Take Responsibility – The Eighth Commandment

Take Responsibility

Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19

“You shall not steal.”

Love for our neighbors requires that we be prepared to take responsibility for any of our actions that may bring harm to our neighbors or their property. Because we aren’t always as careful about this as we should be, or we don’t understand the larger consequences of some of our actions, counties and municipalities establish laws that reflect the spirit of this statute quite well.

For example, when I was a kid, we always burned our trash out back, in a 50-gallon drum. Everybody did. Trash fires were always burning in someone’s back alley. Once a neighbor’s fire ejected an ember that set our yard on fire, burning up all the grass in the back, but not reaching the house. He hadn’t been watching his fire as he should have been.

But, no harm, no foul: the grass, we knew, would come back. But we didn’t understand the damage we were doing to the atmosphere by all this burning. Which is why now you have to get a permit to burn a pile of brush or the leaves you rake up in the fall. The spirit of this commandment, and a statute like Exodus 22:6, lives on in the laws and statutes of many American communities, proving the enduring wisdom of God in His Law.

Can you see other ways in which local statutes reflect this principle of guarding against unintended consequences?

Daily meditation in the Law of God helps us along the path of holiness, righteousness, and goodness (Rom. 7:12). Order your copy of The Law of God, a compilation of the Mosaic Law for contemporary believers, by going 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.