A Vision for Life

Exodus 20

Sometimes when people think of religious rules they imagine a balance beam between two sky scrapers. There is a mean nasty God on one end daring you to obey the rules, forcing you to pull off a miracle by walking the balance beam. If you are not able to obey the rules, you fall helplessly into the urban abyss below while the almighty laughs a bellowing cackle! Or, people consider the rules to be a small 7x7x7 windowless room that you need to stay in, for fear that you might start enjoying yourself.

The Ten Commandments are a vision for a new life in a new place with a new freedom. The only way of life the Hebrew people knew up until then was a life of slavery under despotic leadership. They were bound to repeat it, either as slaves or as despots, unless they could learn a new way. The Ten Commandments were the new way, not just for Israel, but as they modeled it, it would become a new way of life for the world. The Ten Commandments weren’t just a moment in the life of Israel, but a moment in the course of history where law became codified and a nation was bound together not just around superstition and personality, but around a common story and a common way of living. That common way of living has held together the Jewish culture ever since. It became the foundation from which Christianity, and all of western culture for that matter, sprung.

The people were receiving from God a land that would be their own. The law was for them to enjoy the land and live the lives that God intended for them. Just like there are laws of physics that if you break them, they will break you—try to fly for instance; there are laws of morality that if you break them, they break you—try revenge or adultery, or ignoring the Sabbath. Imagine a dog receiving a new home with a new, huge yard filled with trees, flowers, hills and other animal life. An electronic fence is put in, not because the owners wants to keep the dog from enjoying life, but so that the dog may remain safe and can enjoy life even more. As long as the dog stays in the yard (a big yard, mind you—think rural, not suburban), he is safe and can enjoy all the goodness life can offer. The dog may look outside of the yard and think that the bunnies are slower outside the yard or the grass is greener outside, but they are the same bunnies and the same grass. Though things may appear differently to the dog, the only thing that is different, is that the dog is outside the safety of his owner, and is in disobedience to his owner. The bunnies are just as fast and the grass isn’t any better.

We need to make sure that we do not mistake freedom for autonomy. There is no such thing as autonomy. We are all bound to die; we are all bound to the laws of physics; we are bound to a certain place in history; we are bound to the reality that we are social creatures; and we are creatures who are shaped by generations of ancestry. No one is autonomous of these things except God. Freedom comes from placing ourselves under his ownership, and following the ways of this world that he wired into from creation. The Ten Commandments are a pretty good start.

Posted by Marc