God's Justice

I’m not trying to build a new religion so much as break up bad religion. Most of the time that means offering my religion as a counter, but that’s because I understand my own beliefs best. Still, a part of me in the background holds open the door for you to reach out for something at variance with mine, something which you sense will work better for you, even as I help you break up the calcified junk which isn’t working for anyone.
Often I use the term “God’s Laws” and then suggest a better term is “God’s Justice.” Even that brings along baggage which makes for bad religion. Lots of cultures recognized deities associated with justice. The Phoenicians recognized the goddess Dike (dee-kay), which translates directly into English as “Justice.” A critical element in their thinking about her was the idea of comeuppance, not so radically different from karma. While I find an element of truth in that, it is hardly the whole story as I understand it from the Spirit Realm.
God’s Law Covenants seemed to say certain things to our modern eyes because we have no mystical heritage to help us make sense of what they wrote. In the Hebrew mind, there was an assumption you could recognize a higher meaning, even if you couldn’t say much about it. So the Hebrew Scriptures assume you will read between the lines. Yes, you would assay observing the Law Covenants as applicable, but you would know better than to worship, as it were, the written and conceptual expressions. The Law was not god, but an expression of His nature, a depiction of what He wanted on a higher level. It was always recognized the Laws as written could not possibly fit every context.
A critical assumption in God’s Law Covenants was the necessity of reining in the fallen fleshly nature of humanity. There are boundaries which, if crossed, would cause trouble. The Laws of God are presumed to answer a very real need of taking seriously the business of not stomping on others when you start walking toward something you want. You must assuredly account to God for how you treat others, and accept the responsibility for sharing this broken reality with others.
Your appetites are not evil, but how you seek to satisfy them could all too easily work evil. Humans are required to account to God for how they deal with their appetites in light of the very real necessity of not hurting others unnecessarily. It’s not a question of rights; that’s the wrong model. It’s the question of responsibility, accountability before God. You aren’t supposed to dream up your own way of getting there when something God has revealed covers it well enough. What He says must not be ignored in your calculus of how to proceed. His revelation includes a demand people prepare themselves to make disobeying His Laws rather difficult.
Fundamental to this whole business is limiting, and even correcting, the behavior of those who would ignore and violate His Laws. The first order of business is helping your fellow man see the error of his ways. Thus, any legal policies would first and foremost consider establishing a knowledge of the limits, and then penalties which encourage people to restrain themselves. Most people will, most of the time. It is eminently doable. The second concern is trying to restore what was taken or lost. It’s not always possible, but it’s easily visible when reading between the lines as a fundamental concern.
The critical point of failure is forgetting it’s about people and social stability, not about some objective accounting on some cosmic scale. The person holding you accountable must be a member of your family, your kinship community. There can be no claim placed upon you by a wider society. Oh, and any covenant family can serve with the same authority as blood kin. This is so completely alien to us today we can’t imagine a society where people expect this kind of thing. Yet all of the Law Covenants together as a whole make absolutely no sense at all until you place this social structure as the unspoken prerequisite.
When you hear someone using the phrase “rule of law” you can be sure they are, at best, making a god of some imaginary objective standard enforced by a secular state, if not making a god of the state. To then suggest God’s revelation has anything to do with such a concept is sheer blasphemy.
Yes, you are always accountable for your actions. It is unavoidable some of the most obscure choices you make will affect others. Some of that they’ll simply have to live with, because this world cannot be perfected. But the true measure of what is or isn’t just in terms of how we interact with others is found in that moral fabric, not in human logic. The ultimate truth cannot be arrived at by human abilities, but relies entirely on revelation.