The Ten Commandments - Bottoms Up

Human beings seem to love lists. I would guess that 30-35% of sports talk radio is some form of “list talk”. Questions like “top 5 soccer players” or “who would you have in your starting line up” or “worst quarterback of all time” all are versions of “list talk”.

Like most lists, there is a bias toward #1. It is usually at the top of the list as you work your way up from #10. The “top spot” is reserved for the penultimate of the list talk conversation and the top of the list is also a short hand embodiment of the whole list. It is as though lists “build up” to who is #1 like a triangle with #1 being the peak.

This is bias is important in that it impacts how we read and understand the 10 commandments of Exodus 20.

The bias toward #1 might give the impression that the first commandment (You shall not have any other gods before me), is the most important. And there is nothing wrong with that assumption, frankly that is a really good commandment. However, the power of that commandment is lost when we read it as #1 and the others are slightly “less important” - especially the farther down the list you get.

However, if we read the 10 commandments not as a list of descending commandments, but as a list that builds up to something then we come to a keen insight.

If you read the 10 commandments as building up to the last commandment (you shall not covet) then you may come to see that it is #10 that is the most important commandment - not the least.

If we were a people who did not covet , if we did not desire the desires of others, if we were only desiring the desires of God, then all the other commandments would not be necessary. We have false gods because we covet the power of that god. We do not honor the sabbath because we covet the approval of the market to make money. We would not kill or participate in adulatory if we did not covet our neighbors things or loved ones.

The next time you read the 10 Commandments, consider reading them from ten to one and see how that impacts how you understand them. And then, let us not violate the commandment to covet.

What is the First Sin?

What was the first sin?

For many of us we understand the first sin was when Adam and Even ate from a tree that was “off limits”. This was the first “answer” I was given when I was younger. It makes some sort of logical sense. There was a prohibition and then that prohibition was broken and thus there you have it, the first sin.

This way of thinking about the Bible story in Genesis is good if you are trying to instill into a child that they need to listen to authority figures (parents, teachers, etc.). It is a way of teaching young ones that rules, even rules you may not understand, are put in place in order to protect you and to violate those rules comes at a cost.

As we get older we come to see this is not true. There are plenty of people who violate rules but do not suffer any consequences. There are also a lot of rules that are in place that are unjust and do not make a lot of sense. Then when you drill down into Christianity, you hear that we are saved by grace and not the law, that we are in fact not bound to the law. When we read the Genesis story and are told the “moral of the story” is that we need to abide by the law, but were we not told that Jesus comes to liberate us from the law we scratch our heads. Are we free from the law or are we supposed to follow it so as to not be like Adam and Eve?

The Bible is a set of stories that are full of symbol and depth of meaning. Pay attention that Adam and Eve ate fruit. In other parts of the Bible we learn that fruit is a metaphor for that which comes after something else. For instance, we bear fruits of the spirit, after we receive the Holy Spirit. We will bear fruit after we abide in the vine (Christ). Fruit comes after.

Adam and Eve’s consumption of fruit ought to prompt us to ask, what is the thing that comes before? What is this fruit they are eating? Not what sort of fruit as in apples or pears, but more like is this the fruit of love or the fruit of hate? Even demons bear fruit. Not all fruit is good, but if we act with hatred, we will bear the fruit of hate.

And so if fruit comes after, then eating the fruit cannot be the first sin. The first sin has to happen and the first humans are eating of the fruit of that first sin. And so, what is that first sin?

There are a lot of arguments on what that first sin would be. Perhaps it is worth considering that the first sin is not disobedience or pride, but redirection. Redirecting our desires away from what God desires toward what we desire.

When Adam and Even desired what God desired, then the tree in the center of the garden was not even a blip on the radar of Eve or Adam. It never even bothered them, because their desire was mirroring what God desired and God desired them not to eat from that tree. It was only when they no longer desired what God desired that Adam and Even were able to eat of the fruit.

And thus, the first sin is not a choice of produce but a choice of desiring something other than what God desires.

This Lent, consider the actions that you and I might call “sins”. Chances are these sins are not sins, but evidence (fruit if you will) of the sin that came before. Consider what James 4:1-3 says:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

The conflicts and disputes among us are fruit - they come from somewhere. And where do they come from the author asks? They come from our choice to abandon the desires of God and pursue our own desires.

(This is adapted from a sermon delivered on February 28, 2021)

Why is God Jealous?

A few places in the Bible, God is described as a jealous God. Perhaps most well known in the book of Exodus when Moses is given the 10 commandments. Coming in at number two on the top ten is the following:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…

It seems weird that God would ever be jealous of anything because, well, it is God we are talking about. Isn't God above being jealous? Maybe.

First it is worth noting that jealousy and envy are two different things, but we often confuse them. Many times we think of being jealous of someone who has something that we desire. For instance, if I see my neighbor have a cool house or new toy or physical physique I might say that I am jealous of my neighbors house, toy, body. And so when we encounter the ten commandments and read God is jealous, we wonder why would God ever be jealous? God does not need anything, and even if God did need something, God could create it! However this is not what jealousy is.

