There is again endless discussion in the American political context about the legitimacy and sometimes even the necessity of posting the Ten Commandments on the walls of public schools and government buildings in America, as an expression of it being a ’Christian country’ (whatever that means).

This made me wonder why is it that people want to post the Ten Commandments rather than the Beatitudes. Here is my take on it, making use of fr. Richard Rohr’s model of the ‘two halves of life’.

From this perspective, I would like to suggest that the Ten Commandments, and the Law in general, are ‘first half of life’ realities. They are necessary, but insufficient for the plenary life. They are good schooling to the disciplines necessary in mature life, but remaining at their level means spiritual poverty. They are paidagogos (Gal 3:24), the slave keeping the schoolboy from erring on the way to knowledge.

My other take on them is that their purpose is NOT to make us bosting in our moral performance, but, rather, when properly understood, to lead us to despair, about our utter incapacity to live at the level of God’s perfectness, and thus to throw us in the hands of God’s grace.

The Beatitudes, on the other hand, I suggest are ‘second half of life realities’. They are expressions of Jesus’ ‘you have heard it said – the Law’, but ‘I tell you – the Beatitudes’. They are not negating the Commandments, but they incorporate them and take us beyond them, to the ‘life in all its fulness’ (John 10:10).