19.11.06 Michael The Decalogue cont.... Exodus 20: 12-17
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The
hubris of the modern legislator is astonishing. The Queen’s Speech
on Monday announced dozens of new laws on everything from wayward
youths to climate change but this same government has passed hundreds
of new laws in the last ten years. Do we see a nation that is more
just or more law abiding as a result? Far from it.
After
the Queen’s Speech announced a number of new laws on law and order,
and terrorism John Reid announced that the intent was that security
would reach from government and the courts to peoples’ living
rooms. But this frightening vision of an invasive state rampant in
its powers to scrutinise our lives does nothing to conform our hearts
and minds to the prior claim that our neighbours have on our lives,
or to create real peace in British communities. For Christians the
claims of justice do not begin from the threat of punishment –
divine or human, judicial or military – nor even from the
all-seeing eye of God or the CCTV camera.
The
problem is in our larger vision of what it is to be British, and to
be human. The government constantly legislates to prevent harms but
rarely seems able to promote a vision of the good life or positive
justice, either at home or in its foreign policy.
One
of the worst examples of this understanding of politics as the
prevention of harms was in a story I read this week about the Health
and Safety Executive taking the National Trust to court because one
of the trees in the ancient royal oak forest of Dunham Massey in
Chesire fell on a child in high winds three years ago in a freak
accident. The Trust care for literally millions of trees but if the
HSE gets its way none of us will be able to walk under them anymore
if there’s even a hint of wind. And yet of course we go to the
wild, to the forest, to places of beauty and the sublime precisely
because they are not tamed, and in their wondrous natural power we
enjoy them precisely because we do not control them. Instead they
give us a sense of the awe and majesty of the creator God who in
wisdom has set the earth on its foundations and whose divine nature
is manifest in the intricate order of every community of species,
whether an oak forest or a salmon river.
The
first point about the Ten Commandments too is that we do not make
them. Think for a moment about how they are received. Moses is not
sitting with a quill pen in an Egyptian city; he is not even in a
tent encamped among the Israelites. No he has climbed the great Mount
Sinai in the desert – he is in the wilderness without a mobile
phone or GPS or even a compass and OS map. And after days on the
mountain he comes back down with a divine map, God’s plan for human
life, in the form of two tablets of stone.
What
do these commands represent? The distillation of the wisdom of an
ancient nomadic tribe? The law code of one of the first civilisations
to actually write anything down? No they are God’s laws, and they
affirm that there is no true life, no good life which is not directed
to the love and worship of God. And in the commandment we have before
us today that there is no life which is not received as a gift, from
parents, and from God. And so
Honour
your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land
the Lord your God is giving you.
This
commandment is pivotal since it comes between the commands concerned
with human duties towards God and human duties toward life which is
not divine. And its message is that those who do not honour their
father and mother shall not live long in the land. To put this
another way those who fail to honour their roots are unlikely to be
well rooted in the land or to enjoy its fruits for long.
Edmund
Burke in reflecting on the French revolution expressed the same
thought this way:
“people
will not look towards posterity when they fail to reflect on past
generations”.
We
of course live in a culture which takes little or no thought for the
morrow. Burke’s suggestion is that this failure to care for the
future welfare of people and planet is a consequence of our failure
to reflect on the past, to know whence we have come.
The
reason why we think like this is because we are trained by our
culture to imagine that society, and even we ourselves, are human
creations and that through our choices – of friends, partners,
homes, clothes, cars, holidays – we make ourselves. And not only do
we make ourselves but we decide, we legislate for what is right and
wrong. In our culture right and wrong depend on our choices and
relationships:
Coldplay
put this rather well in their latest album.
What
if there was no lie
Nothing
wrong, nothing right
What
if there was no time
And
no reason, or rhyme
What
if you should decide
That
you don't want me there by your side
That
you don't want me there in your life
What
if I got it wrong
And
no poem or song
Could
put right what I got wrong
Or
make you feel I belong
If
right and wrong are just sentiments, passing emotions, feelings we
can’t explain, choices we can’t justify, and if identity is
something we make up from our dreams, the idea that someone else
created us is deeply problematic – as Philip Larkin said
:
they
muck you up, your mum and dad.
