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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Why Do You Ignore God's Law?

That's a question that atheists often ask. Some of them might be serious, but most I think, when they suggest that we should be stoning “cheeky children,” (Dawkins) or that we shouldn't be eating shell fish, are simply blowing smoke as per normal.

For those who are serious though, let me explain. First comes three questions:
. If Jesus was the end of the Law, then why does the New Testament include some of the Mosaic Law?
. If Jesus says that not one part of the Law can be abolished, why aren't every one of the hundreds and hundreds or laws included in the New Testament, and
. Why are only nine of the ten commandments written up in the New Testament?

How can all of these questions be answered without going into mental contortions? I think the following resolves what is really no problem at all. We aren't (and Jesus wasn't) talking about just one “Law.” This is true on more than one level. The Law of Moses was not just The Ten Commandments, but 613 commandments. In point of fact these codes of conduct, handed down by our Creator started even before Moses.
There was a code handed down in Eden to Adam and Eve.
There was a coded handed down to Noah.
There was a code handed down to Abraham.
There was a code handed down to Moses, and
There was a code handed down to us by Jesus.
The Law or Code of Jesus which is found throughout the New Testament completely overrides the earlier codes in their entirety.

Just as the guidelines that we have for our children changes as our children get older and their circumstances change, so too with God's guidelines, as His plan progresses and our circumstances change as a result.

On that note, we can observe:
. The Law or Code of Jesus contains some of the old guidelines: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not covet and so forth; all summed up with, “Love your neighbour as you already love yourself.” (Romans 13:9).
. The Law or Code of Jesus contains some new guidelines: “For everything God created is good, and no food is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” 1st Timothy 4:4.
. And “A new command I give you, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Notice that it is no long just, love others as you love yourself, but “love others as I have loved you.”
Again, the food restrictions have been completely removed.

To review:
Any command of Moses that appears in Jesus' Code should not be seen as a continuation of those earlier commands, but is specifically part of Jesus' Law or Code. 


The Laws of Jesus that were also part of Moses' law are binding on modern followers of Jesus.

The Laws that were part of Moses Law that Jesus did not include in His Law or Code are not binding on modern followers of Jesus.

As an example, sexual intimacy only within a male / female marriage is still binding while dietary laws are not.

In other words, every Law of Moses has been ended unless is has been included in Jesus' Law Code, a set of guidelines that is found throughout the New Testament.

While atheists will remain confused and confounded by this explanation, most regular people should be able to, and actually already do understand this.

8 comments:

  1. There are 2 problems that the question "Why Do You Ignore God's Law?" attempts to address (when asked seriously of course). Your post does not address either.

    1) If God were a universal moral guide, then the morality of an action should not change over time. In a similar context, something immoral before Jesus should be immoral after Jesus. Your explanation contradicts the absolute nature of God's moral code by explicitly denying the continuity of the Old Testament laws. So why do you ignore God's laws when they are supposed to be unchanging?

    2) Certain actions used to be consider moral by pretty much all Christians and non-Christians, both rich and poor, educated or not, powerful or not, throughout the ages. Some of these actions are now considered immoral by the same kind of people, regardless of their own context. This means that Christians like you have a significantly different moral code compared to your ancestors. So, again, the question remains: Why Do You Ignore God's Law? or why do you think your ancestors were ignoring them? who is right?

    And you know, I could have been much shorter: The problem is that we all use a combination of our instincts, reason, personal experienc and social and familial influence to determine what's moral or not. So the question "Why Do You Ignore God's Law?" is used to illustrate this principle that Christians, no matter how devoted they are, are ignoring at least some of God's Laws in order to come up with what makes sense for them in their current spacio-temporal context.

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  2. I am an atheist, and I understand your explanation of changing laws over time:

    "Just as the guidelines that we have for our children changes as our children get older and their circumstances change, so too with God's guidelines, as His plan progresses and our circumstances change as a result."

    I don't think human growth and development is a good analogy for changes in God's code. You give dietary laws as an example of changing guidelines:

    "The Law or Code of Jesus contains some new guidelines: “For everything God created is good, and no food is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” 1st Timothy 4:4."

    So it seems like you are saying that Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, and Moses were incapable, like children, to understand the concept of consecrated food, which is why God gave them dietary restrictions instead.

    Does this make sense? Children have different and changing rules because they are physically, emotionally, and cognitively incapable of understanding and complying with the rules that govern adults. Are you really saying that the Old Testament patriarchs, and by expansion the average adult Israelite, were incapable of moral and behavioral understanding and compliance that adults in Jesus's time were (and by implication, by today's adults)?

    IMO, the code handed down by Jesus to his contemporaries could just have easily have been handed down to Adam or Moses. The only argument that could really be made here is that the code of Jesus is contingent upon Him being God/Son of God, and not specifically upon the cultural maturity/setting/circumstance upon which they find themselves.

