by Eric Muhr

Not so many years ago, I witnessed with interest a continuing debate in my community over Ten Commandments displays. One incident involved removal of a yellow placard from public land at a local airport. Angry letters flooded the newspaper opinion pages. And in further protest, a group of pilots ordered 150 copies of the sign for the sides of their privately-owned hangars.



It’s the kind of thing that happens again and again. And I wonder, how much of the shouting and fist-shaking really qualifies as righteous indignation and how much might be chalked up to plain, old fear. After all, we’ve been hearing for years of America’s slow decline into the secular. In just such an environment, a call to arms — over abortion or gay marriage or little yellow signs — only makes sense.



Or does it?



Are we defenders of God’s law? Does divine order need a human defense?



If the answer is yes, we admit God’s weakness. We imply that God’s law can’t stand on its own. We accept that the secular might be more powerful than the divine. And we try to fix the problem by elevating ourselves above God, by trying to do for God what he is unable or unwilling to do for himself.



If this is the case, we have unconsciously revealed where our true faith lies: not in God but in ourselves. We have committed the very sin we fought to fix.