State legislatures across the American south have mandated the installation of the 10 Commandments in all public schools, but it’s not quite the 10 Commandments. ##philosophy##apologetics##atheism##exvangelical##debate

"Those are not the Ten Commandments. It's close, but the Republican led legislatures of several states, such as Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas, where I currently live, have mandated what appears to be their preferred paraphrase of Exodus 20." The Fourth Commandment, for example, doesn't stop there. It carries on. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall thou labor and do all thy work, but the Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man, servant, nor thy maid, servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger, that is within thy gates, for in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that is in it, and arrested on the Seventh Day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." I mean, God forbid that we remember that we were made for more than labor, for profiting shareholders, for ramping up the GDP. God forbid that we remember that these strangers and the immigrants among us also deserve rest. God forbid that we remember that we too were strangers in the land of Egypt. Or take the Second Commandment. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them for I, the Lord thy God, and may jealous God. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children until the Third and Fourth Generation of them who hate me, and sowing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." Golden statues like golden calfs and a commandment obviuscated to protect the worship of the Antichrist. It speaks even more of the commandments that they didn't cut short. They could have stopped Commandment V at Honor Thy Father and Mother. It's a similar length to Commandment III, and they were fine shortening that. But then we wouldn't get the public declaration of the land which the Lord your God giveeth thee, manifest destiny, and justification from the most high, that the desecration of native land, and the expulsion of the poor, and the downtrodden is our God-given right. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man's servant, nor his maid servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is your neighbor's. Thou shalt not look upon the luxury of the elite, the hordes of wealth, the extravagance, and the opulence, and question if it be ill-gotten. Thou shalt not question my tax policy. You can say it's just not that deep. They just cut those things for length. But why were they overly perturbed about font size? There are multiple places they could have chose to cut down those Commandments that would have made them similar length to the ones they kept intact. But a decision was made, what to cut, what to keep. The right wing pushed to install the Ten Commandments has never been arbitrary. It's rooted in a fundamental belief about the nature of reality and the destiny and the legacy of this nation. This version of the Ten Commandments wasn't published lightly or flippantly if it was about being concise they would have shortened the last Commandment, as they did the second and the fourth, and they would have shortened the fifth one as they did the third. It is not an accident that this presentation of the Ten Commandments contains reinforcements of the social paradigms that they need to keep intact, that we should not question the wealthy or the violence of manifest destiny. While obfuscating the injunctions against the exploitativeness of their capitalist systems and their idolatrous worship, as they hide from the fact that every time they quote these words, they violate them, for the Lord will not hold them guiltless to take its name in vain.