A recent article in Christianity Today online entitled "Jesus' Spiritual Formation" or some such, discussed the probably use of the Shema, which was referred to in Jesus' answer to the lawyer who asked what was the greatest commandment. He stated: "Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength", and the second is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself". Last night I heard Judge Roy Moore interviewed, or browbeaten by Bill Press of MSNBC and Wall Street Journal columns, occasionally. Press accused the judge of overstating his case because, as far as Press could tell, the first four commandments were not the basis of American Law.

Moore looked at him with disbelief. He stated that the whole fight he was in, which caused him to lose his post as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was about the direct and important applicability of just these commandments to American/Alabama Law, and to the other six as well. Like Jesus and the lawyer, Moore needed to explain that without identifying our transcendent, loving God as the source of our law, the practice of law comes to be about power struggles among those of differing opinions who have sufficient power to use the courts to assert their view. Now, in a time of hyper-activist judges, according to Moore, federal jurists have placed themselves in the place of God. The result will be, and has been, a heightened political power struggle and tug of war, which, incidently, is shredding our constitution. Both sides call foul, accusing the other side of excess, but the real problem is that those who wish to legislate from the bench, due to majority rejection by the electorate of their elitist social agenda, are forcing compliance to their views by enacting, from the bench, laws that the people did not make and do not agree with.

Press, in what he thought was a clever ploy to identify Judge Moore as a bigot, asked him if homosexual behavior should be against the law. Press carefully characterized this behavior to be "what two consenting adults do behind closed bedroom doors". Moore responded, without hesitation, that sodomy and other homosexual acts were against the law in Alabama and most other states until a federal court had ruled, citing foreign laws, that these acts were protected under the U.S. constitution, even though on this, the court was even reversing itself in important rulings in the last forty years. Every point Press made was rebutted in detail by Moore. Even selected, edited quotes by the framers of our constitution, which were supposed to be devastating arguments in opposition to Moore, were rebuffed. Moore not only knew the quote cited, but knew its context, its precedents, and was able to quote the exact language of the law and the important documents from memory. Judge Moore is a powerful spokesman for "willy nilly" judicial law making. We will hear a lot from and about him in coming days.