As the New Year starts, the Ten Commandments are “ordered” by law to be posted in Texas schools.
The intent? The mildest is “we support Judeo-Christian values.”
Yet the Ten are Mosaic, not Christian. The intent of lawmakers is Christian influencing which actually violates the intent of the Mosaic law which has for 4,000 years meant to be wholly followed—a whole package—not merely the top ten!
While revered by all as God’s word and an early coding of values most people cherish, ordering the posting raises one infamy high: the Ten’s unity to the whole Mosaic law exposes adult hypocrisies in the lawmakers and in the schools capitulating when none of them want to support the whole Mosaic law. Such hypocrisy further cheapens Christian Values in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus in his New Covenant downplays the law Texas lawmakers enshrined.
Intent? To help elementary school kids know they are not to murder, steal, or commit adultery?
Or to help high school students to know that the school demands they have only one God?
Obviously—they appealed to their base with little real studiousness, especially Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, under the guise of forwarding “Christian values” with a sometimes defense against their opponents.
True freedom of religion was not any bigger value than the whole of Deuteronomy.
Even a casual reader of Deuteronomy cannot escape Moses’ pleading many times for Israel to keep the whole law: 4:1-2, begins with “Follow them so that you may live… Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it.” Moses repeats that in many ways for 34 chapters.
Moses meant the whole law, of which the Ten were carved and representative. The Ten were even placed in the ark, not posted, while the whole law was written and taught.
When you see the Ten Commandments posted anywhere, if you respect Moses’ words in Deuteronomy, then you see the Ten as inextricably, inseparably, intrinsically, indistinguishably, and indissolubly part of the whole Mosaic law—a whole package in which the Ten rest.
Posting the Ten means the host school and Texas support laws few supported in Moses’ day, few in Jesus’ day, and most have not supported the last 2,000 years. Several laws are illegal in all civilized countries.
Worse, nearly every Christian believes several are downright evil today.
In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, you are allowed by law to marry captive beautiful women, if you allow her to mourn for a month, though—if she fails to please—you can send her on her way.
In 21:18-21, if a son will not obey his parents, then the elders of the city are to stone that son to death—inextricably tied to the Ten Commandments posted—and therefore fully supported by our local schools and naughty political hacks. That law is no less than the Ten.
In 22:20-21, if there is no proof of a bride’s virginity, she is to be stoned to death—part of the “law” posted in our schools that no one followed then and will go to prison for today.
Posting the Ten is advocating the whole, if one reads what Moses said, and Moses closed with a chapter of curses upon those who fail to obey the WHOLE.
See the Ten, see the whole, or be cursed!
Will Patrick or Paxton or their legal eagles explain that to elementary school kids? To their children? Oh, have they not read or care for what Moses said?
In 22:23-24, if a man rapes a woman in the city, both are to be killed, yet only if she did not scream. If in the country, only the man is to be killed.
In 22:23-24, if man rapes a virgin pledged to be married, he is to pay the father 50 shekels, about $15 today! Oh yes, lot of men in TDCJ prison wish that Patrick and Paxton were truly serious about that part of Moses’ law advocated in posting the Ten Commandment!
In 25:11-12, if two men are fighting and the wife grabs the assailant’s privates, we must cut of the wife’s hand and “show no pity.”
In 26:16, Moses repeats, “Lord your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.”
Clearly, no one followed them then or much in Jesus’ time, and no one today wants to follow all of the Mosaic law. No one! Did our Texas lawmakers forget Moses’ chapter full of curses for not following the whole?
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, we have Jesus writing a clear codicil to Moses’ law that brings into light our inability and a much higher quality of love.
Why not make it a law to “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself”?
Order “love”—hah! The more practical words of Jesus’ summation of the law into two commands and his immensely useful Golden Rule in “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” are so valued they need no law. They are nearly universal to all religions and dearly loved.
Seriously, only the weird would try to encode “love.”
No one in their right moral mind would order love. Love can never be ordered. To order schools to post “Love Others Like Yourself” actually cheapens the very words and reveals a moral superiority alien to Jesus’ purest intent.
Worse than ordering “love,” posting the Ten with no intent to follow the whole demeans the Ten and makes the host schools hypocritical to Moses’ intent, and then with respect to Moses’ meaning forces the schools the support the ugliest killings totally illegal today.
Moreover, the Texas posting law is hypocritical to longer-standing Texas law and—perhaps naively—also makes hypocrites of the “biblical” lawmakers who created the law. Worst of all, the Texas law subverts Jesus’ summary and his codicil in the Sermon on the Mount that actually says “forgive” and against the Mosaic law to not “take a tooth for a tooth.”
There is no one in Texas who wants to follow the whole Mosaic law. Yet the majority of Moses’ words were thrown out by the Texas legislature while they surgically clipped for special attention the Ten, with no intention of giving the whole credibility. That encoding makes our schools a mockery if—if—an intelligent student asked about why Texas wants to kill girls who are not virgins or stone to death young boys. Very serious affairs!
That is sad and oddly hilarious too, given that Texas Monthly (TM) just closed the 2025 year with its popular “Bum Steer Awards,” including a “Top Ken List” about our Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. senator wannabe.
TM’s “Top Ken” #3: In July, his wife and Texas State Senator Angela Paxton announced that she was divorcing him on “biblical grounds.”
“Top Ken” #4: “Within hours of the announcement, outlets reported that Paxton’s longtime mistress’s Instagram bio read, ‘You can’t always get what you want. But I can.’”
“Top Ken” #6: “Because he always abides by the Ten Commandments, Paxton sued three Texas school districts for supposedly failing to display them in accordance with the new state law—even though the law is being reviewed by a federal appeals court.”
Our kids deserve more integrity than to be forced to participate in adult hypocrisies, or worse, to know that the Ten are a curse-bound part of a whole with laws all find heinous.
