Village Shepherd

The psychologist Scott Peck begins his famous best-seller, "The Road Less Travelled" with the immortal words, "Life is difficult." That simple statement has been a revelation to many of Scott Peck's readers, for it has brought them a sense of freedom. They no longer have to struggle with feelings of guilt and inadequacy just because nothing in their lives runs smoothly. Once they can accept that life is difficult, they are free to make of it the best that they can without worrying too much about how awful their life is.

Scott Peck expounds his statement with subjects that might be regarded askance today, including topics such as "discipline" and "facing pain" and "delaying gratification" and "responsibility" and "self-sacrifice". None of these subjects are popular today, with the result that we face increasing levels of anarchy in some of our schools and in parts of our society.

But try as they might to make life better for everyone, our politicians seem doomed to failure. As a society we humans seem bent on self-destruction for we sit back and allow many of our children and young people to run wild and we allow dearly-held values to be eroded.

It is because life is difficult that God has given human beings a helping hand throughout the ages. When the early Israelites were enduring degraded lives through vicious slavery, God led them out of Egypt and away from their tormentors towards a special land which God promised them, a land "flowing with milk and honey."

But after they became free, life was still difficult for the people. Finding their way across the bleak and barren territory of the wilderness was a huge struggle, bringing its own life and death problems. Food and water were infrequent, the terrain was hard and rocky and unforgiving, there were many people to care for and the Promised Land was never in sight. Naturally enough, quarrels often arose, the people moaned and groaned and mumbled about Moses their leader, and about each other. It was probably like a powder keg waiting to explode.

So God again took a hand and gave the people laws to help them to live life more comfortably and more easily. Moses received these commandments from God during a time of prolonged retreat up on the mountain. We know that Moses spent a considerable time alone there with God, listening to God and waiting upon God, because the people had time to collect all their jewelry together, melt it down and fashion it into a golden calf during Moses' absence.

Perhaps surprisingly, since life for human beings is mostly about relationships with each other, the first four commandments are about God. It's only then, when the relationship with God is sorted out correctly, that relationships with other people come into play, and the next six commandments are about relationships with each other.

The commandments themselves are ethical guidelines rather than a blueprint for life. They may even have raised more questions than they solved, for during the following three chapters of Exodus, Moses is at pains to flesh out the commandments, giving specific examples for each one in what has become known as "The Book of the Covenant" (Exodus 21-23). But the first four commandments are given the greatest weight, for chapters 25-31 of Exodus give detailed instructions about how the people are to make a tabernacle in which God will dwell in their midst.

Some 1500 years later, Jesus was well aware of the importance of the division of the ten commandments into the two sections of relationships with God and relationships with each other, for he summed up the commandments into just two - "You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt 22: 37-39)

Perhaps what is most missing from modern life is that as a society we have all but forgotten the first four commandments in favour of the next six. As a society we put a great deal of energy into trying to sort out the problems of people, but God is largely shunned and derided and excluded from our lives. We can get grants for all manner of community projects, except if they have a religious context. We're given help to repair all sorts of ancient buildings, unless they are churches.

No wonder things are wrong in our society. We have skewed God's laws and placed the emphasis in the wrong direction. But those ancient commandments hold good for all time. They are general enough to apply to all centuries and to all societies, for they are laws for life. Perhaps if we put them into modern language they would sound something like this from Eugene Petersen's "The Message":

God spoke all these words: I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery. No other gods, only me. No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won't put up with the irreverent use of his name. Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. Honor your father and mother so that you'll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you. No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No lies about your neighbor. No lusting after your neighbor's house-or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don't set your heart on anything that is your neighbor's.

They're laws which make huge sense today. Perhaps if we in the West returned to these Laws for Life, we too would build a better society and find our own Promised Land.