from behind the plow

How would teaching children moral lessons hurt?

Oklahoma State Supt. of Schools Ryan Walters has called for a series of steps to promote Christianity and western heritage in every school classroom, including a display of the Ten Commandments.

They include:

• Hold a minute of silence at the beginning of the school day with the following announcement: “We now pause for a minute of silence in which students and teachers may use this minute to reflect, meditate, pray or engage in any other silent activity.”

• Display a “durable poster or framed copy” of the Ten Commandments in each public school classroom.

• Require a “Western civilization” course for graduation “to strengthen the heritage which was integral to the nation’s founding and its western culture, as well as to foster gratitude and informed citizenship.”

There has been opposition spring up in some quarters. It’s not surprising. Those on the left see Christianity as the enemy of communism and it is. Communist leaders have proposed killing religion from the start. They want dictatorial government as the god of the world with them calling all the shots.

I evidently made a mistake recently when I wrote that small business is the backbone of America. I still believe small business is the foundation of the U.S. economy.

Dennis Prager, columnist, author and religious radio talk show host, says families fill this role. And I can’t argue with that.

He asserts that the Ten Commandments listed in the Old Testament of the Bible are primarily about developing strong families.

He also said that the Ten Commandments strongly affect America’s judicial system as well as our traditional society.

Prager says one of his life goals is to get the Ten Commandments infused into every aspect of American life. He sees that as a means to return American society to a just, clean and virtuous level like that before the current “Woke” epidemic. (Woke epidemic are not his words but mine.)

This epidemic includes “woke” attacks on Christianity and other moral beliefs.

I hope I haven’t misinterpreted things I have read that Prager wrote in his commentary, “The Rational Bible” covering the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament. I recommend finding a copy of this series and reading it yourself.

Prager discusses these books with the aim of helping people of the current time understand things written several thousand years ago for people possibly with different thought and understanding.

He states in the beginning of Chapter 20 in his commentary on Exodus: “God, not Moses or anyone else, gave the Ten Commandments.”

Prager, a Jew, has spent much of his life studying and discussing the Bible, often citing other scholars on various aspects of the Bible.

He cites one Nahum Sarna who identifies at least four ways the Ten Commandments are unique, original and unparalleled: The Ten Commandments are the first and only example of a conventional relationship between a deity and an entire people. Or as Yehchezkel Kaufman, professor of Bible at the Hebrew University put it prior to Sarna: The Ten Commandments are unique in that God revealed His will not just to a single prophet or to a privileged few but to an entire people, all of whom became answerable to his terms.”

(Sarna was a modern biblical scholar who is best known for the study of Genesis and Exodus represented in his Understanding Genesis and in his contributions to the first two volumes of the JPS Torah Commentary.)

Prager has a radio program originating in California in which he converses with individuals, usually experts in their fields from many religions, including Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism in addition to Judaism.

In an introduction to his book, Prager wrote: “All my life I have been preoccupied, almost obsessed with the problem of evil: people deliberately hurting other people. At the age of 16, I wrote in my diary that I wanted to devote my life to “to influencing people to the good.”

Later he lists his favorite biblical verse, Psalm (97:10): “Those of you who love God, hate evil.”

He proposes that God gave the Ten Commandments in a no-man’s land rather than in Israel to signify these laws do not belong to one people but to all humanity.

In his study of the Ten Commandments, he lists four defining characteristics: 1. They contain no abstract moral principles such as “Be a good person.”

Telling people to be good without giving them directions is as useless as telling people to be a good pilot without giving them flying lessons, he said.

2. Not all the Ten Commandments are formulated on prohibitions: “You shall not.”

Only two commandments – the fourth and fifth – are explicitly positive, but these also have negative components. The commandment to observe the sabbath includes prohibiting staff, visitors or animals from working that day.

The requirement to honor one’s mother and father seems to have as its main purpose the prohibition of offending one’s parents, reflecting an awareness that the first requirement for a stable, decent society is for people to desist from wrongful behavior.

He cites the first rule for physicians, “First, do no harm,” as a guidepost.

3. The Ten Commandments are formulated in terms of obligations not rights.

He says the Torah makes clear that humans have rights but adds that such rights clearly indicate such rights will more likely be secured if people first feel morally obligated to others than first feel they have rights.

4. Each one of the Ten Commandments is in the singular, thus each is directed to each person individually.

Prager adds: “A good society is composed of individuals doing what is right.

“How can we make every individual as good a person as possible?

“A society in which too many parents, for example, are more concerned with their children’s happiness, intelligence, success or popularity will sooner or later fail.

Later, he observes that the moral failure of secular education and secular intellectuals was almost universally ignored in the rise of Naziism in Germany prior to World War II.

His discussion of the Sixth Commandment, “Thou Shalt not kill” is eye-opening.

He opens with a red letter headline reading: “Essay: Only if there is a God is murder wrong.”

Later, in a red letter inset in the copy, he writes: “If there is no God who says “Do not murder” murder is not objectively wrong… For that you need God.”

In his discussion, he points out that the Hebrew words are different for killing and murder.

In the Ten Commandments the word used is for murder.

If it meant all killing is wrong, we couldn’t swat flies.

Murder is the immoral killing of an innocent human.

He concludes that the commandment does not forbid killing in self defense or the defense of another person or your country.

It is difficult to understand opposition to the posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Teaching young people how to deal morally with others is the real key to a fair and just society.