How are the Ten Commandments relevant to American life today?
Well, the Ten Commandments are relevant to any society that hopes to nurture and sustain community. They’re the basic precepts by which community can be held together. When they’re violated, communities disintegrate. That’s why they resonate 6,000 years later. If you look at the ethical code that almost any religion creates, they’re strikingly similar to the Ten Commandments: the Buddhist Wheel of Life, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with its questions about whether you’d lived a good or honorable life. Many of the measures of [having lived a good life] are beyond law. It’s very hard to legislate honoring your father or mother for instance. It’s hard to legislate against idolatry. These are the moral or ethical questions raised in the commandments, and I find them particularly interesting because almost all of them are beyond the scope of law itself. I suppose they could be legalized if we allowed people to narrowly interpret them. But that would desecrate the commandments completel