    The other problem with the "as His plan progresses and our circumstances change as a result" is the fact that OUR circumstances are arguably MUCH MUCH different than the circumstances of the Jews in the OT, or the Christians in the NT. The worldviews Abraham and Paul are not that much different(both are pre-literacy, pre-technology, pre-science, pre-information age, etc.), and yet Paul somehow warrants a revised worldview from Jesus. Our lives in moderity are literally unrecognizable to the biblical partriarchs; as Sam Harris puts it: "...there’s not a person in this room who has ever met a person whose worldview was as narrow as the worldview of Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus, or Muhammad..." (http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/archive/index.php/t-226289.html). So where is OUR new, revised, updated code? Why are we supposed to make do with a 2000 year old code that doesn't even recognize our circumstances, let alone address them in any meaningful way? And with the 2nd Coming, Christianity has effectively closed the door on any future codes, so what we have now is the best that it's ever going to get.

    Of course, the address-ability issue is open to discussion and debate. But as the 2nd Coming grows farther and farther into the future, and our circumstance of modernity keep getting....well, more modern (lol), it seems that it puts more and more pressure upon the Christian to maintain the relevancy of Biblical morality.

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  4. "If God were a universal moral guide, then the morality of an action should not change over time."

    You're right of course. And the morality of God's moral law does not change. I think your error lies in not recognizing that “the Law” is divided into three parts: The moral law – to which you refer, as well as ceremonial and judicial law.

    . The ten commandments comprise the moral part of the law.
    . The Judicial law begins at Exodus 21:2 and covers the legal rights and behaviours between people and punishment of offenders, while
    . The ceremonial law begins at 25:1 and regulates the worship life of Israel.

    So your partially right. You were simply ignorant of the fact that the laws that have been discontinued have nothing to do with morality.
    You may also be confusing the punishment for certain offences with the offence itself. Not stoning someone for dishonoring one's parents does not remove the offence of dishonoring one's parents.
    =======

    As further explanation, let me say that the ceremonial laws in totality and the judicial laws in large part were to clearly separate and distinguish God's people in thought, word and deed from the behaviours of their surrounding neighbours – the goal being, to help them avoid being drawn into pagan life-style. There were strict guidelines, not moral, but ceremonial guidelines for the Israelites to not mingle in any way with the surrounding cultures.

    When Jesus came we were no longer to avoid mingling with our pagan neighbours but were / are instead to step completely into our world, to work diligently for the good of our secular world without become like the secular world.

    As you point out, it isn't working so well, with many, many Christians reinterpreting the moral laws on an “as needed” (sarcasm) basis. That however has not changed the moral code from God's perspective.

    As you state, the morality of an action should not and indeed has not changed over time. Our opinion changes nothing from God's perspective.
    =====

    “This means that Christians like you have a significantly different moral code compared to your ancestors.”

    No. That's wrong. The moral code has not changed. Our interpretation of the code has changed. Again, on an as needed, or as desired basis. An example would be, Christians acknowledge that God says, sexual intimacy outside of marriage is wrong – until they are in a relationship. Then we start to tell ourselves that the wrong thing may very well be right, or at least maybe it's not as wrong as we had once thought. We say things like, “Well, we love each other so that makes it right.” Or, “We're going to get married at some point in the future so that makes it right,” or the best one is, “We're already married in our hearts, so it's okay.” It's all very pitiful and you have every right to ask, when seeing us behaving this way, “”Why do you ignore God's law?”

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  5. Hey dejuan, You snuck in while I was replying to Hugo:

    “I don't think human growth and development is a good analogy for changes in God's code.”

    Perhaps not, but in the moment it was as good as I could do.
    =====

    "So it seems like you are saying that Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, and Moses were incapable, like children, to understand the concept of consecrated food, which is why God gave them dietary restrictions instead.”

    No, as I explained to Hugo, the Israelite nation was to be distinct from surrounding cultures in thought, word and deed. It was to be an utterly unique culture. When Jesus came, He came to bring people into His family FROM those surrounding cultures. It had nothing to do with their capabilities. The goal was to maintain a spiritual and physical separateness. The goal now, as I understand it is to maintain a spiritual separateness. I might be wrong about this but it's how I understand it.
    ======

    “Paul somehow warrants a revised worldview from Jesus.”

    I couldn't disagree more. Paul's world-view is identical to that of Jesus because He got His world-view from Jesus.
    =====

    “Why are we supposed to make do with a 2000 year old code that doesn't even recognize our circumstances, let alone address them in any meaningful way?”

    Can you give me some examples? I'm not saying you're wrong, but nothing comes to mind for me. Is, Love your neighbour as you love yourselves no longer relevant?

