Balking at the Law.
Since it's been a bazillion years since I last posted, here are links to:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
When discussing the role of the Law in the lives of believers, the discussion very soon turns toward the penal sanctions given in Old Testament case law. The usual "extreme" examples are brought out as a way of demonstrating the (supposed) absurdity of keeping God's Commandments in our (again, supposedly) more enlightened modern times. The laws regarding slavery, reviling parents, or sexual crimes are brought up as ridiculous, barbaric examples of...well, of God's cruelty, if the reasoning is followed out.
And sadly, many of us follow the reasoning. Christians are either embarrassed into silence or into retreating to a kind of soft Gnosticism, believing that the God revealed in the Old Testament is a meaner one than the one revealed in the New.
I don't have space to deal with each one of the "offending" laws, but there is a broader point anyway. The simple questions are these: "Who defines what is criminal," and, "Who defines what is a just punishment for crime?" I should hope that answer is obvious to the Christian mind. So the next question needs to be, "If God's punishment for x sticks in our craw, who has the problem here, us, or God?"
Can it really be that, say, the cursing of parents by a delinquent son really is enough of a threat to society, and an affront to God, that it would deserve the death penalty? Dare we think such things?
The point to ponder until next time ought to be, "Dare we presume to judge God's Law?"
1 comment:
Amen
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