If we are really a people steeped in the Ten Commandments—culturally, politically, socially—and intent on preserving them as the bedrock of our own civilization, what does that mean for us, here and now?  Are the life principles they provide for us truly living impulses in us or simply a relic of past ages that has become a kind of cultural fetish, something that distinguishes us from the religious world around us, perhaps, but that is of little consequence in either our personal or public lives?

Is there anything in them to really care about, or are they simply artifacts of another world?  Are they really any kind of criterion of our own lives?  What do they measure in us?  And who cares?. . . .

The point is that the Ten Commandments are laws of the heart, not laws of the commonwealth.  They are laws that are intended to lead to the fullness of life, not simply to the well-ordered life.

Aristotle insists that the perfect life is one where we contemplate the best, most worthy things, the things of highest merit.  The perfect life, he argues, commits us to dedicate ourselves to what it is that is worth thinking about.  The Ten Commandments tell us what’s worth thinking about in life.

    —from the Introduction to The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart by Joan Chittister (Orbis Books)