Q. 41. Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?
A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments.
“And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” (Matt. 19:17)
A businessman notorious for his ruthlessness, announced to Samuel Clemens, aka, Mark Twain, "Before I die, I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top."
"I have a better idea," said Clemens, "You could stay home in Boston and keep them." - Clifton Fadiman, ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 483.
Many states have passed laws requiring each motor vehicle licensed in the state must have an inspection sticker generally on the driver’s side of the windshield. States made these laws because some of us are careless about keeping our cars in safe operating condition. The law is for the good of the owner of the vehicle and for the others who might be jeopardized by its operation. So the law is for the good of all concerned.
Suppose the legislators in your state passed another law requiring a green star sticker on the passenger side of the windshield. They explain the purpose of this law: “We made this law just to let you know that we have the authority to legislate. We want you to get this sticker because we can simply make you are get it.” That would be an arbitrary, tyrannical law. During the next election, the electorate may be inclined to see some new faces in the legislature!
Law must originate from authority in order to have validity; yet just laws are not arbitrary expressions of authority, just because one have this authority. The Ten Commandments lose their authority if you don’t embrace the author. Simply having the Commandments posted on the wall without a relationship with the creator produces little compliance.
The Ten Commandments, for instance, were not arbitrary laws, but were based on principles, which have proven themselves for centuries among humans. In it, God is saying, “Remember your spiritual relationship with me, and remember the dignity and purpose of man.”
Theologian Douglas Alan Walrath reminds us that "God's love includes not only a sustaining center but protective boundaries." Indeed, by dishonoring the boundaries, we diminish the power of what he calls "God's endless, bounded love." Boundaries like the Ten Commandments "protect us from jeopardizing our relationship with God, from violating other humans and from destroying ourselves." Or, as he ends his treatment of this theme, "We become the persons God created us to be as we are blessed with God's soul power. That godliness continues in our lives as we embrace God's endless love and honor the boundaries set by God's commandments." - Walrath, Counterpoints: The Dynamics of Believing Today (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991), 60, 61, 63.
Chris Hedges, in his wonderful book about the commandments in America, Losing Moses on the Freeway, says this about them:
The commandments do not protect us from evil. They protect us from committing evil. The commandments are designed to check our darker impulses, warning us that pandering to impulses can have terrible consequences. "If you would enter life," the Gospel of Matthew reads, "keep the commandments" (19:17). The commandments hold community together. It is community that gives our lives, even in pain and grief, a healing solidarity. Our commitment to the community frees us from the dictates of our idols, idols that promise us fulfillment through the destructive impulses of constant self-gratification. The commandments call us to reject and defy powerful forces that can rule our lives, and to live instead for others, even if this costs us status and prestige and wealth. The commandments show us how to avoid being enslaved, how to save us from ourselves. They lead us to love, the essence of life.
The commandments are thus something that we should carry with us even more ubiquitously than our iPhones. They are not just words on a tablet of stone or digital checklists on a tablet of glass and plastic - they are designed to be written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), and stored there so that we will no longer sin against God (Psalm 119:11). The commandments don't lend themselves to general confession so much as specific confession to God of the ways in which we have failed, as Jesus put it, to love God, to love our neighbor and to love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).
Saint Augustine of Hippo says: “As Christians, our task is to make daily progress toward God. Our pilgrimage on earth is a school in which God is the only teacher, and it demands good students, not ones who play truant. In this school we learn something every day. We learn something from commandments, something from examples, and something from sacraments. These things are remedies for our wounds and materials for study.” We need to commit ourselves as an eager student of God’s word and listen to it with faith and trust?
Today’s Lectionary Readings
Morning Psalm: 43, 140
Evening Psalm: 136
Jeremiah 23:9-15
Romans 9:1-18
John 6:60-71
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