The Arc of Legalism

OT today, Deuteronomy 1:17-18

"When you make decisions, never favor those who are rich; be fair to lowly and great alike. Don't be afraid of how they will react, for you are judging in the place of God."

NT today, Luke 6:7

"The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees watched closely to see whether Jesus would heal the man on the Sabbath, because they were eager to find some legal charge to bring against him."

When I got to the OT section today, I was impressed. Over and over, the admonitions of God in the OT have much more to do with the advocacy of the divine and eternal rather than advocacy of the temporal. God tells the Israelites to act in faith and in love. The establishment of judges is initially designed to be an advocacy for truth over favoritism. The truth is immutable, eternal, and perfect. Disputes among people should not be judged relative to the people, but relative to the truth. When God was with the Israelites, the truth was very close. The judges were to seek this truth, and not sway from the truth, regardless of the people involved in the case.

But when God is not around, how do we seek the truth? If our hearts and spirits are not aligned to God, then we must, by default, either use tradition or human rationality. If we use tradition, we become frozen in time even though the culture moves on around us. If we use rationality, as flawed creatures, then we run the risk of our flawed rationality making mistakes, and potentially making a mockery of our pursuit of truth. And, if in our weakness of spirit and confidence, we create a situation which only tolerates weak-minded individuals who practice the "truth" we come up with in our flawed manner, then the "truth" gradually begins to lose its meaning relative to the real truth that God intended for us to seek.

When we get to this point, our "truth" becomes a self-sustaining collection of laws and arrogance. Until, one day, God Himself returns, and we are unable to recognize His truth because we are blinded by our own, possibly well-intended, "truth" that we have been practicing for generations. So, threatened by the real truth that is so far away from the "truths" we have created in our own image, we look for ways to find some legal charge to bring against Him. We have forgotten to use our heart and our spirit, relying instead on tradition and rationality.

But the heart and spirit is individual. Can I look into your heart and see what is there? No. Can you look into mine and see what is there? Of course not. Our spirituality is individual and unique. But if I write words, and you write back, then we can, by our rationality, agree on our intent and content. Without the uniqueness and irrationality of spiritual worship, we create our own legalism. But with irrational spirituality, we don't lose sight of the Truth as God intended, and our hearts remain aligned with that Truth.

It's the inevitable push/pull of the rational and irrational. A balancing act, on which one side is chaotic spirituality, and the other side is heartless rationality. The tug between the two keeps one centered, because if one strays too far from that center, one loses sight of God.

Structure is important, but so is heart. The arc of legalism is the loss of that heart. Once that heart is lost, we will crucify the Truth. But without rationality, culture can overtake a tradition and warp it so that we lose sight of God as well. Exercising both facets of our personalities, and practicing with faith, and humility in our own ignorance, seems to be the way to avoid these traps.