The 10 Amendments?
I learned something today that is really quite stunning, and I'll get to that in a moment. Last week, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Norman Geisler was a guest speaker at my church. The title of his message was, "Should the 10 Commandments be Displayed in Public?" I don't tend to get involved in politically-oriented religious debates, and while I am certainly supportive of public display of the 10 Commandments, I don't get up in arms when I read about the removal of them from public places, largely because I've come to expect these things given the current ungodly state of our nation.
Admittedly, I had some preconceived notions about what Dr. Geisler's points were going to be at the outset of his talk but, I have to say, I was really taken by surprise at the points he made, and the interesting historical documentation he had to support his position. In a nutshell, he discussed that if displaying the 10 Commandments is unconstitutional then, by the same argument, the Declaration of Independence and The U.S. Constitution themselves are, by definition, unconstitutional. Not necessarily a pioneering argument, but the support is what was quite interesting. I really wish I had taken detailed notes, but I was so engrossed in his talk that the notion to do so escaped me until the end. I'm not going to try to recreate his presentation to you here, because I will badly butcher it, but what I do want to mention is one particularly interesting experience he had shared with us.
You may, or may not, know that the 10 Commandments and/or Moses are depicted in and around the U.S. Supreme Court 6 times. In the courtroom, an allegorical figure known as The Power of Government is depicted resting his arm squarely on the 10 Commandments, symbolizing that the foundational basis of government laws are the laws of God. Dr. Geisler shared with us that he had toured the U.S. Supreme Court and the tour guide not only failed to mention the 10 Commandments when she was describing the frieze along the top of the inner chamber, but she stated that she didn't know what it was when he directly asked her about the tablets. When he told us that, I just assumed the tour guide was inexperienced, but it would appear the ignorance of the tour guides is somewhat intentionally fashioned.
This brings me to what I learned today. Apparently, The Official Supreme Court Handbook has been deliberately altered over the course of two revisions to eliminate references of the Christian influence that imbues the Supreme Court building. The original handbook clearly stated that the tablets were indeed the 10 Commandments (which is obvious) but the subsequent revision to the handbook eliminated the reference entirely. The next revision revisited the human figure leaning on the tablets and provided an explanation that it was a representation of the first 10 amendments to The U.S. Constitution. It's really actually kind of funny what a stretch that is, considering there are, at the time of this writing, 27 Constitutional Amendments, and 21 of them were already ratified prior to the 1935 construction of the current U.S. Supreme Court building.
While nothing surprises me, and I know this isn't the first or last time this will happen, it really is quite disturbing when you think about it. Now, you may be an apathetic audience regarding the significance of Christianity being erased from our country's history, but don't think for a moment that the scope of such manipulation will always be so narrowly focused. As a history buff, I value historical accuracy, and an effort to preserve such accuracy. It really makes you wonder what you can trust when reading the history books, no?