September 21, 2005
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Hey, all! Just letting everyone know I’ve not fallen off the face of the earth! Life is REALLY full, right now, ‘though, and I’m blessed with plenty of “task-ey” things to fill my time. Just started a Bible survey course last week, and was asked this question:
“What comes to mind when you think of “The Law”, (in the biblical sense)?”
Now, many things came to mind, all at once, when I considered this question. I thought of large rooms of bearded Judaic scholars in robes, debating and discussing the huge body of work, built over centuries, known to us as the Talmud. I thought of the Ten Commandments [not "The Ten Commandments"
]. I thought of the seemingly endless list of purification rituals and laws in Leviticus. I remembered the principle that “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. “
(James 2:10)
However, one reference came to mind far more boldly than all the others. It is from Jesus Himself, and in it he builds a response to a challenge first with a direct quotation from one of the “books of the law” :
He is asked,”Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?” He cites Deuteronomy 6:4+5: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This segment of the Shema Yisrael was fully familiar to Jesus’ audience; however, Christ went a step further…He said, The second is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
(Mk12:29-31, Mt 22:37-39)
Now this may seem to be just a little bit of a stretch from the original question: “What comes to mind when you think of the Law?’ The reason this comes foremost to my mind is in Jesus’ concluding statement to the above. He concluded:
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
(Mt 22:40)
Though I know I cannot fulfill the Law; Jesus alone does/did that, I have a goal on which my limited human mind and understanding can focus: love God and love those He created. Paul called this “a more excellent way” in 1 Cor 13, and devoted much of rest of that chapter to how we should love…both vertically, toward God, and laterally, toward others.
It is also reassuring confirmation of the nature of God toward me…When we read in 1 John (multiple times) that “God is love”, and we recall the hundreds of years of forbearance God demonstrated toward Israel, calling them “back home” time and again after unfaithfulness, we begin to glimpse the constancy and faithfulness Paul had seen when he said in Romans 8,
“…I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So I think of “The Law”, and rather than feeling stifled or hopelessly inadequate, I am comforted that God’s purpose for me consists of, and is driven by, His unfailing love.
AWESOME!!
Comments (13)
Sometimes I think I’d like to fall off for a short while. LOL. This weekend I will, sort of – out camping with the boy and all his scout buddies. LOL. TTFN.
Jimmish: I believe God’s people need frequent reminders to love God and His people. I did a study a few years ago in I Peter. Peter was writing to a severly persecuted church, one knowing great suffering, and he repeated the instruction to love throughout the letter. Recently my husband and I contemplated Peter’s words, “Love one another deeply from the heart, for love covers a multitude of sins.” I find love to be a choice~ a choice to put aside what someone has done that you don’t feel comfortable about, or makes you want to put distance between you and another. I believe Love asks a question, “What can I do that will benefit the other?”
secureintruth : AAAAAMEN!! You said,
“I find love to be a choice~ a choice to put aside what someone has done that you don’t feel comfortable about, or makes you want to put distance between you and another. I believe Love asks a question, “What can I do that will benefit the other?” “
I couldn’t agree with you more…I have been for some time working on this in my interactions with others. When I am in an “abrasive” situation or moment with someone else, I (try to remember to) ask myself, “What is this person’s need?”, before I respond. I am finding myself less reflexively defensive, and it has helped me be more thought-ful..I am more able to RESPOND, rather than simply to react.
later…Jim
Questions about “the law” seem loaded to me even when they really aren’t. And of course the reason is because if asked what I think of when I think of “the law,” I think of knock-down, drag-out debates in which Christians are ready to crucify one another for wrong answers. This further reminds me of some of the lingering tensions between that whole rift between Protestant and Catholic and while both sides have made some great inroads toward reconciliation, depending on the circles in which we travel, we can still see sparks fly. Fortunately, I see little of that these days, but there are certain “trigger words” that still bring to mind lots of uglies in my past and “the law” isolated in this way–that is, isolated in the sense you were asked of “What do you think of when you think of ‘the law’”–is one of them. Now when “the law” comes up naturally in a larger context, however, I am not nearly so jumpy. Anyway, I don’t know where all that came from: Wow!
