The Law II

Don: Jesus told his self-righteous listeners that the demands of the law are very harsh, and those would live by it need to understand just how harsh. Hence, his references to cutting off one’s hands, eyes, and so on. This was also the lesson of the rich young ruler, and it was the message of the Sermon on the Mount, where to hold hatred in the heart was said to be as evil as breaking any law.

Jesus is telling those who see themselves as self-reliant and able to uphold the law of the futility of their stance. It was a way of telling his listeners what grace was really about. We cannot keep the law. We have to rely on god’s grace. The Pharisees dumbed down the law so they could keep it comfortably, but of course the dumbed-down version was not the real law.

Robin asked why Matthew 18 focuses on children. It’s not just little ones but little ones “who believe in me”—a common phrase in scripture. What is it about a child’s mind that is so important? Matthew 18:10: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.”

“Despise” has the sense of belittling, depreciating, devaluing children who believe in Jesus, because all the resources of heaven are deployed in their nurture. How can a child have this simple belief in Jesus? And are these just literally small children or are they metaphorically small children—people whose faith is not well developed, who should not be burdened with the impossibly onerous law but should be allowed to continue in their simple belief in grace?

How do such “children” see the law of god? We who have spiritual maturity have an obligation not to burden those who are spiritually immature. Jesus contrasts grace with the law.

Alice: Do we have a responsibility to tell others the truth and constantly correct them, or is this against preaching or witnessing the word of Jesus? I always used to find reasons to open the bible and tell people what the real truth was, but when I discussed this with a friend the other day, who told me had had reproved a Catholic for praying to Mary, I suggested that perhaps my friend was being a stumbling block to that Catholic by belittling his beliefs.

But afterwards, it struck me that perhaps I too was being a stumbling block to my friend, by telling him to abandon his principles! So perhaps we should not interfere—we should just let people believe in what they want to believe in, and not interfere in their relationship with god. And yet, while we don’t want to cause “children” to stumble, we do feel a need to guide them.

Jay: The issue comes up a lot in church leadership. Do you have to come down to the lowest common denominator in order not to be a stumbling block to others? We set up sa stumbling block every time we set up a rule in the Church. There’s a rule about not wearing jewelry, and just because the rule exists, the stumbling block exists too! I’m starting to think that a stumbling block is not about law at all, but about an individual’s relationship with Jesus. That changes what the lowest common denominator is.

Alice: Catholics pray for their dead, light candles for them, and so on. How does it affect my salvation to believe or not believe the dead can hear us? Will it make a difference to god? My friend thinks it does.

David: The message Jesus is getting across is: Don’t get in other people’s way. In Daoism, the Dao is (literal meaning) The Way.  But Daoism only talks about one’s personal relationship to The Way. It doesn’t much care about our relationship with law.

Children, who have next to no knowledge, have next to nothing but the inner light (we have often discussed in this class) in them. I don’t think we acquire the inner light later in life: It is there from birth. So I am confused by the condition that it is only wrong to cause children who believe in god to stumble. The conditional implies that there are children who do not believe in god, and I don’t think that is so, even though they may be incapable of articulating their belief.

Last week Veronika opined that we are all one with god in the spirit world before we are born and again after we die. If that is so, then all children—in whom some sort of memory of their prior spiritual existence is retained for a while—believe in god and we must not interfere with their relationship with god. If that is so, then it would seem that our only responsibility to children is to keep them alive, but to steer well clear of guiding them spiritually.

Alice: So we are assuming that every human being is a child who believes?

Jay: That’s how we start out. One of our child-like qualities is belief, the inner sense of goodness and love and grace and helping one’s fellow man and faith. As we mature, we move away from those beliefs. But if we prevent someone from moving back toward those basic beliefs, we are causing them to stumble.

Unfortunately we think our law helps us help people to become closer to god, and to get closer to those original beliefs. But Jesus is saying perhaps don’t be too sure about that, or at least be careful how you approach it! If I personally choose to stick with what the bible says—to not eat meat or whatever the stricture might be—I’m not hurting myself or anyone else unless and until I try to impose it on them.

Alice: Even those who like to stick to the law are welcome to do so. They just should not try to impose it on others.

Jay: Being an Adventist all my life has brought me to a closer relationship with god, and I am prepared to share that story with others if they ask. But I do not make my views about e.g. the Sabbath mean that it makes the SDA the “right” church, it simply helps bring me into a closer relationship with god and my fellow man. But I have no right to impose this belief on others.

Alice: Maybe witnessing is not about telling people about the law, the commandments, the bible, etc., but about our personal experiences with god—how god has helped in our lives, had mercy on us, how he has put us in certain circumstances, through which we grew. So witnessing is about sharing, it’s about community and communion; not about books and churches.

Don: The scriptural implication that one should not interfere in others’ beliefs is a strong cry for humility—to accept that we do not know The Truth. Paul said that knowledge and prophecy are transient; only love is immutable. Jesus is making the point that we do not have a corner on any kind of knowledge, and especially not of the law. Jesus says if you are willing to accept god’s grace, then let me take the burden of the law from you, let me clear The Way for you, as he did for Paul on the road to Damascus.

David: You don’t need to belong to a church to hold this perspective. Churches operate on the basis of the law. This doesn’t mean that there is no role for a church: The role is just what Alice suggested: To show anyone who is interested what your experience with god has been like. That is exactly what is happening within our group. Why shouldn’t it happen throughout the SDA church?

Don: I read this morning a homily written by a fundamentalist pastor, titled “Why Require Unregenerate Children to Act Like They Are Good?”

1) For children, external, unspiritual conformity to God’s commanded patterns of behavior is better than external, unspiritual non-conformity to those patterns of behavior.

A respectful and mannerly 5-year-old unbeliever is better for the world than a more authentic defiant, disrespectful, ill-mannered, unbelieving bully. The family, the friendships, the church, and the world in general will be thankful for parents that restrain the egocentric impulses of their children and confirm in them every impulse toward courtesy and kindness and respect.

2) Requiring obedience from children in conformity with God’s will confronts them with the meaning of sin in relation to God, the nature of their own depravity, and their need for inner transformation by the power of grace through the gospel of Christ.

There comes a point where the “law” dawns on the child. That is, he realizes that God (not just his parents) requires a certain way of life from him and that he does not like some of it, and that he cannot do all of it.

At this crisis moment, the good news of Christ’s dying for our sins becomes all important. Will the child settle into a moralistic effort the rest of his life, trying to win the acceptance and love of God? Or will he hear and believe that God’s acceptance and forgiveness and love are free gifts—and receive this God in Christ as the supreme treasure of his life?

The child will have a hard time grasping the meaning of the cross if parents have not required of him behaviors, some of which he dislikes, and none of which he can do perfectly.

Christ lived and died to provide for us the righteousness we need (but cannot perform) and to endure for us the punishment we deserve (but cannot endure). If parents do not require external righteousness and apply measures of punishment, the categories of the cross will be difficult for a child to grasp.

3) The marks of devotion, civility, and manners (“please,” “thank you,” and good eye contact) are habits that, God willing, are filled later with grace and become more helpful ways of blessing others and expressing a humble heart.

No parents have the luxury of teaching their child nothing while they wait for his regeneration. If we are not requiring obedience, we are confirming defiance. If we are not inculcating manners, we are training in boorishness. If we are not developing the disciplines of prayer and Bible-listening, we are solidifying the sense that prayerlessness and Biblelessness are normal.

Inculcated good habits may later become formalistic legalism. Inculcated insolence, rudeness, and irreligion will likely become worldly decadence. But by God’s grace, and saturated with prayer, good habits may be filled with the life of the Spirit by faith. But the patterns of insolence and rudeness and irreligion will be hard to undo.

[Complete article is here.]

Alice: Some of us, and perhaps some children, are more observant than others. Children may also observe the way we behave and copy us. So is it necessary to teach them explicitly, or should we let them learn intuitively?

Jay:  A baby knows that crying gets attention. Young daughters and sons instinctively mimic their mothers and fathers respectively. No-one tells them to do it; they just naturally copy our behaviors.

Alice: If we try to impose this, we become stumbling blocks.

Jay: Up to a point, but I still believe in issuing guidance. I have one cardinal rule: Be kind.

Alice: My point is we should not just teach them by words but by our own behavior. Just telling them to be kind is not the same as showing them what it is to be kind.

David: Alice is so right. We should be teaching by witnessing, by being there, and not by proselytizing. I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses misinterpret their own central concept of what it is to witness. What Jesus might say in this context is “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” In this case, the rules of society are Caesar’s. They have nothing to do with god.

Don: The biggest stumbling block might be when we don’t act the way we speak, when we don’t “walk the talk.”

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