Commentary Argues Adventist Church and Louisiana Both Misread the Ten Commandments

The Seventh-day Adventist Church and the State of Louisiana take different approaches to the Ten Commandments, according to a commentary published on Adventist Today on August 6, 2024. The author writes that both have, in different ways, given the commandments prominence.

In June, Louisiana’s legislature passed a bill requiring all Louisiana public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, from kindergarten through state-sponsored universities, and the governor signed it. The commentary reports that the governor, defending the law against constitutional church-state questions, said concerned parents could tell their children not to look at them. A few days later, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction ordered that the Bible and the Ten Commandments be incorporated into curriculums across the state. A Utah law that took effect July 1 requires that the Ten Commandments be studied in the curriculum. The author notes that the stated rationale for these actions is that the Ten Commandments are an important historical document that has played a significant role in the nation’s history.

The author writes that the Adventist Church has also historically promoted the Ten Commandments, though for different reasons. He says the church has primarily resisted any diminishment of the Ten Commandments because of the seventh-day Sabbath commandment. He recalls that, during his early education in Adventist schools, lessons often affirmed the continuing validity and importance of the commandments, and that Jesus’s statement about the law not changing until all was fulfilled was frequently cited.

The commentary argues that Jesus did not stop there. The author points to Jesus’s answer about the most important law, which identified love of God and love of one’s neighbor, and to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus cited the commandments and then went further, addressing anger and lust as well as murder and adultery. The author writes that the commandments mostly address outward wrongdoing and do not fully address the heart, character and attitudes. He cites a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans describing love as the fulfilling of the law, and he concludes that the commandments are insufficient as a guide to righteous living on their own, a point he illustrates with the observation that avoiding wrongdoing is not the same as loving others (Ephesians 4:15).

The commentary does not report a formal statement from Adventist Church leadership on the Louisiana, Oklahoma or Utah measures. Its position is that outward compliance with the commandments is not the full standard, and that a genuinely loving Christian who seeks the best interests of all people is the real aim.

Source: Read the original report