No Funny Business – The Kingdom Curriculum IX (5)

No Funny Business

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16

“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.” Deuteronomy 16:18, 19

Threats to Justice and Righteousness

When I used to teach Greek and Hebrew, occasionally my students and I would come upon a principle of grammar that just didn’t fit the paradigm we were learning. There was no way to explain such conundrums, so whenever a student would ask, “Why?” I’d simply say, “Because I’m the mommy, that’s why.” Of course, no parent should use that as a fall-back explanation for how he tries to raise his children. We should explain our decisions and actions to our children, so that they can learn to think with the mind of Christ and appreciate the wisdom of our judgments as reflecting the wisdom of God.

We have a right to expect as much of our public officials as well. Not long ago, the county commission where we lived was embarrassed by a huge political brouhaha involving term limits, appointees, and the form of county government. It’s a long story, but it comes down to this: certain members of the public sued the commission, charging that, in appointing replacements, they failed to adhere strictly to the “sunshine laws” requiring all county business to be conducted in full view of the public. The people won their case, to the chagrin of the commission and the county executive. No one was charged with wrong-doing or bribe-taking or favoritism–although doubtless some of this was going on in the situation. Rather, what the public insisted on, to their enormous credit, was the preservation of those ways of doing the county’s business that are designed to guard against whatever threatens justice and righteousness in county government.

In ancient Israel local officials did their work in full view of the public, in the gates of the city. It’s a good practice to preserve in our own day, when backroom deals, log-rolling, tit-for-tat politics, and assorted other kinds of political funny business are all too frequently the norm.

Daily meditation in God’s Law is the mark of a righteous person (Ps. 1). Order your copy of The Law of God today, and begin to discover the beauty, goodness, and truth of God’s Law for yourself. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, point your browser to “Publications,” then click on the drop-down option, “Waxed Tablet Publications.”

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore.

T.M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.