Source of Human Standards

Scriptures: Be careful that there isn’t this wicked thought in your heart, ‘The seventh year, the year of canceling debts, is near,’ and you are stingy toward your poor brother and give him nothing. He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty. Deuteronomy 15:9

Observation: As Moses teaches the precepts for lending - especially the canceling of debts every seven years - he warns of this pitfall, which is that people may choose not to lend money to help others when that seventh year is near, for the debt will certainly have to be canceled before it is paid back. He warns not to do that, and of course the great point is that the Lord blesses the generous person ... of course you won't receive the money back that you lent, but you will receive blessing from the Lord that will exceed that loan.

However, this is a loophole that Moses is calling out. He is warning about the hearts of men, and how they will now change how they behave due to the rules about forgiving debt. Debt forgiveness will not then be a blessing to the recipient of the forgiveness, but a burden on the poor who cannot receive a loan. So is there any acceptable limitation on how much can or should be lent in each year within the seven year cycle? This feels like exactly the kind of loophole question people would ask, and exactly the kind of thing that some "legal expert" ... a Pharisee ... may eventually establish as a man-made component of obedience to the law.

Most of the rules and precepts Moses wrote had some element of vagueness. The how/where/what components were often missing. Wash before eating ... what do you wash? Meet in the place ... where is that, a city or single building or type of building? Do no work ... what is considered work? Give freely ... how much is normal for that? In time, it is human nature to come up with "standards" for all these elements, and then to have people who teach the standards. The danger comes when those standards become themselves the law, ignoring the spirit and purpose of the original teaching.

Application: It is in this manner I can understand the existence of the Pharisees and Jewish experts we find judging Jesus in the gospels. That same activity still takes place today, in all aspects of life. For example, there are accepted standards for hours of work every day, but the truth is those standards are effectively arbitrary ... they exist instead to establish a common understanding of expectations, and thus close a loophole for someone looking to find the absolutely minimum they can do, and since such people can create burden on others, a standard is established.

I wonder how much of Jesus' teaching we have turned into "standards" that we now teach and enforce, losing the heart of the matter in the process? I'm sure there are procedural activities like taking communion that don't look like what Jesus intended, and in some churches there are people who are a stickler for their procedures that are nothing like what Jesus did. I get angry at how some things are done in church, and I know that is wrong.

More and more, it is important that we obey the heart of Jesus, not the human process we have created to achieve that obedience.

Prayer: Lord, I ask today for your forgiveness for when I have cared too much about how, where, and what we are doing in the church, and not enough about your love as the reason why we do it. May I not have strong opinions about process, but simply love others as you have taught. Amen.