Desiring an object that your neighbor has is not jealousy, that is called envy. We envy things like homes, toys of physical characteristics. We might even envy our neighbor’s partner or our neighbor’s job. When we want what our neighbor has, we are envious not jealous.

Jealousy is not about desiring an object our neighbor has, but about desiring the relationship our neighbor has with that object. You may not desire your neighbor’s partner, but you desire the type of relationship your neighbor has with their partner. You may not desire the boat that your neighbor has, but you desire the joy your neighbor has when riding the boat. You may not want your neighbor’s physical body but you may want the attraction that your neighbor gets from others due to their physical characteristics.

God does not desire a thing, but God desires the relationship we have with things. God wants to be in relationship with you and when you are in relationship with something else (such as money or fame or success) God is jealous. God knows that your relationship with these other things (idols) are not good for you spirit or your community. God is not jealous because God is lacking in some way. Rather God is jealous because God desires so deeply to be in relationship with each one of us.

God is not envious, but God is jealous.

Trajectory/Redemptive Movement Hermeneutics - Humans Driving Redemption

The fancy word to describe the process we all use to interpret the Bible is called “Hermeneutics”. There are many different hermeneutics, just like there are many different political philosophies. And like politics, hermeneutical processes are in tension with each other and these tensions are what makes theology fun and exciting. It is also what makes theology contentious.

One of the “newer” hermeneutics that I have come in contact with is called “Trajectory” or “Redemptive Movement Hermeneutics” (RMH). How it works, as I understand it, is that the Biblical authors have a context and a culture that must be taken into account when interpreting the scriptures. The context allows us to see beyond the specific teaching, and allows us to ask in what direction is the teaching moving the people of God?

Some have found this hermeneutics helpful to address a number of topics. For example, It is argued, most notably in William J. Webb’s book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, that there is an overall “trajectory” of liberation when it comes to slavery and women throughout the Bible. For instance, Exodus 21:7-11 says:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master (father), who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 

You may read this and think this sounds awful; however, what Webb and other trajectory thinkers would point us toward is that this scripture is redemptive because this commandment limits who the father can sell his daughter to. The daughter cannot be sold to foreign people and the daughter is given rights that were uncommon in the day. Webb suggests that God is pushing the boundaries of the male dominated world in such a way that women are to be liberated and free.

These signs give a ‘trajectory’ but there is much interpretation needed to arrive at Rio.

Photo by Deanna Ritchie on Unsplash

Webb goes on to show the incremental ways God is pushing and pulling the people toward greater redemption and liberation of women and slaves and children. According to Webb, God does not push or pull the people too far or too fast but that “God brings his people along in ways that were feasible adaptations.” (p. 255).

And this is where this hermeneutic becomes counter to the basic idea that God is the primary mover of redemption.

God pushing for liberation of women in ways that were socially acceptable still permits God to allow for the sin of subjugating women. Yes, this commandment from Exodus may be more freeing than the culture in which it was written, but redefining who you can sell your daughter to still allows you to sell your daughter.

If selling your daughter is a ultimately reveled to be a sin, then why not prohibit the selling of all daughters in Exodus? Why is there a gradual softening of the position by God over the course of scripture?

For the moment, let’s accept that God prefers to have a gradual reveal of what is sinful in ways that are “feasible adaptations’ to culture. What do we do when the trajectory seems to shift? For instance take the trajectory of marriage. Adam and Eve are monogamous, but later scriptures endorse polygamy, but then when we get later into the Bible monogamy seems to take a privileged position. Of course this trajectory is called into question when marriage is no longer a part of the new creation.

Is there is trajectory? Is the Bible waffling on the definition of marriage? Or are these commandments just reflecting what was acceptable in the culture of the time and then given a divine veneer?

If God only moves in ways that are “feasible adaptations”, then we have to ask who is driving the work of redemption? Will God command the redemption of people only when it is “feasible” to achieve? Is God waiting on humans to be willing to change before God commands it?

As a evangelical progressive pastor I believe God has already revealed God’s desire in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The desires are stated by Jesus himself in several locations, none of which are feasible adaptions to culture. To name a few - the liberation of all people (Luke 4:17-21), mercy over purity (Matthew 9:13), supremacy of forgiveness (Luke 23:34), taking up the cross mandate (Matthew 10:38; Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; Luke 14:27), give up possessions (Matthew 19:21, Luke 18:22).

Christianity proclaims that the desire of God is most clear in Jesus Christ, but readers of the entire Bible know that these are not new revelations. Jesus fulfills the law which we have failed to do (Matthew 5:17-20). In doing so Jesus points us back to what is already known to us. Humans have done a good job at justifying why we are slow to live out the desires of God.

If Trajectory/Redemptive Movement Hermeneutics reveals anything, it reveals the same sin we have always done - justifying our delay to make real the desires of God.