Louisiana has passed a law requiring all public school classrooms to display the 10 commandments! Brothers and sisters, please, I’m begging you, stop cheering! There are many reasons to calm down but I’ll offer just a few in an effort to give some perspective.

First, the pagans are already asking if classrooms must also display stuff from the Quran. This is because public schools are built on a foundation of secularism, not Christianity. The truth is relative in public education. They cannot (and will not) declare one view as superior to another. In a system built on ‘fairness’ rather than truth, the Bible is just another opinion.

Which means (this is the 2nd reason to stop cheering if you’re keeping count) even if the 10 commandments are tattooed on the foreheads of every Louisiana citizen, it won’t turn public school students into disciples of Jesus. The teachers are not equipped to teach theology so posting the 10 commandments on the wall is no more meaningful than hanging a painting of a banana.

Third, the 10 commandments don’t actually help anybody. If you’re a Christian, you’re supposed to already know this. Those commandments are part of the old laws which we are told has no power to save us. (Galatians 2:15) The students who follow those commandments are no closer to faith in Jesus than the students who break them. Since the public educators can’t teach theology, there’s a good chance the students following the 10 commandments will believe they’ve achieved righteousness. This makes them worse off than if they’d just stared at a banana painting.

And finally, posting the 10 commandments in public school is going to give undiscerning parents hope that secular, godless education is good for Christian children. Foolish people believe posting bible verses on the walls of a classroom will convert children to Christianity. The Louisiana law will encourage some Christian parents to keep sending their kids to be brainwashed by pagans.

“John, you jerk!! Why can’t you be happy that Christians have won a small victory?!!”

This isn’t a victory. It’s a vehicle to challenge Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment. That’s a good thing, but it is not a revival. Pagans who sit in classrooms surrounded by Bible texts are still pagans. Christian children surrounded by pagan educators become pagans. There’s a long way to go before we celebrate.

(Galatians 2:14) When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”