By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX –
It is said that seventy percent of Americans want the Ten Commandments displayed on government property, meaning courts of law, schools, and the like. In the so-called "red states," it is a powerful and emotional issue. My own view is that if its public display will lower crime and promote education, I am foursquare in favor of it.
But what I really think is that going to school and studying your lessons during the week and church on Sunday is the thing to do. This promotes both learning and good citizenship. The more education people have the more they use intellect instead of emotion to make important decisions, and the less susceptible they are to government and corporate propaganda.
But those with religious certainties are entitled to them. They do more good than harm. For every mother who says God tells her to kill her children, millions more are comforted by religious beliefs.
Forty years ago, the statement "God is dead" caused an uproar. The issue made the cover of Time on October 22, 1965. Dr. Thomas Altizer, a professor of religion at Atlanta's conservative Emory University, spent years trying to explain that he never meant that a literal God was literally dead, though most people understood this to be the meaning. He meant, he said, that the medieval concept of a transcendent God has been replaced by a new one that incorporates a scientifically enlightened population. A century before that, Frederick Nietzche said the same thing in response to the humanism of Europe's expanding industrialization. Both were wrong. There is no scientifically enlightened population and though industrialism is continually expanding, more people than ever, eighty-two percent says last year's Newsweek poll, believe in the apotheosis of Jesus.
I'm not sure how Frederick fared after his magazine piece was published, but I do know that lunatic asylums and straitjackets got involved. Dr. Altizer, I remember vividly, was definitely creamed by the faithful.
A couple of years ago, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's version of the Torah cited historical and archeological findings to back up its rational explanation of Biblical events. Rabbi Harold Kushner, a best-selling author, was one of the co-editors. He said that too many people are "locked in a childish version of the Bible." The new translation of the Torah, the first in 60 years, starkly states what most rabbis thought already - that the Bible is not literally true. But other rabbis are bothered. They believe the faithful must be sheltered. Pultizer-winning columnist Leonard Pitts seemed to agree in his response to this story. He wrote that the Democratic Party is becoming too secular at a time when more than seventy percent of Americans believe the Bible is literally true. The election of 2004 proved him right.
Religion-busting is a dangerous enterprise. We all have our beliefs to help us negotiate the land mines of life. Those who say they don't play this game, play it even more.
I'm with the traditionalist rabbis who want to shelter their flock. Aging, I've found, is a natural myth-buster. I don't need any help from historians and archeologists. Any legal need that might comfort people, including the public display of the Ten Commandments, should be left alone if they comfort people during the seventy years or so that precede their funeral.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian. If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.