The weekly study guides, which include questions for discussion or meditation, are here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.