Things We Are Free to Do?

Longer ago than I care to think about I took a Bible as Literature course at the state college. It was a great class, really. Being a state college, it was light on deep theology and heavy on the significance the Bible has had on literature and culture.

And the professor was entertaining if not curiously eclectic.

As we were working our way through the Torah, we inevitably came to the Ten Commandments. The prof pointed out that so many people view the Ten Commandments as a restrictive law filled with too many “Thou shalt nots”. But in reality, he said, the Ten Commandments are a great set of laws that give tremendous liberty.

I was fairly young in my Walk at the time, but even then my mind shifted to that verse in James (chapter 1, verse 25) that calls the law the “perfect law of liberty”. So I was silently pumping my fist and cheering.

And then he says, “Take, for example, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ It might outlaw adultery, but look at all the other things you can do!”

And then, of course, my jaw dropped.

As the decades have passed, it has become apparent to me that the professor’s little riff really does represent the way many of us practice the law of God. “I’m not really lying. It’s just a white lie that I’m telling you for your own good.” “I’m not stealing. I’m borrowing. They’ll never miss it anyway.” “I’m not coveting, I just want what I’m entitled to, and be damned that the next generation will have to pay for it.”

And then there is this one: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. ... In it you shall do no work.” Maybe I can’t work on that day, but look at all the other things I can do!

I’m not one who is inclined to lay down all kinds of little rules as the Pharisees did on what should or should not be done on the Sabbath Day. But people do need to make some distinctions between those activities that enhance our relationship with God, family, and friends and those that don’t. Ezekiel draws a sharp distinction between the “holy” and “profane” (or “common”, as rendered in the New International Version.) That’s something to take seriously. See Ezekiel 44:23-24, 22:26, and 42:20.

This is just to say that we can use the laws of God as a path to blessings or litigate our way around them and miss the blessings. The prof was right: the law is a law of liberty even though he never understood what true liberty is.