They
may not mean to, but they do.
They
fill you with the faults they had
And
add some extra, just for you.
The
implication is that if we controlled our own destiny – if we
somehow made ourselves – we would not be in such a mess. And the
further implication is that the only relationships that truly affirm
our identity are relationships we freely choose:
Parents
give us birth. And their presence in our lives is a constant reminder
that we receive life not as a possession but as a gift. We did not
intend ourselves into being.
Analogously
we don’t obey the commands because we wrote them, or we judge them
to be wise, nor even that we fear some horrendous punishment if we
don’t do them. We believe that they point us to the good life –
the life God intended us to live – because they come to us from the
God who made us.
And
here the order of the commandments is so significant – we do not
make gods because we receive life from God as a gift. We don’t
abuse the name of God because even to name God is to overstate things
– we receive God’s life but we do not control the God who made
us. We do not control time, time is ordered to God and to the worship
of God. And then the fourth commandment – we do not make ourselves.
We receive life as a gift from our parents, just as we receive time
as a gift, and the name of God as a gift, and are commanded to
worship truly in recognition of this gift.
And
the placing of this command also suggests that all our other
relationships will be built on how we negotiate our parental
relationships – if we can love God then we can love our parents,
and if God forgives us then we can forgive our parents for messing us
up, and if we can do that then how much more will be able to
forgive our neighbours also. And if we can forgive our neighbours we
are less likely to want to kill them, steal from them, be unfaithful
to them, or covet their belongings.
Some
suggest that these five ‘human’ laws are the really significant
heritage of the commandments and the religious laws are of less
significance for society – that human law is written on these laws
and that it is the solid foundation which gives the law power over
our lives. But nothing could be further from the truth. Law alone
does not save – as St Paul says the law is at best a tutor which
could teach us that we stand in need of grace but that could
ultimately not redeem.
Jeremiah
was surely right when he suggested that in the days of the messiah
God would write God’s laws on human hearts or in another form of
the metaphor in place of a heart of stone God would make a heart of
flesh – the laws were the heart of Israel. But the law that God
makes new and fulfils in Christ is a law written on the heart not on
tablets of stone.
And
this recognition also changes how we think about these laws. The laws
before us are actually pretty vague – they do not give us cases,
they invite interpretation and argument and reflection.
Thus
the law about respecting parents is not an absolute law – it does
not mean never disobey, never go your own way. But it means for the
adult children to whom it is addressed – never forget that you are
creatures, that you first received life so that you might in turn
give it.
It
also means that family is more central to life than the market or the
state. Our society is currently obsessed with out of control children
and no doubt many of the laws announced this week will be designed to
restrain them – but no one asks why? What has destroyed stable
communities and stable families if not the idol of the market and the
idea that for something to be worthwhile it must have a money price
on it and of course time for parenting is unpaid – it is not
valued, and yet it is priceless.
The
story of the Ten Commandments is the foundational story of Jewish and
Christian culture. We forget its meaning at our peril. And yet this
fourth and pivotal commandment ends not with a threat of punishment
but of blessing – do this, live like this, and your days will be
long in the land the Lord gives.
To
put this another way our actions do have consequences. How we live
does make a difference. True worship, restrained work, respect for
the past and our elders, peaceableness, fidelity, thankfulness for
what we have rather than covetousness for what we do not –
societies ordered around these things will not breed growing numbers
of violent criminals and fraudsters. Societies that uphold and train
their citizens in these positive goods will not need to legislate to
prevent their citizens from harming one another. Following these laws
does bring a blessing and however much we may lament when bad things
happen to good people we should also remember, and give thanks, how
more often it is that good things happen to good people.
Thanksgiving
– for the gift of life – counting our blessings – these are not
the habits of a commodity obsessed culture but they are the practices
that the law requires and that the Spirit of Christ would write on
our hearts.