The day the two ton Ten Commandments monument was hauled out of the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court was, for some, a watershed moment. Preachers and politicians across the nation spoke up en masse against the court decision, and the implications they saw in it. Is it any wonder that sexual promiscuity, dishonesty, violence, and disbelief have swept the nation when all remnants of God are swept from the public square, they asked. What kind of society denies the very foundation upon which it was built?

For many Americans the answers to these questions were clear. In the 1950s, about 5% of American children were born out of wedlock, now over a third of America’s children are born outside of marriage. And even those children born to a married couple frequently live through the excruciating emotional pain of their parents divorcing sometime during their childhood. In the 1950’s, homosexuality was considered a perversion. Today, despite the well-documented harm it does to those engaging in it, homosexuality is celebrated as something healthy to be proud of. In the 1950’s, sexually transmitted diseases were limited to those on the margins of so c i e t y. Today, it is estimated by health professionals that 50% of Americans will contract a sexually transmitted disease by the time they reach 25 years of age, and 45 million Americans are infected with at least one incurable sexually transmitted disease. Combined with a loss of civility, rampant dishonesty, wanton destruction of the environment, exploitation of workers, the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, the explosion of drug abuse, murder, abortion, and assault, America has become a society completely at odds with the American mind set of the 1950’s.

What went wrong, and why? Is our national moral decline a result of the removal of the Ten Commandments and an end to prayer by public school teachers in the classrooms? Or is it the arrival of the pill, prosperity, and television that were the primary drivers? Has the dishonesty of our leaders and the engagement in unnecessary foreign wars undermined faith in all things associated with the establishment--including traditional morality? Or is the refusal of religious leaders to uphold moral absolutes themselves the primary cause for our decline?

It would be presumptive to assume to answer these complex questions outright, but there is good reason to believe that the removal of government displays of the Ten Commandments is not a significant contributor to our moral ills. By and large, Ten Commandment monuments are alive and well on U.S. public buildings. Indeed, even the U.S. Supreme Court has a large statute of Moses holding the Ten Commandments on its east frieze. Only in a very few instances in which the Ten Commandments are displayed in a way designed specifically to use the government to advance a religious agenda have they been found unconstitutional. We can hardly ascribe the moral degradation of our society over five decades to a few isolated cases involving the governmental removal of the Ten Commandments during the last few years. If governmental displays of the Ten Commandments in court houses were a barrier against moral decline, why haven’t the many hundreds of displays in courts all the way up to the Supreme Court saved us up until this point?

In truth, we have to admit that whatever the disposition of the government, it is the job of churches to uphold the law of God and to teach how it relates to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, not the role of the state. Sadly, for many decades, churches have done a very poor job in this respect. Rather than uplifting the Ten Commandments as a reflection of God’s character, we have been told by the nation’s leading clergy that the commandments are nailed to the cross and no longer apply to Christians. Rather than being told about the life changing power of the grace of Christ, we have been told that living a Christ-like life is an exercise in legalism. Rather than being told of a righteous God who will sort the wheat from the tares on judgment day, we have been told about a friend who will accept us no matter what manner of evil we unrepentantly perpetrate on others. Rather than being told about the offensiveness of sin to a holy Savior, we have been lulled by our religious leaders into a comfortable compromise with the world.

Today, many in the Christian church are demanding the state do what the church has refused to do. But the state is not equipped to change lives. That is the essence of the role of the church by turning people toward the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. Rather than demanding that the Ten Commandments be returned to a place of honor in our courthouses, maybe it is time for us to reinstall the Ten Commandments in a place of honor in our churches, not as an end in themselves, but rather in the context of the saving grace of Christ who can do all things--even change a corrupt society, one life at a time.