LEST YOU FORGET

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes…”

(Deuteronomy 8: 11-20)

Knowing who God is and knowing who I am in relation to God needs to be the taproot of all I am and all I do.  All else is just commentary.  That root will produce obedience because obedience out of my knowledge and love of God will be my new nature.  It’s out of freedom that obedience grows free.  Obedience doesn’t make me free; it’s the fruit of my freedom.  Being free produces the desire within me to want to obey.  In that, obedience is freeing and not restrictive.

As I am reading about the ‘church fathers’ it is interesting to see how restrictive they became in their explanation of God and how we are suppose to live as people of God.  It seems to be human nature to get things clear and concise, well researched, and proven.  Then that is made into a doctrine, well formed and put in stone.  People then adopt the doctrines, build groups around these doctrines, and try to live them out, encouraging or even demanding that others do the same.  So Christians have been fruitful and multiplied, filling the earth with Lutherans, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Franciscans, Dominicans, and so on.

 In my heart of hearts I still question if this is what God planned for his people.  Or have we fallen prey to the temptation put forth by the devil in the wilderness, both in the Exodus wilderness experience and in the temptation wilderness that Jesus was led into.  Are the doctrines made by human hands stones made into bread, that one would think would satisfy hunger, but truly isn’t the word of God; are the doctrines testing God, putting forth the word of God through human interpretation, without his true Presence; are the doctrines ways of humankind to the final destination of God, but not God’s Way?

As I read the Bible and learn the history of my faith it is clearer to me that it’s important to look at the whole council of God in context and in perspective.  From the beginning in Genesis to the end in Revelation, there is a pattern.  That pattern hinges on Jeremiah 2:13.

“For my people have committed two evils;

they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.”