A Life Well Lived

So often people picture God as a fun-inhibiting policeman, and that prevents them accepting Him. Is God really like that? Jotham Kingston ponders the question.

How would you answer if asked, “Do you think you’ll go to heaven?” “If I’m good enough,” many answer. But most say, “I don’t care.” Then they may add something like, “I don’t want to be some religious square, a goody-goody who doesn’t do this and can’t do that—I want to enjoy life!” So often people picture God as a fun-inhibiting policeman, and that prevents them accepting Him. They see Him as the inventor of the Ten Commandments and interpret these commands as saying, “Thou shalt not have any fun!” Many people, Christians among them, believe God is extremely strict, exacting and stern, and He doesn’t cut slack for anybody. Where did this perception come from? Certainly not from the Bible.

In fact, if you read the Bible at any length—not just a verse here and there—you discover a God who is kind, loving, long-suffering and willing to forgive even murderers.

Around the time of the early Mesopotamian civilisation, in Ur, in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, lived a man called Abram. In a dream, God told Abram to head west toward the Mediterranean, to a land He would direct him to.

He also told Abram that his descendants would become a huge nation.

Abram, or Abraham, as he came to be called, did as he was commanded and eventually settled in Canaan—presentday Palestine or Israel.

Some 500 years later, Abraham’s descendants found themselves in Egypt, as slaves. By then they’d become largely ignorant of their culture and history.

Moses, a slave who, curiously, was adopted into the royal family as a prince, murdered an Egyptian and was forced to flee Egypt. He fled to Midian on the Sinai Peninsula, where he worked as a shepherd.

Half a lifetime later, God told him, “I haven’t forgotten about my people in Egypt, and I’m going to rescue them in order to take them to the land I promised their ancestors. You will bring them here” (see Exodus 3 and 4).

Rescue them he did, marching them through the Red Sea to the land where he’d lived as a fugitive for 40 years.

Eventually they arrived at Mount Sinai. Moses left the people camped at the foot of the mountain and climbed its heights, surrounded by dense cloud and a lightning storm. Then, the Bible says, “[God] spoke these words to Moses” (see Exodus 20: 1). “These words” were the Ten Commandments—Exodus 20:2-17.

Moses was no saint; he’d been exiled for murder. And the former slaves were undisciplined, impatient and irreligious.

God was almost unknown to them. They needed the Ten Commandments in order to live.

God sets the scene by beginning, “I am Yahweh [Jehovah], your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. . . .” He introduces Himself with His personal name, Yahweh. Next, He acknowledges their relationship: “Your God, who brought you out of the land of slavery,” claiming them as His unique people.

Then He tells them how they will need to live as free people. There were to be no other gods; no idolatrous images to worship; no murdering; and no selfdestructive envy, lying or immorality.

God isn’t saying, “I’ve rescued you and been nice, so in return you have an obligation to do as I say!” That would be obedience to fulfil the requirement of some legal agreement.

In the Hebrew, a command and the description of future events are closely related.

In eight of the commandments God isn’t saying, “You’re not allowed to —.” Rather, He’s saying, “You won’t —.” God’s concept of obedience is far deeper than mere obligation. His people don’t follow His commands because they ought to or have to.

Instead, they’re obedient because of their relationship with Him. They can’t help but want to do His will. It’s a natural consequence that they won’t do what God doesn’t want them to do.

Through the commandments, God paints a picture of the life ahead for His people. He explains what it means to be authentically human.

He knows, for instance, that all humankind has a desire to worship. In the first four commandments, God says, “ Worship Me.” He is the centre and focus of true worship. He observes the human tendency to selfishness, and in the final six commands, He says, “Be mindful of the needs of others, and be loving toward them.” God also says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God . . .” (Exodus 20:5). He isn’t content with skin-deep religion— one-day-a-week Christians. He finds no gratification in people who consider themselves “good enough.” He wants to transform His people’s hearts—their motivation—so that their obedience is as natural as their breathing.

The God who authored the Ten Commandments is the One who authored life, who designed our reality and wrote the physical and spiritual laws that hold it—and us as authentic human beings—together.

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