Required posting of the 10 Commandments on schoolhouse walls violates the Third Commandment.

Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.

Vain in Hebrew is lashav, which means worthless, false, deceitful, or something that is, or a statement that is groundless.

Vain is something that holds no value.

I think we’re all raised to believe that the Third Commandment means don’t use God’s name as a cuss. But it means more than that. It means bearing or invoking God’s name in ways that are trivial, in ways that skirt the sacred and elevate the profane.

The 10 Commandments (properly, in Hebrew, the 10 words) are God’s word. They represent God. The intent of such government mandates to post them is, clearly, to represent God, which, in that manner, also turns them into an idol.

In modern America, the drive to post the 10 Commandments is always politically motivated; thus, it’s appropriating God’s sacred identity and his authority to prop up a partisan agenda.

It’s using state power to promote ideology masquerading as Christian virtue.

It reduces sacred words to civic decoration.

Treating God’s words as tools in a culture war trivializes the text. Such mandates do not honor the Commandments. It takes what belongs to God and drafts it into civil governance.

Posting the 10 Commandments doesn’t honor God. It celebrates human ambition and vanity.