Explaining the Dilemma
It would seem from the plain reading of scripture that the Law of Moses (commonly referred to as the Old Law; Old Covenant; Old Testament) was less-than-perfect, though that is not to say that the law failed to serve the exact purpose for which God created it. The last sentence might sound double-tongued and contradicting. But an honest reading of the Old Law will likewise appear contradicting to the passing glancer. If you don’t know what I mean, it’s because you haven’t read your Old Testament all the way through a handful of times. The first time you read Genesis through Malachi you are too confused by the new jargon, haphazard organization, and distracted by the mesmerizing stories of heroics and villainy that you just might miss the forest for the trees as they say. But amidst the forest of the Old Testament is a rather glaring tree or dilemma that demands it be dealt with. The dilemma is this:
How can the holy God create a law that has less-than-ideal provisions within it?
By this I mean, how can God create a law that says, “You shall not sleep with your sister for I am the Lord your God,” (Lev. 20:17, 24) while at the same time allowing for divorce which He later describes as something He hates (see Malachi 2:16)?1 The first command makes sense; the second provision doesn’t seem to fit. Jesus even says that Moses, “Because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so,” (Matt. 19:8). If divorce is bad, then why did God permit it, and for so many ridiculous circumstances (see chart on left)?! Contradictory much? This is the dilemma.
There are other less-than-ideal provisions in the Old Law besides divorce. Depending on how you interpret the many passages and historical comments about polygamy, it is not difficult to see why many have come to the conclusion that God permitted polygamy under the Old Law, albeit, polygamy was not His original design for marriage. Turn the page again and you find that God left no confusion about the innovation of human kings into the nation of Israel. God predicted that Israel would ask for a king “like the nations around me” (Deut. 17:14), and sure enough they did in 1 Samuel 8:5. God comments on this affair by saying point-blank: “They have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them,” (2 Sam. 8:7); yet, He gives them King Saul. Again, if this was such a travesty, and a quick overview of Israel’s monarchy will reveal that it certainly was, then why did God allow for this in His law? Polygamy (1 Chron. 3:1-9), kings (Deut. 17:14-20), and divorce (Deut. 24:1-4) stand as poster children for the seemingly contradictory, unnatural, and glaring problems in God’s first covenant through Moses. What are we to make of this mess?
An Eyebrow Raising Example
I knew of a preacher once who used some eyebrow raising tactics to bring sinners to the gospel. This preacher would go to a congregation to hold a “gospel meeting” as it is called. Once he arrived, one of the members would inform him that on Tuesday night their husband would be at services, and he went to such-and-such church that doesn’t believe baptism is essential for salvation. So, this preacher would ready his baptism sermon for Tuesday night. He would whip his sermon out come Tuesday and he would preach with a ferocious spirit. He would make sure to preach loudly and boldly and use lots of scripture and press the point that baptism was essential for salvation. He might even call out the name of the denomination that the visiting husband went to and exclaim how that denomination was not the Lord’s church! Someone might ask the preacher afterwards, “Preacher, didn’t you know that so-and-so brought her husband, and didn’t you know that he is part of the such-and-such denomination, and didn’t you realize that you highly offended him, and did you not see how mad he was when he stormed out of the building after your sermon?” The preacher was well-pleased. Because, while most preacher’s intent is to appeal to the positive grounds of common agreement with those visiting in the audience of a gospel meeting, that was not this preacher’s intent. His agenda was to rile up the visitor into a disposition that would lead to a conversation and that person going home to disprove the preacher. The preacher was so confident in the truth that he was preaching, and he was confident that if the visitor would be highly motivated to go home and disprove what was preached that the man’s soul would ultimately be saved. And it worked on many occasions. Many souls were saved by being thrown into a fit of rage!
Now, you see, the member who came up to the preacher after the sermon and said, “Didn’t you know…” was surprised. That member thought the preacher’s purpose was to make the visitors smile and dance their way into the baptism waters. Why did the member think this? Because the member was casting his own expectations, methods, and purposes of gospel preaching onto the preacher. The member had placed the preacher in a self-constructed box of what was proper and improper methods and motivations for preaching. But the preacher’s own intent was actually to make visitors angry and study their way into the baptism waters. Did the preacher fail when he made the visitor mad? It depends on whose standard of measurement you are grading with. If the true standard of measurement is that of the preacher, then no, he didn’t fail. And who can argue when the person’s soul is saved at the end of the day? As far as I can assess, there was nothing unethical about the preacher’s methods. They were certainly non-traditional but not unethical. Nonetheless, people on the outside looking in might raise their eyebrows and call the whole thing a disaster up until the person was saved in baptism.
Questioning the Status Quo
I share this story of the preacher with the eyebrow raising tactics, because I believe this is similar to what God did under the Old Law. People read the Bible, and they correctly conclude that the Old Law didn’t provide atonement for sins, and so they conclude that the Old Law failed. But what if God’s intent for the Old Law wasn’t to atone for sin to begin with? People read the Bible, and they correctly conclude that the Old Law allowed for less-than-ideal conditions such as human kings and divorce (for now we will leave off polygamy since there is such widespread disagreement over its rightness or wrongness in the Old Law). Based on these provisions, some people conclude that the Old Law was imperfect. But what if God’s intent in the Old Law wasn’t to make the visitors smile and dance their way into the baptism waters? In other words, what if God had a distinct and unorthodox purpose for allowing less-than-ideal conditions such as divorce and monarchy and potentially other such items?
It is my conclusion that, as a general rule, Christian readers (including myself) have exchanged God’s ruler for measuring the Old Law with their own ruler. We have perpetuated a pessimistic view of the Old Law in the traditional statements we make, the language we use, and the way we interpret Paul and the Hebrew writer’s explanations of the Old Law. This getting-the-cart-before-the-horse happened by swallowing assertions about how the Old Law failed to do what it was supposed to do, and then fitting passages from Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews into our prefabricated theological framework.
But what if the Old Law didn’t fail God’s purposes? What if it did exactly what it was supposed to do?
What if God’s ways aren’t our ways, and after our eyebrows have a chance to calm back down, we find that God’s tactical methods in the Old Law weren’t actually flawed to begin with? Maybe we just didn’t leave room for such unorthodox tactics in our man-made box for God.
In Part 2 on this topic, I want to expound further on what I have put forth up to this point. I want to answer the questions just proposed, and in the process, I want to test the reader to see God’s Old Law in a new light. If my conclusions are correct, then this is not a new light in reality. If my conclusions are correct, this is simply new to me and potentially new to others who have long misinterpreted God’s Old Law. I apologize in advance for any repetition and overlap from one point to the next. There is continuity and discontinuity across each of the three points to come:
1) The Law did exactly what it was supposed to do;
2) The Law was good despite being less-than-ideal;
3) Less-than-ideal provisions were God’s way of playing hardball.
(Coming Soon)
Footnotes
1Reasons for Divorce Under the Old Law:
1. She doesn’t please her master (Ex. 21:7-8).
2. He no longer wants to provide for her (Ex. 21:9-11).
3. Husband has “no delight in her” (Deut. 21:13-14).
4. Some “uncleanness” (ervah) is found in her (Deut. 24:1).
5. Hate (Deut. 24:3-4).
6. If wife was a heathen (Ezra 10:10-12).
