8.
Love
Me, or Die In Sin?
What’s the First commandment? What’s the “Great
Commandment”?
(Sorry.
Should have warned you that there was going to be a quiz. So I’ll give you a
hint – the answer’s in the first essay on “Faith, Not Works”…)
In Exodus 20, the Lord’s very
first commandment is “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Following
verse 3, the second commandment in verses 4-5 serves only to
emphasize the first: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or
any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water
under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your
God, am a jealous God…”
The great commandment,
stated originally in Deuteronomy 6:5 and repeated by Jesus in Matthew 22:37
when asked by the Pharisees, “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” is
precisely the same concept in different words: “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Sounds almost like
a threat, doesn’t it? “Love Me, or Die
In Sin!”
Is
that how God expects us to parent as well? Complete obedience and
love, or else?
The
short answer…is yes.
Read the fifth commandment, which
is the first one that doesn’t directly involve our connection with the Lord – Exodus
20:12 à
“Honor your father and your mother, that your
days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”
(Curiously,
that’s the only commandment which comes with a reward attached.
Apparently, this one’s so important that the Lord added a bribe to sweeten the
pot.)
Beyond that commandment, the Lord
continues to emphasize this point over and over; the two favorites of mine are Leviticus
20:9 and Deuteronomy 21:18-21.
In Leviticus, before touching all
of the no-nos (adultery, homosexuality,
bestiality, sex during menstruation, voting for liberals*), God makes it
abundantly clear that He was deadly serious about the fifth commandment:
“Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall
surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his
blood is upon him.”
And in Deuteronomy, there’s even more
to it. More than just directly cursing your parents, the Lord makes it clear
that even being a schmuck is unforgivable –
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son
(I wonder, do the rebellious daughters count, too?) who will not obey the voice of
his father or the voice of his mother, and though they discipline him, will not
listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring
him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and
they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and
rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ (I
wonder if other sins are assumed to be included as possibilities, too?) Then
all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. (And
what else would you stone someone with?) So you shall purge the evil from
your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” (In
particular, of course, the children…)
How much clearer could the Lord have been? Children are to obey their parents
completely, totally, and forever; in thought and deed. None of this “free range childhood” and “let the child do what they want” and “rebellion is a natural part of being a
teenager” stuff. Just as we are
to obey the Father without question (which as fallible, fallen, sin-ridden
humans we fail to do sometimes), our children are to obey us with equal
devotion (which, see previous phrase, they also fail to do sometimes).
But make it clear from
the beginning that the goal is non-negotiable. Fallibility in the
attempt is expected; not attempting
to respect thy father and mother (or thy Father Who art in heaven, hallow’d be
Thy Name) is NOT allowed. Will there be things that you CAN let them
‘rebel’ from the way their parents want it done? Of course – in fact, that’s
often the carrot that makes the stick tolerable.
Let me share an example
from my own home. My sons all want to keep long hair. I don’t like it – but rather than fight an issue
that isn’t really important in the long run, I set my non-negotiables (in this case, cleanliness, manageability
and presentability), and assuming they follow those guidelines, they
can keep their long hair. (My oldest
son’s hair is actually longer than his twin sisters’, and they’ve got
hair to their tailbones! But he keeps his neatly braided and clean, and when he
goes to work, it’s always more presentable than most guys with short
hair.)
Pick your battles.
Remember, we discussed in the Prologue how the Lord’s proclamation that
marriage is supposed to be monogamous is presented on an equal footing with the
notion that adultery was a sin. However, the
Lord picks His battles, too! Not to bore you with redundancy, with redundancy, with redundancy, with redundancy, but God turned a blind eye to
David’s multiple wives and (for most of his reign) Solomon’s 700 wives and 300
concubines. Adultery, however, He nailed every time. Pick your battles, but demand
obedience on the rules you enforce!
*”Voting for liberals” may not
actually be included anywhere in Scripture, good or bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment