Still Wise – The Kingdom Curriculum XII (2)

Still Wise

“You shall not steal.” Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19

“If fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the field is consumed, he who started the fire shall make full restitution.” Exodus 22:6

The spirit of the Law lives on!

You don’t have to look very far to see that today’s secular governments acknowledge the wisdom that God has encoded in His Law. In a day when even churches don’t seem to have much interest in the Law of God, the city, county, state, and federal governments keep reminding us that we can’t do without it – whether they intend to do so or not.

Love for our neighbors requires that we be prepared to take responsibility for any of our actions that may bring harm to them or their property. Because people aren’t always as careful about this as they should be, or they aren’t able to anticipate the larger consequences of some of their actions, counties and municipalities establish laws that reflect the spirit of Exodus 22:6 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, in the late fall, 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. But, no harm, no foul: the grass, we knew, would come back.

There was no need for restitution in this situation, but it served to remind us – and our neighbor – to keep watch over our trash fires.

At that time, however, we didn’t understand the damage we were doing to the atmosphere by all this burning. This is one reason why, now, casual trash fires are prohibited in most places, and you have to get a permit to burn a pile of brush or the leaves you rake in the fall. The spirit of the Exodus statute lives on in the laws and statutes of many American communities, proving the enduring wisdom of God in His Law.

How can we use the Law of God to make wise ethical choices? Order your copy of The Ground for Christian Ethics today. Click on www.MyParuchia.com, then click Publications, Waxed Tablet.

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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.