While I'm Thinking About It

While I'm Thinking About It

Coworkers are off limits for this sort of thing.

Had a customer at the bookstore today (well, several, really. But that's not the point). She was looking for a fancy framed print/artwork of the Ten Commandments. We don't have any such thing. After establishing that the closest thing was a stained glass, she told me about her friend, who hand-letters them, and donates them to churches.

"After all, the pagans took the Ten Commandments out of the public schools. But who took them out of the churches?" She then smirked, like she had made some sort of serious point. "Think about that."

"Huh," I said. "Never really thought about it that way." My mind, meanwhile, was already coming up with the punchline for a strip I could never draw: You know, my church actually meets in a high school. Not really a toy store type of situation.

But it did get me thinking. Jesus said:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him,"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:35-40

And it occurred to me: If you're really taking those two commandments to heart, you're already honoring your parents and not bearing false witness and all the rest. It's probably not a major sort of revelation, but it's something I thought might be worth sharing. Especially the next time someone raises a fuss about the absence, or the presence, of the Ten Commandments somewhere.

Something lighter tomorrow, I promise.