Didn't Jesus do away with all the rules? part 11

The Rev. Know-it-all’s “Young Christian’s Guide to Halakhic Law.” continued

In last week’s thrilling episode, I pointed out that the Ten Commandments are immutable because they flow from the very nature of the Almighty. Amazingly they make a point about humanity, namely that humanity is meant to reflect this same immutable nature.

The Hebrew sages speak of the Noachide laws, laws that are required of every human being.  If all people are descended from Noah, the laws of the covenant with Noah are required for all human beings, so goes the reasoning:

The seven laws of Noah are these:

Do not deny God.

Do not blaspheme God.

Do not murder.

Do not engage in illicit sexual relations.

Do not steal.

Do not eat from a live animal.

Establish courts/legal system to ensure obedience to said laws.

The sixth forbids cruelty to animals and hints at our duty as stewards of the earth. The seventh, regarding legal systems, in effect takes care of the commandments forbidding covetousness and dishonesty. One must be answerable to law and thus is held to a standard of honesty and respect for the property and relationships of others. These same laws are essentially what are meant by natural law. This very phrase “natural law” is earthshaking. It means that we have a nature, and that this nature is not totally different from God’s nature.

We Christians believe that Jesus did not come to destroy or change nature. He came to restore it. To recognize and reverence something greater than one’s own self, to treat others fairly as we would be treated ourselves and to respect the life-giving nature of human sexuality are the bedrock of human civilization and the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian law. Break these laws, or still worse, deny them and you do so at you own peril, and at the peril of the civilization. They are laws that are bound up with our nature as beings.

The world at present denies that we even have a nature, particularly in matters reproductive and intimate. The Scriptures tell us that “God said

to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’”  (Gen 1:28) and again, “He created them male and female and blessed them.”  (Gen. 5:2)

Jesus of Nazareth, who I happen to think was God, reiterated this law when He said, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’” (Matt. 10:4, 5) 

I think that there are now 52 or more genders that progressive people insist we recognize. Jesus, the Torah, natural law and the covenant with Noah say that nature gave us two genders. I mention this not just to be difficult, but to point out a whole spectrum of Torah laws which are designed to protect the purpose of human intimacy. These old desert laws written by ancient patriarchs are no longer adequate for life in these modern times, so we are told.

I grind the following ax constantly. All our gender and reproductive confusion is about to bring on one of the greatest crises in human history, perhaps the greatest since the flood itself that engendered the Noachide laws. I just got back from visiting the cousins in Lower Upper-Hessia. I finally understand Angela Merckl’s insane immigration policies.

After the wars, the German people rejected human life by rejecting children. I remember it. When I first visited the old country in 1973, people were having ZERO children. Now they have a few. I just got back from another visit (2017) and Germany has become a retirement home. Tourist sites are mobbed by vigorous German old folks, striding about and having a good time with lots of beer and gemütlichkeit. (Gemütlichkeit is the mood brought on by lots of beer.) They all look like those horrible commercials wherein laughing old people eat healthy cereals and drink protein and fiber drinks and use products that cause them to sit in tubs on beaches holding hands, the specifics of which I will not mention here!

Angela and her government have got to pay for all these vigorous old Germans, and there are not enough young people to do so, thus she must import other countries’ extra young people to work to support the vigorous old Germans.

It seems to me that this is a cynical reworking of the motto of previous German institutions, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes Free.)  Most of the world is running out of young people or soon will because we have defied our nature, and worse we have denied it. The chaos engulfing a large part of the world is a very direct result of the demographic shift that results from our failure to heed the very first law of the Torah. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

“Nonsense!” I can hear the more enlightened among you say. “The world is full of people!” At present, yes, but look down the road a little, the train may be chugging along nicely right now but just around the bend, the bridge is out.

We may not be in trouble, but our grandchildren and great grandchildren are.