In 2005, The United States Supreme Court heard the case of Van Orden vs. Perry. What was disputed in the case was a monument of the Ten Commandments that was on the grounds of the Texas state capitol building. The organization that gifted the monument (in 1961) argued that the monument has both religious and secular importance. Others argued that a state placing a religious monument on state property violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 

I remember watching the news updates about the case and reading different articles about the case. It seemed that many believed that installing the Commandments was essential to restoring Godliness to our society. There is no doubt that the Commandments are vitally important to adherents of both Judaism and Christianity and yet installing monuments will not increase the morality or faith within our people. The same scriptures that record the Ten Commandments put that emphasis elsewhere.

Parents and the family structure play the most important role in passing on the faith we adhere to. 

• Deuteronomy 6:5-9 |  ^“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
• Proverbs 22:6 | “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.”

Parents are the most influential voice in a child’s life. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must be intentional about training our children to live as disciples. It is not a display of the Ten Commandments that will transform our society; it is Christians raising up emerging generations to radically follow Christ and love our neighbors with the love of God. We must go beyond wanting to display our faith through monuments and seek to display our faith through lives that have been transformed, shaped, and in the image of Jesus.