How to Love Your Neighbor (God’s Way) | Westminster Catechism | Q 63-81

Hey, friends.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we continue through the
shorter Westminster Catechism on our study of the Westminster Confession,
some of the history of our faith and the teaching tool of our denomination and some of the doctrines.
We’ve been looking the last two weeks at the Ten Commandments.
This will be the second week
where we finished them.
We finished what is sometimes called the first table,
which are the Commandments 1-4 that have to do with a relationship primarily with God.
The second part of the Ten Commandments,
5-10,
really then shift the focus to community,
life together, and relationships.
So,
there is quite a bit to cover today.
Several of the questions, most of them are short.
We’ll try to do our best to get through them and give them some
consideration as we go.
So, let’s,
Michael, jump right in.
We’re at the Fifth Commandment,
question 63 of the Catechism.
The Fifth Commandment, what is the Fifth Commandment?
The Fifth Commandment is honor your father and your mother that your days may be long and the land your God is giving you.
Then we move on to 64.
What is required in this Commandment?
The Fifth Commandment requires the preserving the honor and performing the duties belonging to everyone in their several
places and relations as superiors,
inferiors,
or equals.
So, this is going to be a theme that
we’ll see today, a real expansion of the Commandments.
Rather than read them literally in their
smallest context, you’re going to see that Westminster consistently broadens the context.
So, here we start with honor thy mother and father,
a familiar Commandment.
But the interpretation at the very first line is all duties belonging to everyone in their several places and relations as superiors,
inferiors, or equals.
So, kind of using this Commandment,
Michael, as a lens
to see a much broader group or a spectrum of commitments and responsibilities.
You know, I think in our modern culture,
Clint, there’s been a lot of conversation about power
dynamics and there’s been a lot of conversation about, you know,
who can use that power in unhelpful
ways over other people, things like that.
I think it might surprise us looking at a text that is
hundreds of years old to see people talking very, very seriously,
Christians thinking very, very deeply about our responsibilities,
our duties to one another in our different vocations and roles
and stations in life.
And to see this Commandment about mother and father as not just a familial Command,
but as one that has implications for literally the structure of our societies,
the structures of our business,
of how we conduct ourselves in the commercial world.
The idea that the Commandment reaches every part of our lives and our structures as it relates to how we bear
responsibility in the life lived together.
Clint, this is an unbelievably contemporary idea.
It’s getting a lot of press,
I think a lot of time and thought right now.
And we might be surprised to see
that, you know, as there’s no new thing under the sun,
this has been thought of deeply,
that this is connected even into the very heart of the Ten Commandments themselves.
I think that there’s a lot of wisdom as we turn over this leaf.
Clint. It’s interesting that mother and father
here become sort of metaphorical for all of those various relationships with authority
and with relationship with other people.
Maybe on one hand, that’s not surprising.
This is written in a time in which families are,
for the most part, still very nuclear,
very hierarchical.
But it’s also written in the backdrop of intense political uncertainty and upheaval.
And so it probably makes sense that the Catechism looks beyond the home,
though it includes the home,
but looks beyond that to the broader society,
to broader relationships.
You know, if you take the next question here,
which is the inverse,
65, what’s forbidden,
the fifth commandment forbids
the neglecting of or doing anything against the honor and duty which belongs to everyone in their
places and relations.
You know,
I suppose, Michael, there’s a sense in which this
interpretation could be critiqued for assuming an observance to power,
hierarchical power.
But I think if it’s read fairly,
while that is a legitimate concern,
wrapped in this is the idea
that we owe something to everyone relationally and that we should fulfill that obligation
in Christ and by Christ out of respect for each and every person as an individual,
but particularly
those who have some authority,
we should give that to them.
We should speak of others with respect.
There’s a lot here.
You know,
those who govern us,
we should be careful about how we talk about them,
even if we don’t agree with them.
Those who are in our families,
those who are in our businesses,
those who might supervise us or have some authority over us,
we should make sure that our words and
actions are in keeping with a call to have a respect for those that have those positions.
Having said that, I think, you know,
clearly we could have deeper conversation about when is the
right time to stand up.
The catechism is not interested in going along when things are not
going the right direction.
But there is here,
I think, a broad sensitivity to the idea
of authority and people in positions that should be given respect and some
respect.
Maybe I’ll just leave it at respect from Christians in the name of Jesus.
Well, I think that this is mutually interpreted by the next question.
