OBEYING THE COMMANDMENTS FOR THE WRONG REASONS

Most of us, I assume, grew up learning the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, my guess is that most of those growing up today have never heard, and maybe never will, learn them, let alone memorize them and learn what they mean. That is sad. (And it’s the church’s fault. But that’s for another reflection.) My further assumption is that even if we who once could recite the ten could not do so today. That, to, is sad, maybe even sadder.

There is something else that is even sadder most of all. When we learned those commandments way back then and we set out to obey them, we obeyed them for the wrong reasons. We did so out of fear of present or future punishment. They were commandments handed down by God and, by God, God would make us pay somehow in some way if we disobeyed them.

The truth is that we do pay when we go astray from them. When we lie and cheat and steal, our sins eventually come back to haunt us as we all know well from experience. Our sins catch up to us. When we fail to keep sabbath rest, take time to relax and reflect, our health pays for it sooner or later. When we forget about God and God’s creation, when we abuse it, we and our world will pay for our negligence and abuse. And we are.

Keeping the commandments and obeying laws out of fear of some kind of punishment is not the way to live. Rather we are to live our lives, doing whatever we are to be doing, out of love and not fear. We honor our God not because we fear God’s retaliation if we do not, nor, on the other hand, because God will reward us if we do. We honor God because we love God even if we really do not know what that means, because we don’t.

We honor our parents, anyone in authority, not because we fear what they might do if we do not nor because we want to receive some kind of reward – praise, honor, a raise, etc. – but because it’s the right and loving thing to do. In fact, keeping the commandments is always the right thing to do. And let’s be honest, the right thing to do is somehow already written in our hearts and minds and souls from birth.

Keeping the commandments is the only way to live. The reason why the world is in the mess it is in, where we have divisions, sometimes great ones, is that individually and collectively we have decided that it is easier and presently more rewarding to disobey one or more of them. That present reward always comes with a price, often at a great price, as, again, history and our own life experiences teaches us.

God gave the commandments to Moses simply as a way of reminding him and the people he was leading to the Promised Land that is they wanted to arrive there, keeping them was the only way to get there. The same is true for us today. Loving another, especially (fill in the blank), is hard. But it is the only way to live. The truth is that in the end and through it all love always overcomes fear.