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  7. Note: I messed my Comment As selection. DeJuan and Luc are the same; sorry for any confusion. Reprinted below.

    Regarding Paul, I should have said "warranted" not "warrants" because he did get a revised worldview from Jesus...even though his circumstances weren't all that much different from the OT patriarchs.

    I would argue that the Bible does not address the concerns of a global, culturally-diverse, literate, technologically-connected, civilization. Social issues, economics, politics, medicine, education, crime, science/technology, entertainment, the environment...most of these areas aren't even recognized in scripture. And yet, Christian politicians and ministers feel qualified to pontificate about and pass laws on same sex marriage, stem cell research, global warming, abortion, sex education, assisted suicide, health care, evolution vs. creationism/ID, etc., confident that Jesus approves their views. Many times their views are based on information so far off-base that a 30min Google search and a swallowing of pride would do great work.

    And as far as morality and ethics goes, philosophy and psychology are light-years ahead of scripture. Let's take "Love thy neighbor as yourself." Along with "Love thy God with all thy heart" this is often considered the zenith of Christian morality. Yet, we know at the level of the brain that attachment to another can't be chosen, or forced; to "choose" love is to rewrite what love means, to change what is so very precious about it. We can, however, choose to have an open conversation with another, and see what authentically develops from there. This works so much better than rebuking for allowing love the potential to grow.

    This approach is congruent with diversity, and is a theme that is found nowhere in Scripture. This is why "love your neighbor as yourself" fails; within the context of Scripture, it means that the neighbor has to love you on your terms as a Christian, or else is rebuked. "Love the sinner; hate the sin" fails for the same reason.

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  8. I would argue that the Bible does not address . . .”
    There is some truth to what you say. Although “Love your neighbour as you already love yourself,” fails to cover perhaps only 1% of the world's problems. I don't see how culturally-diverse, literate, technologically-connected, or civilized would affect that command. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts of murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Matthew 15:19 addresses the opposite of “Love your neighbour” and consistently drives and has driven human conflict for ever. It's been my experience as a counsellor that human nature has not changed one iota since recorded history began. The Bible is a book about human nature. I'll let author Paul Brownback explain further. “The greatest book ever written on personality, is the Bible. There we find concept after concept that speak of what people are like and how they do, and should relate to others, including God, their friends, business associates, spouse, children, and themselves. The Bible speaks of love and hate, pride and humility, joy and depression, moral victory and defeat. It speaks of the intellect, the emotion, and the will and how they should interrelate.” The Bible certainly speaks to entertainment Philippians 4:8,9) and the environment Revelation speaks of a special punishment for those who destroy the earth). You are correct though, we Christians, along with all humans are prone to talking of things about which we are not experts.
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    “And as far as morality and ethics goes, philosophy and psychology are light-years ahead of scripture.”
    Again, can you give me an example. Because I couldn't disagree more. Virtually all my training as a counsellor has been secular in nature and over the years I found that anything worth keeping, knowing or using with a client, that secular psychology teaches, is also found in the Bible. Today's post gives about a 100 examples. Perhaps you could show me how today's post is light-years behind philosophy and psychology.
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    Let's take "Love thy neighbor as yourself." Along with "Love thy God with all thy heart" this is often considered the zenith of Christian morality.
    No – they lead to the Zenith of Christian morality – again as shown in today's post. When I love God with all my heart I will be obeying those relational commands listed in today's post.
    =====
    “Yet, we know at the level of the brain that attachment to another can't be chosen, or forced; to "choose" love is to rewrite what love means,”
    I think you're confusing “love” with “attraction.” Love as the Bible uses the term is the “willed, volitional, desire to do good to another.” It has nothing to do with whether that love is returned or warranted or any other factor. “While we were still His enemies, Jesus loved us.” Jesus said, “The one who loves Me is the one who obeys Me.” Because I love Jesus I deny myself sexual love outside of the marriage relationship that I have with my wife.” If you aren't a Christian then none of what Jesus says applies to you and any Christian who tells you how to live is, I believe, stepping outside the bounds of “love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
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    “This approach is congruent with diversity,”
    Ah, ok, well if you want to justify your screwing around with multiple partners, you have nothing to fear from the Bible. What Jesus and the New Testament says He says to those who claim to be His followers. If you are not a follower of Jesus, then you can do what you want. If your are not in a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus then your “diversity” is the least of your problems. Is this why you asked why I chose Geta Christina's blog? That I chose her for her homosexuality? No, I have nothing to say to her about her relationships. She's on her own and is free to live as she wants.
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    "Love the sinner; hate the sin" fails for the same reason.
    What do mean fail – that nothing should be labelled sin? Or what?

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