I hear what you are saying about “dropping off the face of the earth” and FKIProfessor’s comments that sometimes he would like to do that very thing for a short while. I think I have needed a little time away and have had opportunity to seek God in the silent, re-creative spaces that has done wonders in re-newing my perspective and causing many things that were looking very large just a week or so ago now appear quite manageable: just a normal day’s fare: business as usual, you might say. The biggest change is that with a re-newed perspective of God, I am seeing Him in many places where He seemed absent to me before. We all need this silent re-creation in which the Holy Spirit floods into our life anew, transforming us. You know, sometimes the mystical aspects of Christianity buy into a more esoteric or occult side than I truly like, not because I see some great evil and darkness but because it is “man-made,” if you like–it simply gets in the way of the real power source, which is God. I guess I have little danger of being drawn too far into the extremes, for with my natural analytic bent, the mystic side forms a nice corrective without pulling me too far overboard. With that said–and spitting out seeds just such as these–I found a few paragraphs in particular from an article on centering prayer and the fruits of the spirit to be quite applicable:
Meekness (kindness) has no energy for hostility, hatred or outbursts of anger. The energy of anger is necessary for human health and growth, but needs to be transmuted into a growing capacity to persevere in the pursuit of the difficult good, especially the immense goods of the spiritual journey and of the imitation of Christ. The growth of meekness opens us to the continual awareness to God’s presence and the acceptance of everyone along with their limitations. One does not approve of the harmful things that others may do, but one accepts them just as they are, ready to help whenever possible but without trying to change them. One is even content with one’s inability to change oneself as one would like while continuing to do what one can to improve, relying more and more upon God and less on one’s own efforts.
Faithfulness (fidelity) is the dynamic expression of meekness. It is the daily oblation of ourselves and all our actions in sacrifice to God and out of compassion for others, especially in service of the concrete needs of others. It is to serve God without dwelling on what God or others are going to do for us; perseverance in giving without thinking of any return. Our normal need for affirmation is coming from a new place: the growing conviction of being loved by God which greatly reduces the desire for human approval.
In sum, for me, a renewed awareness of God’s reality–even when I don’t feel Him within–not only reduces my need for human approval, not only gives me backbone where I was previously lacking it, but makes everything else settle into its proper place as well. There was quite a stretch in which I was getting lost in the abyss of my own doubts, worries, and cares, choking out the seed that fell on now twice fallow soil.
It’s good to know you’re still on the same planet as us
.
luckyfreecoin: LOL! Thanks for looking at things in your unique way.
fishtree: I love Father Keating….I’ll be back tonight after work
……Jim
I’ve been thinking about a little Father Keating for an upcoming post, in fact.
I think Father Keating would be good!
As for me, when I hear “the law” I think of things negative, harsh, demanding – the Law that acted as schoolmaster to bring those who practiced it to Christ, the Law that has been fulfilled in Him, the Law whose curse no longer holds us, the Law that some men insist we must be bound to still – ultimately I equate “the Law” with condemnation.
breath_of_dawn: I really like the term “schoolmaster” in relation to the law. As Paul elaborated in Romans (of course!), “the law” had as its whole purpose to show us a) how holy God is, b) how unable we are to acheive that holiness, and therefore, c) our need for “another way”. I like the term schoolmaster, because it evokes a sense of an unyielding instructor. I also have that condemnation tie in the things that come to mind regarding the law…I guess that’s why I so enjoy Jesus’ summation of the essense of the law in “love” terms.
fishtree: I am still learning to set aside adequate, really quiet, contemplative time …as you point out, it does so much to give true perspective; to re-set our personal gyroscopes. A person can do this anywhere, of course, and I love spending this kind of time in a “natural setting”, but there is also something to be said for place that isn’t weather-dependent, and has a feeling of being private, special, “holy”. There is a neat place near here, run by the IHM Sisters, that has just that atmosphere. It’s an old converted barn, and a number of Christians of various backgrounds go there..it’s often referred to simply as “the barn“, but it’s very nice…rustic and earthy, but warm, quiet, and “set apart” specifically for seeking God. I think the two of us (you and I) have just convinced me to spend some time there.
You said, “I think of knock-down, drag-out debates in which Christians are ready to crucify one another for wrong answers. This further reminds me of some of the lingering tensions between that whole rift between Protestant and Catholic and while both sides have made some great inroads toward reconciliation, depending on the circles in which we travel, we can still see sparks fly.”
