Relevance of the Old Testament in Modern Christianity

To some American Christians, the Old Testament is obsolete. They see no correlation between living in today’s world as a Christian, and the happenings of the past. They attribute the Ten Commandments as laws for the Jews, “intended only for the nation Israel before the death of Jesus” (Gane, 1997, para. 1). They reinforce that idea by pointing out that the fourth commandment was for the nation of Israel specifically. “The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. ‘It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed’” Exodus 31:16-17 (New International Version). While

“The Ten Commandments are different in that they don 't list consequences. The commandment doesn 't read, "Don 't steal, but if you do, here 's what happens." That kind of formulation is reserved for the legal sections of the Hebrew Bible, which are cast in the “if ... then ...” framework (technically called “casuistic”) typical both of ancient Near Eastern law collections such as Hammurabi’s Laws, as well as our own modern laws. By contrast, the Ten Commandments are a list of norms that have moral import” (Hoffman, n.d., para. 8). The Decalogue were given to Moses from God, who then passed them on to his people. Moses repeatedly warns against forgetting them, and disobeying them (Arnold & Beyer, 2008, p. 14). The Ten Commandments are absolutely applicable to modern day Christians, and we should beware the thought and practice of not following them in our

Its values and moral code are ingrained in our constitution, and we can see symbols of God, and Christianity throughout our infrastructure, and economic denominations. While it is understood that we are a country of diversity and variance, the belief that The Decalogue should not be posted or engraved on courthouses, schools, or other “public” domains because it was taken from the Bible is a foolhardy step down a road this country may not recover from. While diversity and freedom are the building blocks of this country, allowing political correctness and the fear of giving offense to supersede what is right, and what is good, is a sure way to optimize failure for all. Our civilization was not built on the morals and values of the Middle East, or communist China, for a reason. If we continue to allow the current minority, as loud as they yell, to make decisions that will ultimately affect us all, we are going to go the way of Rome, and other great countries who faded away, or crashed and burned, due to moral suicide. The Israelites were told to rid themselves of all evil, and they didn’t listen. They intermarried and propagated their population with the very people God commanded them to slay. This did not end well for them, on multiple occasions. Knowing what God wants from our nation is harder than knowing what God is asking us as individuals. However, the belief that we as a society need to remove any trace of God from view so