Louisiana schools mandate 10 commandments: Will kids be confused or enlightened?

Some important things to tell an 8-year-old: don’t kill anyone, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet your neighbour’s ass.

Oh, how much fun they’re about to have in Louisiana, US. The 18th state in the union has now mandated that every classroom must display the Ten Commandments on the wall, as set out in Exodus Chapter 20.

Maybe they’ll go for the abbreviated version of these fire-and-brimstone demands – simply “do not covet” – or change ass to donkey… although perhaps the inclusion of the “ass” clause will distract giggling children from wondering what adultery is.

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Because if they ask about adultery they’ll learn that, biblically, half of their parents are likely adulterous, since the divorce rate in the US is 50% and Louisiana has the fourth highest incidence in the land. Thus, biblically, half of their parents should be stoned to death (Leviticus 20).

And while they’re embracing the Old Testament in classrooms, are they going to start sacrificing animals too? That’s right at the bottom of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:24) where the Lord adds that he wants an earthen alter, and “sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen.”

Are the authorities going to insist that a menstruating teacher is unclean for seven days (there’s a lot about this in Leviticus), as is everywhere she sits, so mind where you put your satchel?

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Are they going to tell teenagers to pluck out their own lusting eyeballs if they fancy each other, to hack off the bits of their own body that might cause them to sin (Mark 5)? God, I hope not. But the Bible says so.

And yet from my Sunday School days I remember one biblical edict that I really wouldn’t mind seeing on the wall, on any wall, though it’s fallen out of fashion in the Bible Belt. It’s the bit where Jesus tells the people not what they shouldn’t do, but what they should do: “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12).

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Then this is condensed further into one simple rule for an irreproachable life, into what is – after loving God – the single most important instruction in the New Testament: Love your neighbour as you love yourself (Mark 12:31).

And yet “how quickly they forget…” (Psalms 106).

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