The kind of pointless, adversarial, “no one comes out alive” contentiousness you mention brought to mind some reading I’ve done regarding the Jewish tradition of debate and discussion, particularly regarding questions of God and the law. I read on the philosophy of the Talmudic tradition that it has long been considered each person’s sacred duty to, when discussing/debating such matters, to state his case wholeheartedly (with all his heart and soul and mind) , and that, as a result, rabbinical debates can appear as a cacophony . The difference is that there is an understanding that all together are seeking not an individual’s truth, but God’s, and that every possibility should be explored on a particular question.
In an article on the “origins of life” debate, written for npr.org, rabbi Brad Hirshfield delineates the difference between our current “culture in which the absolute obliteration of the other side’s views is often the only basis for thinking that one’s own position is correct”, and “the Jewish intellectual tradition of healthy debate, the acceptance of multiple positions on complex issues, and the awareness that even those claims judged to be incorrect still have a great deal to teach us.” “ In fact”, says Hirshfield,” according to the Talmud, the views of the “losing side” in every debate are preserved precisely because they may, at some future point, be deemed to be correct. It is that intellectual modesty, sorely lacking on both sides of today’s debate, which my tradition brings … “
I may already have mentioned this, but I went to college on scholarship for debate. I dropped that scholarship my junior year precisely because, as a newly – converted believer, I had tired of endless argumentation which had no goal of seeking any objective truth. I also have become driven to focus (and re-focus) on God and His truth(s), and less and less time “lost in the abyss of my own doubts, worries, and cares…”.
I am really enjoying considering the passages on meekness and faithfulness, and how faithfulness and perseverence , coupled with the heart truly focused in kindness, can keep a person “ready to help (others) whenever possible but without trying to change them, even (becoming) content with one’s inability to change oneself as one would like while continuing to do what one can to improve, relying more and more upon God and less on one’s own efforts.”
I hope you decide to do the piece on Father Keating; I really enjoyed the excerpts you shared.
May all our “fallow soil” be richly seeded by God…Jim
Thankyou. I like the way you write.
‘I truly think that doing acts of cruelty in the name of God, whoever is doing it, is “taking the name of the Lord in vain”.’
I agree with you entirely. Thank you for that amazing peice of wisdom – that’s the truest thing I’ve heard for a long time.
I want to go to the barn!
Sorry, my friend. No, I did not see your comments here on your site. There is no one proper etiquette that I know about: if you want to make absolutely certain your comments will be seen, I guess the best way is to double post or to go to the other person’s site and give them a quick heads-up to come back and have another look. The other person will probably check their site the most frequently and in any case will normally be notified by e-mail the following day that a new comment has been added. Normally, I do check back on the entries on my Xanga friends’ blogs, but I’ve been a bit sluggish lately, my schoolwork keeping me hopping: my attention has been divided between Fraser’s book, Hobbes, Rousseau, Aristotle, Plato, Rawls, Strauss, as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, and now Taoism and Confucianism (interestingly described as the yin and yang–respectively–of Chinese religion), as well as my other classmates’ papers and a guidebook on “writing with style” (which I’ll admit always get shoved to the back of my other reading and which I am now currently well over a hundred pages behind in reading).
In any case, your comments are much appreciated and well-taken. You have in turn given me pause to ruminate and reflect, and as for a post on Father Keating, so far that hasn’t seemed to materialize, though if it does, it will probably be a paragraph or so excerpt like I often do on Xanga, the place where I try to be short winded for I am long winded virtually everywhere else. And yes, I am a screen reader myself, skimming when researching, but otherwise generally taking the time to read thoroughly onscreen; unlike the premise of my post, I generally read with sustained concentration many scholarly, thoughtful, or informative pieces online, often a direct result of either my courses in college or other books I have been reading that require background research, such as the latest, for example, a crash course in who Tocqueville is (and how to pronounce his name properly) so that I can keep up this scholarly image and sound smart like the rest of the world (or at the least, my political theory professor).
Still, there is something to be said for the differences in mental habits online reading fosters, for I am used to quick, electronic searches and can feel somewhat exasperated when trying to find quotations in a book, particularly if it has no index. What is more, graduate school still seems to believe that as useful as the Internet is, it is best combined with thick tomes and laborious study and when it is used, it is generally the “deep” or “invisible web” where the databases and other scholarly and professional warehouses of information are parked and packed to the brim.
I didn’t know that you were a debater in college. I find that oddly interesting somehow: not in a bad way at all, of course, simply in a “Fishtree” sort of way.