What should be our relationship with God’s commands? Can we safely leave them to a group of educated professionals? Or do we need to see them as binding each of us, every day?
The Audience
Incognito has proposed a way of looking at the audience of a command that God gives. Full disclosure, in this post I propose my own view of these things. This post is NOT using his terms, his definitions, nor is it in direct reaction to his view. I encourage you to read his view.
So when God gives a command to a given group, be it all mankind, all Jews, all Christians… it seems to me like there are three distinct ways we can see that command as it concerns us:
This command, though given to all mankind (or any other group we are part of) was designed to be obeyed and thus carried out by a given group within our group. So, the daily sacrifices needed to be done in such and such a way… well, it was the priests and Levites which needed to do this.
This command was given to all mankind, and thus all mankind needs to carry this command out… in the same way.
This command was given to all mankind, and thus all mankind needs to carry this command out… but each in a different way.
Now, these are the three ways in which the audience of a command can be seen to work… at least as far as I can envision it. But now I am going to go out on a limb and state that… I think only (3) is valid. Or, put another way, I believe that both (1) and (2) actually collapse into (3) when examined closely.
So I believe that for every command God gives, our response needs to be, “What is my role in obeying and carrying out this command.”
The Group
Let us take the ‘group’ idea first. Suppose the command even very specifically lists the group that needs to obey the command, or carry out the command. Let’s go back to the idea of the daily sacrifices. What is the role of ‘everyone else’ in those sacrifices.
Well, obviously, there is the issue of bringing your own sacrifice. But let’s ignore that for a moment. Let’s just look at the overall issue. There are the priests, they have their duty to bring the sacrifices in, slaughter them, etc….
How do they afford to do that? Well, the tithes. And how do they live their normal lives? Well, the normal run of shopkeepers, wood and water boys, father’s giving them their daughters to marry… etc etc. In other words, the whole of society has to, at the very least, not hinder the priests in doing their duties.
Now, lest you think I am making up objections here… I have seen this logic play out. I have read authors who both acknowledged that young men need wives… and then pronounce whole swaths of young men not good enough to marry their daughter. I have seen pastors pronounce that there is a real problem with a lack of marriages… and then throw up their hands and wonder what God was going to do!
The Individual
Now the next case is, I believe, easier to see. Let us take a command like, “Thou shalt not kill.” The obvious initial reaction would be to see this command as applying to all men equally at all times in the same way. But… not so fast.
Because we go on and find out that there are some people who, during some times, have a special responsibility to see to it that ‘thou shalt not kill’ happens. The most obvious is the civil magistrate. He is responsible to see to it that murderers are executed. Guards and soldiers may be responsible for protecting someone. Father’s may be responsible for defending their household.
But then we have the teaching function. Judges (the Biblical kind) and pastors, teachers, and fathers are responsible for explaining the law to those under their responsibility. Father’s may need to train a child how to react not in anger, not only to prevent an angry reaction from becoming the norm and thus leading to murder, but to avoid Christ’s definition of anger as murder.
So while we each need to literally not kill anyone (leaving aside the judge and the soldier doing their duty) how we obey ‘Thou shalt not kill’ will still look different for each of us.
Marriage and Monks
Which brings us back to where we started: Marriage and monks. Given the commands, examples, and blessings in the realm of marriage, having children, and raising children in Godliness… what price monks?
Well, let’s start out by seeing how these commands fit into our rubric. How is it that each person can individually obey them, and yet do so differently? I think we should start by realising that each marriage is… a different thing. That the command ‘be fruitful and multiply’ is carried out by each married man in a different way from each married woman, and from every other married man.
Each man has his own children, raises his own children. Each man has his own wife, and has sex with his own wife. Each man has to support his own family, and lead his family, and defend his family. This command comes ready made with the idea that each individual must apply it differently.
But monks do not ‘apply’ it, they deny it. They say, “Not me, not now, not ever.”
Demographic Death
We live in an age of demographic death. Around the world, societies are having far fewer children than the replacement level would require. If one wished to argue for the obedience of monks to the command ‘be fruitful and multiply’, I would ask this question: “Where is the presence of monks causing a society to have more children than those around it?”
Where are the two societies, sitting side by side, where one society has 1.7 children per woman and the other society, the one with monks, has 3.2?
Meanwhile, I will point to two things:
The Amish don’t have monks. They do have children. Lots of children.
If every single monk were to marry a nun, and the rest marry a nice young Catholic girl, and they would breed like bunnies… There would be more children.
Full Confession
The naive reader might be tempted to think that I am merely beating up on Catholics here. I’m not. Monasticism is evil, I am saying that. But so is so much of what goes on in Protestant churches, Judaism, atheism, etc. In this very area. Practically no one is having children nowadays… and that’s a problem. That is a flat-out disobedience to God. And we will pay the reckoning.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von