I am a Christian, saved by Jesus. I want others to know Jesus and be saved by Him, too. This is why I'm against schools requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, as Louisiana's state government has recently mandated. This is also why I'm against compulsory Biblical curriculum in schools, as Oklahoma has recently announced.
People can easily be driven away from any and all ideologies - none is exempt, be they strictly religious, political, social, sociopolitical, or some hybrid of these and others - if those who proclaim them do so in overbearing and aggressive manners. I don't want people driven away from Christ: and, as beliefs of any kind become pariah when imposed upon people, I have no choice as a Christian but to object to mandates like these.
The more an ideology, especially a religion, is distributed without option by various governments, the easier it becomes for that ideology to be manipulated and misrepresented by those governments' officials, who proclaim the faith's good values, and are then entrenched in scandal and dishonesty. This is among the reasons Church and State must remain separate. I want people to come to know Jesus, not be driven away from Him by the heavy hands of politicians.
We can't have it both ways - if we want the government to stay out of our private lives, we can't heartily approve when politicians attempt to legislate faith.
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| Photo by Jason Reed / Reuters |
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