So I think we can have a
fuller conversation about what’s forbidden when we finish 66.
Let’s do that, Clint.
Sure.
What’s the reason annexed to the fifth commandment?
The reason annexed is a promise of
long life and prosperity as far as it shall serve for God’s glory and their own good to all who keep such commands.
Yeah. So Clint, the point to make there, I think,
is not that this is a causal
relationship per se, that because one does this,
therefore you get the benefit of this other thing.
I don’t think that that’s exactly what’s in play.
But I do think that it points us to that there is
a real sort of social network,
a kind of strength that happens when people honor one another.
And that by definition means that there are different ways of honoring at different times,
much like that father-child relationship.
There are ways of honoring the child in their early
years that are not honoring when they’re older,
when there are moments in which a child should
be given the opportunity to practice responsibility or to be held accountable for a lack of immaturity.
There are some things that happen later that are inappropriate earlier because
a child couldn’t be expected to be mature in that circumstance.
Just that particular frame
reveals what is true writ large across all of society,
that we have different expectations for
different people at different places.
And generally, it is good for everyone if we can build one in
which honoring one another,
respecting the duties that we have by place of our own vocation,
by place of our own abilities,
whatever that is, that when we conduct ourselves towards one another
with a kind of emphasis upon our duty to one another and the honor that should be given to
another creature, an image bearer of God,
Clint, that there’s something about that which will
inculcate a kind of society which God can be glorified.
It will be ordered,
which of course is a word that Presbyterians love,
it will have the markers of well-put-togetherness,
and that is generally in the reporting tradition thought to be God honoring.
Yeah, and while I appreciate what’s happening here,
you know, it is interesting, and this probably goes beyond the catechism,
Michael, but to the commandments themselves,
it is interesting that as we turn the page on that first table,
the commandments one through
four that have to do with our relationship with God,
that we then turn to the idea of our
relationship with others and our sort of communal societal obligations.
It is fascinating that the
first place that the commandments go is the family.
And I think maybe in our day and age
with a breakdown of family and struggles within families,
it might have been nicer to hear
a stronger word in that direction from the catechism.
I think we can see what the authors
are doing here as they take family and they sort of push it out in the idea of other relationships.
But in the world in which we live,
it would have been helpful to hear from these authors,
maybe a little stronger note toward those relationships actually within the household
and not simply see that as a metaphor for other relationships.
It may have been important,
I think, in our day and time to speak a word specifically about mother, father,
specifically about what does Christianity,
what does obedience look like inside the home,
because I think in a
way that maybe these authors couldn’t have predicted,
that is certainly a less clear
picture for us than it was for them.
Yeah,
there’s a real pro-con in that.
The one is there’s a missed opportunity to talk about
the ways in which we can model Christ in our most intimate relationships.
The other side of that is
there’s wisdom in not over-contextualizing what is a eternal command.
This is thousands of years old
being interpreted hundreds of years ago and now we’re coming to it again.
So there’s also the
benefit of them giving it to us in that way,
but the task, Clint, to your point, I think the task
comes then to us to take this commandment seriously in our lives and to recontextualize it
into our real families and our real relationships,
our real citizenship,
whatever that looks like and
whatever the need of this moment is,
it does require something of us and that is a thing
I think we need to own.
And therein, I think, is the struggle, Michael.
The first four commandments are, in a sense,
timeless because they have to do with relation with the one who is beyond time.
These other commandments, as we’ll continue to see,
are all incredibly contextual.
They all say different things perhaps at different times.
I don’t mean that they mean different things,
but I do think we hear them differently depending.
And I think the next commandment,
if we can move
on, is a really good example of this.
What is the sixth commandment?
The sixth commandment is,
“Thou shalt not kill.” What is required in the sixth commandment?
The sixth commandment requires
all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life and the life of others.
What is forbidden?
The sixth commandment forbids the taking away of our own life or the life of a neighbor unjustly
or whatsoever tends unto or leads that direction.
So, again,
we start with what seems
clear-cut,
“Thou shalt not kill.” But if we’ve ever,
whenever we’ve tried as Christians to live into the law,
we realize that that gets complicated quickly.
There’s a complexity to what it means,
the commandment, “Do not kill.” And I think here the Westminster authors follow suit of
virtually every Christian sense that there is a core here,
which is the preservation of life,
the protection of life,
our own and others.
But notice how quickly in question 69
forbids the taking away of our own life or the life of our neighbor unjustly.
So, already we begin to consider that there may be more to it than that.
