Village Schools of the Bible

Ten Commandments Monument In Alabama

But, as disturbing as the violence in the Middle East has been, a story here in the States has caused me to have greater alarm. In the state of Alabama, the Chief Justice of their Supreme Court, has placed a large rock monument, inscribed with the Ten Commandments, in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building in Birmingham. A Federal Judge has ordered the monument be removed because its presence violated the principle of the separation of Church and State. Alabama's Chief Justice has not heeded that order and many Christians have now taken up a vigil around the monument. Alabama's chief jurist has correctly stated that the United States Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, does not separate the State from the practice of religion, merely the organizing of a religion. As one reviews the history of our nation, those who wrote the
very documents upon which our nation's laws have been founded, were men who believed that God was active in and through the government. But they wished that government would not establish and ordain its own religion, much like they had experienced while living in England.

There persists in America today a strong vocal minority whose wish is that God could be abolished from public life everywhere. For the most part, the Church has been silent and inactive in its defense of its role in the marketplace. I have been gripped with this haunting thought as I have been studying the Sermon on the Mount these past few months. Are we really salt and light in our world? Has our salt lost its saltiness? Has our lights gone dim? Are we really impacting our world in the manner that God would desire? Just something to think about.

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