Law

"Don't think I came to get rid of the law or the oral traditions of the prophets. I came to bring it full circle."

About a year ago, I was sitting in a courthouse in Pasadena. I'd gotten a ticket for not having a valid inspection sticker. As I was waiting for the judge to appear, the deputy was giving his spill about the rules of the courthouse. One of the rules he gave was turning off all cell phones. The problem was, after he finished laying out all the rules that everyone was supposed to follow, he sat down, made himself comfortable, and pulled out his cell phone. Without a second thought of how hypocritical I and everyone else sitting in that courthouse thought he was, he didn't take his eyes off his phone more than three times in the hour that I was there. 

And then there's this local megachurch. Without giving too much information, this church spends around $50,000 a year on food for staff and member events, living high on the hog, yet I know of homeless people who've tried to approach the front desk of said church for the slightest bit of help and were turned away within the first few minutes of the conversation.

And then there's what we've probably all experienced - the police officer speeding in the patrol car with no sirens on, no turn signals, nearly running people off the road, but for some reason thinking it's okay to do so.

And then there's the "constitutionalist" business owner who's gung ho about protecting him or herself from the crooked hand of the government while at the same time enacting legislation for employees that would send him/her crying to mommy.

Why is it that the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law don't hold themselves to the same standards as the rest of us? 

And then there's Jesus. Right in the middle of one of the most tumultuous "police state" eras in history. You have Jewish law and Roman law, both working against the average citizen to the point that it feels like an oppressive, dominating system that's sucking the life out of everyone.

That's where I want to go today. 

But first, a little about the religious laws of Jesus's Jewish culture. 

There were a ton of them, roughly 600. And, you had different categories of them. If I could boil them all down into one category, I would call it social justice. 

And there was a systemic problem that had been escalating within Jewish religious culture (mainly among the high priests and Jewish elites) for centuries. Yes, centuries. On paper, Jewish religious leaders called for everyone to follow every law to the letter. And, there were penalties for breaking any of the laws. There were very precise, detailed penalties that required all sorts of amending processes. 

If you were a passionate Jew who was trying to seek God and grow spiritually, you would've been told that keeping the law was the way to do that.

But back to the systemic problem. At some point, the practice of Jewish law got way off balance. At some point, Jewish leaders found that they could get away with turning the laws into a program of self preservation, while ignoring the social justice laws. And so, it was very common practice for a Jewish leader to keep his body pure, eat the right foods according to law, and fast for days according to the law, while at the same time ignoring the poor and the marginalized of society. 

"I didn't come to get rid of the law, but to fulfill it."

In other words, the religious system was very, very, corrupt. While the laws in themselves were created for good, they were twisted and turned and molded over years and years and years in ways that created a huge gap between the rich and the poor, the elites and the marginalized. 

The religious system became a club for the elite. This rich, beautiful, form of spirituality designed to enlighten people in their connection with God was turned into a means of oppressing those who didn't have the resources or the means to be like the Jewish religious leaders. 

And so, when Jesus arrived on the scene, the religious leaders obviously didn't like the program he was teaching. It threatened the empire they were well on their way in establishing. It threatened their view of the laws, and it threatened their powerful grasps. Why was he so threatening?

Because Jesus spent his life in the balance between morality and social justice. In a world that chose to ignore the plights of the marginalized and only focus on how moral one should be, Jesus lived both and he followed the laws as an expert in Jewish practice. 

But, wait. Doesn't this sound familiar? Doesn't this sound like something that's happening now, in 2015? 

Today's religious system is just as full of contradictions as it was in Jesus's time. I still don't know how to put the program of self preservation aside in order to be the spearhead of social justice that I signed up for when I signed up to follow Jesus's program.

In the Church's efforts to keep her congregation "pure and holy," she'll spend thousands of hours and dollars on developing programs and groups under the facade of "discipleship," while ignoring her responsibility of being a beacon of hope for the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten members of society. In a way, the responsibility of taking social justice seriously has been replaced with the idea that the only thing that matters is people being "holy" and "set apart."

What Jesus did was pretty clever. Being an astute pupil of Jewish law, he knew it every way you could read it. And by following it to the letter, he threw the current system on its head. He exposed how corrupt the religious leaders really were by doing everything the law asked. And naturally, the law took him to the places where the poor were at. The law took him to the homeless, the disease-ridden, the lame, and the blind. 

Have we missed something?

If the Christian church is so adamant about following the commands laid out in scripture, then why is the law leading her to build more buildings, install more pews, and put out more billboards?

If "by fulfilling the law . . ." led Jesus to the margins of society, to the places that were dark and uncomfortable, then why does the American church find herself needing to expand the parking lot? 

I can understand why atheists get so riled up about people like me. They see what I can't see. They see how lopsided my actions are versus my belief systems. They see that I'm following the wrong set of laws. 

So, I'm gonna wrap this rambling job up by saying this: If you're a Christian and you subscribe to the commands and laws laid out in the scriptures, then you should find yourself going into the same hairy situations that Jesus went into. You should find yourself socializing with people that society wants nothing to do with. You should find that your morality is pointing you toward social justice and not toward self preservation. 

That's it. I'm done.