Two years ago, the judge sneaked the Ten Commandments into the Alabama Justice Building and reverently placed the 5,300-pound granite rock in the rotunda. Justice apparently couldn’t be achieved until Alabama acknowledged that America’s laws are based on God’s rules of conduct.

It wasn’t as dramatic as Moses descending from the mountaintop with two stone tablets, but Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s little ploy to circumvent the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state certainly got people’s attention everywhere.

Lawyers being lawyers sued to get the religious monument out of a government building. The masses, in turn, gathered outside the courthouse in defense of God’s Top 10. They raised their Confederate flags — a cry for states’ rights that carries the South’s own sinister past of racial enslavement in God’s name.

The U.S. Supreme Court let a lower federal judge’s ruling stand to remove “Roy’s Rock,” as people are calling it, but sooner or later the Supremes will have to decide because lower federal courts in different states have issued conflicting rulings in similar cases.

Had Moore’s exhibit attempted to put the commandments into historical context, so as to remove any appearance of the government favoring one faith over any other, then maybe it would pass constitutional muster. He could have attempted to do that by including, say, the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact and Bill of Rights along with his version of the commandments (there are several). Other public buildings and courtrooms have such historical exhibits without great controversy. One’s intent matters. If the display is meant to show different philosophies that contributed to this nation’s history, it has constitutional relevancy.

Moore says he’s fighting to protect the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion. But his defiant actions so far indicate a crusade in the making. This fight is about one man’s belief in the sovereignty of his God over the authority of the sectarian government whose laws he must judge. Not a good place for a judge to be sitting in judgment.

Our government absolutely, positively denies no one the right to believe in God. The federal or state government must, however, refuse to put its imprimatur on any religion, Christian or otherwise, as the U.S. Constitution clearly indicates.

“To do my duty, I must acknowledge God,” Moore told a crowd of supporters last week. “That is what this case is about. I will not violate my oath. I cannot forsake my conscience. I will not neglect my duty, and I will never deny the God upon whom our laws and country depend.”

Whoa. There’s no state law in Alabama for mandatory church attendance on Sunday, is there? That’s a commandment, but certainly no state would defend such an unconstitutional mandate for prayer, would it? There are other commandments of faith that have nothing to do with state or federal laws. What duty does Moore speak of — his Christian duty or his duty to serve as an unbiased judge to mete out nonsectarian justice?

To acknowledge God, we don’t need to put commandments in a government building. We need to put those commandments in our hearts. No law and certainly no judge can do that for us.

Myriam Marquez is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Her e-mail address is mmarquez@orlandosentinel.com.