What happens when a community rejects God and His ways? When you tear down His commandments and forbid them from the public square. What is the effect on a people that embrace hedonism and government programs?
The answer lies in Detroit. The motor city is on the leading edge of our national experiment to reject God and embrace immorality, to seek the government for our daily bread and our protection. Detroit is a case study in what happens to a people when God is driven from the public square.
Now, fatal shootings have prompted church leaders in Detroit, Mich., to come together and try to fight the incidents of deadly violence by reminding the community of the Sixth Commandment with “Thou Shalt Not Kill” posters and banners.
The main plan is to post “Thou Shalt Not Kill” banners and signs around Detroit in the hope that the sixth commandment will reach locals’ hearts and minds.
“We all have to do what we can do, and right now we don’t have a respect in our communities for life; we don’t have a respect for many things,” a local Christian minister, Ovella Andreas, tells CBS News, of the use of posters and banners. “But we still have to create a standard to hopefully have a consciousness about God…. because even our people have become apathetic.”
Violent incidents prompted local Christian leaders to hold an emergency meeting at Greater New Tried Stone Baptist Church on Thursday.
“Our goal now is to infiltrate and saturate our communities with this commandment, via buses, via billboards,” Andreas said. “The churches have posters – we’ll put them into the businesses in the area.”
It is too little too late. Taking just one of the commandments to use as an anti-crime campaign will not cure Detroit’s ills. Without the first commandment there is no authority for the rest.
The first commandment states,“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
Without the foundation of the commandments, a relationship with the Lord, the house falls. This is why Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Local church leaders had earlier called for the city to designate every 22nd day of the month as “Stop the Violence Day.”
Meanwhile, two Bibles worth $1,200 have been stolen from St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek, Free Press reported. Another large Bible worth about $200 is reportedly missing from the chapel at the Battle Creek Family YMCA.
To be clear, I am not opposed to posting the sixth commandment around Detroit. But, if we desire real change of heart and mind, all of the commands must be displayed and taught.
