⁸ Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. ⁹ For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.

Roman 13:8-10

Dear God, I live in Texas, I love you, and yet I am not a fan of Texas putting up the 10 Commandments in the classrooms. I don’t like the State imposing religion on people. And the 10 Commandments are an expecially odd starting place because there are only two of the 10 we have laws against (murder and stealing). The first four deal with revering you as God and observing the Sabbath, the last of which very few of the people who passed the law mandating the 10 Commandments be hung follow. In fact, I believe they ironically voted to pass this law on a Sunday.

I do like, however, what Paul did here. He broke it down the way Jesus broke it down. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied, we must love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Then he added a bonus one and said we must love our neighbor as ourselves. Our lives will not be complete if we do #1 and skip #2. And it will certainly be incomplete if we skip #1 and only do #2. For our purposes here, Paul isn’t saying ignore #1. Not at all. The context of this paragraph is about living in society, and he breaks the commandments down to what Jesus did at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:12: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Another irony is that I believe forcing non-Christian children to look at the 10 Commandments and for public schools to display them prominently is actually violating the overall principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and doing to them what you would have them do to you. If Muslims were all of a sudden in the majority, Christians would not want their scriptures posted on public school walls. These children need to be loved. They need to be welcomed into worshipping you and loving others.

Father, I’m probably off on a tangent here I don’t need to be on, but it’s just frustrating to me that so many people who call themselves Christians seem to be reaching for the gods of power and coercion instead of love, service, and persuasion. As we enter a political season, a time when I tend to keep my opinions to myself and only discuss them with a select few, please show me, Holy Spirit, what you would and would not have me do. I guess I’m asking that you grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen