I’m
sure most have heard the maxim ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’
but I suspect few have actually considered the implications of this simple
adage. What you intend – your intent -
can only be determined by what you actually willfully
do. An intention is not necessarily what
you planned to do (saying so does not make it so) rather it is determined by a
wilful deed. Most often, of course, we
do what we intend and our deeds succeed.
What is disturbing is that this maxim is telling us that the road to
hell may well be littered with our good deeds and most certainly the good deeds
of others. Considered in this light are
we obliged to reassess our moral compass?
Are some of our good deeds superfluous or insufficient? It depends - on whether you are trying to
avoid going to hell.
For
many the concept of Hell is mythological so they have no reason to fear what is
waiting around the corner. Their good
deeds contribute to their self-esteem, enrich the lives of others and produce a
warm feeling of satisfaction. Their good
deeds contribute in some small way to the well-being of the world. Too bad that they, unwittingly, will
eventually be forced to sojourn in God’s flaming dustbin.
“How can that
be?” You say, “This surely describes a morality we all would do well to
follow.” Yes, but no. God’s Ten Commandments are not about
morality. “But my Pastor says…..” Your Pastor is wrong. “But Jesus Christ said
‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’” (Matt22:39) Christ was not talking to you. He was repeating six of the Ten Commandments
to a rich man. We need to understand the
function of God’s Commandments to understand Christ’s purpose in repeating
them. They function to set believers
right with God, and, only as a corollary, with the people they encounter.
Here we must pause to ask: ‘What was God’s ‘purpose’ when he offered His
Ten Commandments to his chosen people and how do they function to serve His
purpose?’ I think it is clear that God’s
purpose was to provide His people with the means to share their spiritual lives
with Him. Their bodies will pass away
but their conscious spiritual being will reside with its maker. We must remember that God’s Ten Commandments
are nor orders believers must fulfill or rules
they must obey. Rather, they are
instructions to follow; acts of worship that are like a recipe that when carried out will change the entire being of
the believer. Worship is not expected to
be a task, rather it is carried out as an experience; an immersion that cleans
the spirit and prepares it for acceptance by God.
Denis
Prager argues: “In three thousand years no one has ever come
up with a better system than the God-based Ten Commandments for making a better
world. And no one ever will.” (.”Prager, Dennis. The Ten Commandments: Still the Best
Moral Code) But the debate between believers and
atheists on how our sense of morality comes to us; whether it is God-given or results from our intellectual
capacity misses the point of the Ten Commandments. The world is not better for our having the
Ten Commandments nor was it intended to be.
If the Commandments were designed to make a better world why didn’t God
give them to everybody; Egyptians, Sumerians, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Hittites
etc.? Why only his chosen people? His chosen people were not a particularly good
choice. Their story is rife with failure
to maintain their covenant with God; returning again and again to old habits of
idol worship learned from the Egyptians.
God made the best of all possible
worlds for us. It would have been better if it had not been peopled. We have the world we deserve. How many of us adhere to God’s Commandments
and how many of us ask God for forgiveness when we make a misstep. I suspect many just shake off their failings
and promise themselves (not God) they will do better next time.
While believers hold that worship and forgiveness is the key to finding
favor with God, for others the failure to keep God’s Commandments is merely a
religious problem. For these persons, God does not exist and while their
moral principles may overlap some of the Commandments they tend to shy away
from any suggestion that the Commandments are the source of their morality. This is partly because evangelical profiteers
find currency in chastising those who flaunt religious dogma and fail to
acknowledge the existence of a supreme being.
These so-called godless persons, who nevertheless practice goodwill
toward others, resent the ‘holier than thou’ attitude of evangelical
entrepreneurs. Consequently, they attack the idea that the Ten Commandments is the
source for Western ideas of morality.
They argue that goodwill toward all is not a religious idea, indeed,
there are some exclusive religions that pursue a contrary practice. They insist that the growth and development
of democratic ideas, first established in Ancient Greece, promote notions of
equality, fairness and the freedom to pursue an unhindered destiny which are
the cornerstones of Western morality and, in part, they are right. But this is not the full story. Adam and Eve obtained knowledge of good and
bad as a result of their sin and all of us inherited this knowledge. They and we gained the ability to weigh up
different situations to determine what was good and what was bad about them
which is the foundation of morality. Atheists argue that good and bad are not
absolute terms, they rely on context and as a consequence morality relies on
context. Theists argue that God is the
absolute good and the measure of morality.
But God, in establishing a covenant with his chosen people, was pursuing a
different course by insisting they abide by his Ten Commandments. What is most
abhorrent to God is selfishness. God
will not and cannot abide a person with even a faint tinge of selfishness; it
is an unnatural condition that is contrary to His Being. A selfish person cannot worship God because
if they are concerned with self they cannot be concerned with God. This is why
Christ tells them: “Therefore I
say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall
drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body
more than raiment?” (Matt 6:25) Christ does not desire that his audience
starve themselves or run naked through the wilderness, rather he wants them to
turn to God for their needs: “But
seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you.” (Matt 6:33) To be concerned for your own welfare without
acknowledging that your life comes from God is to be selfish. Appealing to God for your needs is an act of
worship; a recognition of God’s supreme power.
To transgress any one of God’s
commandments is also an act of selfishness which is why we are told by James (2:10): ‘For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point,
he is guilty of all.’ All of God’s
commandments are designed to show us how to avoid selfishness. Logically a loving, caring God cannot
accommodate selfishness for God is self-consistent. There can be no part of Him that is
selfish. Selfishness reflects a
character trait that is most obvious in
many wealthy persons. It is the opposite
of love. But as we are all sinners we
are all guilty of succumbing to selfishness at one time or another. The asking for forgiveness is an act of
worship and a recognition that we need God’s help to put right our relationship
with Him. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do His good
pleasure.(Phil 2:13) We should ask for
forgiveness to remove the scourge of our selfishness.
‘Is God Moral?’ is not a question we can ask of God. Morality is a human proclivity and God, the supreme or ultimate reality,
cannot be anthropomorphized. Prominent atheist relish the ability to (falsely) accuse God of promoting genocide
and ethnic cleansing. They cite Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomora and the
destruction of other Canaanite cities but
when we look closely at the people God is destroying we discover peoples who
are beyond saving; peoples who transgress all of God’s laws and indulge in all
manner of abominations. God wants to
protect his chosen people and leave no chance that the seed of those who live
in the land He has given to his people will survive to infect them. All must be destroyed.
I have argued
elsewhere that God knows our future because it has already happened. God does not exist in our time or space, He
is eternal. We will not catch up to our
future until the end of days. Einstein’s
theory of relativity demonstrates that time on earth is different from time in
space and beyond. (see Schroeder,
Gerald. Genesis and the Big Bang Theory: The Discovery of Harmony Between
Modern Science And The Bible. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
2011.)
God is always now,
there is no past or future with Him. Consequently, God knows what choices we will
make just as God knew what selfish choices the people of Canaan will have
made. He knows that the children of
Canaanites will follow their parent’s path so all must be slain. They are not punished, they are resolved of
their pathological state. He knows that
they will rise again at the end of days for their final judgment. God talks to humans as
humans talk. God loves Himself and as we
are part of God He necessarily loves us.
We bask in the joy of being part of God.
What sort of God would it be who didn’t love Himself, Who did not
believe that Himself was the highest form of love? Let’s look at his commandments:
“I am the
Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image, or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is
in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Most persons, if they are of a mind, can comply with the first two
Commandments with little difficulty. It
is atheists and the ignorant who are thought to follow this road to perdition. The worship of idols is selfish because
offerings to idols is an attempt to gain for the worshiper what only God can
give. The concern is not for God but for
the self.
3. Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that
taketh his name in vain.
The
taking of God’s name in vain is selfish; an act of vanity that inversely
demonstrates an inflated pride in oneself promoting God’s
name to be worth little. Slanderers
defile themselves by their own words.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and
do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it
thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is
within thy gates.
The Sabbath was made for man to rest his body
and provide time to contemplate the blessings God has provided but it is not a
restriction forcing believers to ignore the special needs they encounter. Christ allowed his disciples to harvest ears
of corn (actually hard grain sometimes translated as corn) on the Sabbath to
satisfy their hunger. It is important to
remember the Sabbath as a holy day reminding all to give thanks to God. To ignore the Sabbath is obviously selfish.
5. Honour thy father and thy
mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee.
“For God commanded saying, Honour thy
father and mother: and He that curseth father or mother, let him die the
death.” (Matt 15:4) Christ warns
against those who use perverse methods to avoid using their money to support
their parents such as the Jewish tradition of Corban – where some dedicate all
their money to God which provides them the opportunity to use the money while
they live but because it is technically God’s money they can avoid the
obligation prescribed by the 5th Commandment.
Clearly a selfish act. The death
that He speaks of is the second death at the end of time. The first death we all shall experience for
we all are sinners; we all are transgressors of God’s law. Those who do not sin do not die. This was made clear when Adam and Eve first
sinned. Genesis 2: 17 but as for the tree of knowledge of good and
bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.” (TANAKH
1985). God
is not describing a punishment in 2:17, rather he is describing a logical
necessity. The punishment Adam and Eve received was banishment from God’s Garden
in Eden. Death comes about as a result
of being a transgressor of God’s law. It
is not a punishment, it is a necessary condition of being. Adam and Eve were selfish and those who are selfish
do not worship God. They hold themselves
to be above God (whether they know it or not) and are necessarily incompatible
with God. If we are incompatible with
God we cannot join him when time ceases to exist.
God’s Ten Commandments did not just appear as
a result of Moses needing a moral means to control his people. The Ten Commandments have always
existed. "Where no law is, there is no transgression [or sin]."
Romans 4:15. God
is not temporal nor is his word. There
is no past or future with God for everything is now, everything has always
existed. Death is merely a means to the
end.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
The 6th commandment forbids
‘killing’ but Christ interprets this to mean ‘murder’. “Thou shalt do no murder,” (Matt
19:18)
Killing may be justified or it may be an accident but murder is a
paradigmatic selfish act.
7. Thou shalt not commit
adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant,
nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s
So too
is adultery, which is to be
culpable of intemperate, possessive carnal desires. Loving
intimacy is by definition not selfish. Lying, thieving and
covetousness; desiring or taking what belongs
to another. All of which infest the
heart and disease the mind. A person who steals bread because he and
his family are starving does not have selfishness in his heart nor does the
person who states a falsehood to protect a child from cruelty. Deliberate lying in such a case is not
selfish. It is what is in the heart
that is the final determination of a selfish act. Lust, of course, leads to adultery and greed
to covetousness. Both are selfish
desires. When we allow our desires and
urges to rule our behaviour we are
selfish and separate ourselves from God
©Launt Thompson Auckland 2018 New Zealand
©Launt Thompson Auckland 2018 New Zealand
No comments:
Post a Comment