A Mystery of God’s Laws

Every day I watch people struggle with God’s Laws.

That’s because His Laws are reality; His Justice pervades all of Creation. The revelation of His ways in terms of Law Covenants was a gift meant for all humanity. Obey His Laws and everything works better. Ignore His Laws and things don’t go so well. It’s a sliding scale; to the degree you observe His revelation, so your life on this earth will have His blessings.

His Laws aren’t that difficult. Once you see past the literal meaning, you can perceive an underlying moral character — God’s character. Yes, it requires absorbing something of the Ancient Near Eastern culture in which God chose to cast His revelation. That’s part of the revelation, since God created that cultural background as the place to reveal Himself. When you understand God in the way He revealed Himself, you understand how things work; you understand reality.

When you obey His Laws, when you act according to His moral justice, Creation responds as a living thing with positive results. Creation longs for His Justice and God has programmed the universe to respond to proper moral behavior. You can call it miracle or magic or whatever you like, but reality shifts to meet you halfway if you desire His moral character. Things happen for you that don’t happen for others. While the difference remains subtle, with an element of plausible deniability, it still works as God promised it would. Not like a mechanism, but more like a creature with an appetite for truth.

It should surprise no one that people gain insight into reality outside His revelation. God has always been eager to manifest His truth; He has always been very generous to the slightest human response. A very large library of ancient literature reflects some of the same character God revealed to His people. Much of what is reputed ancient magic is nothing more than an alternate expression of the same basic moral truth. Ancient peoples were untroubled by the lack of mechanical knowledge about things. They had an expectation of the inscrutable, ineffable nature of some portions of reality. They understood instinctively that our human senses were not sufficient to cover all reality. They invested time and effort looking into these things and were able to reproduce some of the same powers as God granted His people through the Laws.

Granted, some of it was Satan’s ploy, a very real power, if limited. The ancient world viewed things through the lens of moral reality, not some imaginary mechanistic factual reality. Since the whole point was deception, it’s easy enough to see why the Scripture called some it “dark arts.” However, there were plenty of people with good moral character who weren’t part of God’s people. Many of them managed to suss out some measure of how things were supposed to work. In their minds, there was no dividing line between secular science and mumbo jumbo that seemed to work. Scripture never says these things were invalid, though they might be forbidden for those under Moses’ Covenant.

Even then, the Lord placed His people in contexts where they had to engage this alternative approach to moral truth. Most famously were Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon. Both of them were required by their masters to engage in what we today think of as magic and pagan rituals. Scripture never said those things were invalid as a whole, that they couldn’t work. How do you think all those outsiders were able to tell when someone walked in God’s power and truth? It wasn’t pure superstition; they recognized real power when they saw it. When something in a pagan ritual reflected God’s Justice, it would work. God sent His Laws to all mankind; it was His gift to the fallen world. He didn’t really expect everyone to recognize Him personally, but granted the power of His Justice to anyone that wanted it.

Because so many Christians confuse the Two Realms, we have a lot of really bad theology. Indeed, most theological debates and controversies die if you get this one thing right. Christians keep applying Laws to matters of grace, and then spiritual principles to matters of the Flesh. Folks, the Flesh Realm is the Fallen Realm, and it’s under the Laws. The Spirit Realm is an entirely different matter and is all about grace and God’s sovereignty. We can indicate matters of the Spirit and there are certain basic notions formulated for us in Scripture, but almost nothing in the way of facts, per se. We have lots of revelation of the Laws of God for the Flesh. While we recognize the Laws are a parable of higher truth, that doesn’t keep the Laws from having a very real power without that higher spiritual awareness.

Nowhere did God require pagans to worship Him directly. He required only that they not blaspheme His name or threaten His people unjustly. When His people transgress the boundaries He set for them, it’s open season. When they are obedient to His Laws, He actively protects them. He also protects those who don’t serve Him on the same basis. The Bible says those who don’t serve Him will not have our advantages in understanding His Justice, but nothing says they can’t get any part of it. There was vast lore of fairly accurate shaman teaching in the ancient world. From our Western viewpoint it would include a broad mixture of valid science and medicine with lots of harmless ritual, but we cannot from our Western stance see the moral authority hidden in those things. The West knows nothing of God’s moral fabric, but the pagans knew of it and, when they obeyed it, power flowed on their behalf.

Just because it’s not specifically your brand of Jesus language and your familiar forms of ritual does not mean God won’t honor it.