David Prater, District Attorney of Oklahoma County, made some commendable comments about the community confusion concerning the Ten Commandments being placed on the state Capitol grounds (The Oklahoman, “Demonstrate our faith through deeds, not words”, July 26, 2015, p. 15A). Prater warned about the treating that slab of marble with its inscription like a “graven image, an idol,” “breaking one of the very commandments that they claim to be the tenets of their religion.” While affirming he is “a believer in the Living God and a follower of Jesus Christ,” Prater shared some sobering thoughts about the morality of our nation, when some citizens “murder our women and children,” when in our state “we suffer one of the highest child hunger and poverty rates in the country,” when “our teen pregnancy and divorce rates are shockingly high,” and “we choose to incarcerate the mentally ill and addicts rather then providing preventive treatment and therapy.” Prater appropriately questioned if that trend fits a “Godly state.” Prater was justified in suggesting that instead of “arguing whether the monument has a place on the Capitol grounds that we “focus on the meaning of its holy words,” applying “the instructions given to us by God,” demonstrating “our faith through actions rather than standing in the town square clanging like cymbals and gongs.” His prayer is that Christ’s summation of those ten commandments be known and obeyed, which is to first “love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and the second, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (cf. Matthew 22:37-40).

Here is the probing question: “How, Mr. Prater, are we to rise above our wicked ways and instill godly moral and spiritual principles in our incarcerated and free citizens if we continue to take God and His Word out of governmental legislation, out of our schools, and too much ignored in the churches??”

In December, 1859, Alexander Campbell stated that it is impossible for man “to form a just estimate of himself without the revealed knowledge of God,” so that we recognize it “highly important that this supernatural revelation should be a standing topic in every well organized school. We, therefore, make the Bible a textbook of man as he was at first, as he is now, and as he must be hereafter” (Selina H. Campbell, Home Life and Reminiscences of Alexander Campbell, John Burns, Publisher, St. Louis, 1882, p. 76). Cf. Matthew 4:4; 28:18-20; Colossians 3:17).

Let the District Attorney and we as citizens stand up for freedoms that will honor His Word as a guide in matters domestic, social, judicial, and ecclesiastic.