And I think that’s when
had very interesting conversations historically about things like soldiers,
about things like capital punishment,
about war and the nature,
about protecting one’s family,
those kind of moments.
So,
I appreciate that the Westminster,
the Divines, is what the authors get called.
I appreciate that the Divines have recognized that it is not always as simple as one sentence
commandment, that there is a messiness inherent in trying to be obedient,
and that sometimes
there is a place that we find ourselves in where protecting and preserving may bump into each other.
Yeah, Clint, I think the words that we might read past in these rather simple sentences
come quickly to bear first,
or question 68, all lawful endeavors.
Lawful is the key word there.
And then we see that in 69,
you already mentioned unjustly.
These are really just
kind of footnotes a little bit sort of dropped in there,
just sort of drawing our attention away to
remind us that that opens up to conversation of what is just and what is lawful.
And I would submit to you, by the way, that the Divines here are not going to give everything that is written
in law is lawful.
I don’t think that they would concede that.
I think that they would certainly
give place for people of faith to push back on the idea of where we should, by conviction,
draw lines in terms of what it means to preserve life.
I think that they would
very much support that.
But wisely,
they’re not trying to open a conversation of giving
an authoritative interpretation of what that is in this day,
on this moment.
Instead, they are
defending what is a historical,
classical understanding of God’s command that we must
honor the Imago Dei in our own life and in others,
that God is creator,
and so that created
must be very aware of this eternal spiritual soul life that we’ve been given as gift.
And to extinguish that life in ourself or in others is in many ways to claim a position
as human that we do not deserve.
This would be, I think, the thing that they have at the core of this conviction, Clint.
And yes, certainly,
it puts back in our hands a very difficult set
of conversations, but I think they’ve honored that that exists and they’re trying to point us to the center.
Yeah, I appreciate that they’re not trying to nail down every contingency,
Michael.
I think that is more realistic to the way faith works.
And I also appreciate that in many of these
moments in the answers to the question,
they sort of, rather than a hard stop,
it’s almost a kind of dot,
dot, dot as in what comes next.
It’s unfortunate that it’s a little tangled
in our language, but this end of question 69,
taking away life or whatsoever tendeth thereunto,
and, you know, or whatever leans that direction,
whatever heads up.
So it’s not simply do not kill.
I think it is the wisdom of the authors here that they have left us with a conversation
that really points us in the direction,
what is it that takes away life in others?
Not in the ultimate sense of perhaps murder,
though that’s clearly included,
but what other ways might we talk about that takes life from people,
that oppresses them, that keeps them from the basic happiness,
the basic rights that keeps them from their needs,
that keeps them poor,
or that keeps them from medical care?
What are the ways in which,
as Christians, we might have to think about our own lives spilling over and lessening
the life of someone else,
and I think, you know,
they did not live in our society,
but I appreciate that they answered the question in a way in their time that asks some very serious follow-up
questions in our time,
and I think that is the mark of a well-written and well-conceived document,
is that it continues to have life,
and I hear that in the way they answer this question.
I think there is a very pastoral concern that is raised out of a question like this.
We won’t have time to address it fully,
but just very briefly,
I want to name,
if you’ve been around Christians for very long,
you know that there are some Christians who have
very, very particular reactions to things like suicide,
taking your own life.
There’s,
you know, some people have these encounters where a family member at,
you know, the worst moment of their life makes that decision,
and then that family member is caught
up in all of the grief and fear of what does this mean that they took their own life,
that they violated this commandment, what does that mean for their eternal soul?
We’re not going to have
time to unpack all of that,
but I think you have to read a document like this holistically,
and you have to understand the commandments are about the best ordered relationship between us and God,
and to look for these commandments as the lens of showing us what outcome they
give us in eternity,
or, you know, what command has to be followed to this level,
when we recognize as humans that the way that they’ve broadened these,
we fail at all of these.
I mean, we hold others’ lives,
whether we like it or not,
at some level we are all participating in
systems that are not allowing others to flourish to the extent that if we could make a different choice, they would.
I would just complexify this to just say,
don’t read a commandment like this
and allow it all be judgmental,
or don’t allow it to all bring fear about it.
If this is a thing
that’s touched your life in a real way,
I think just pastorally here,
what’s happening here
is all couched under an understanding of our need for grace.
It’s all understood that we need God to intervene in places where we’ve been unable to meet the need ourself,
and, you know,
once again, we could talk about what are the implications of when we break this
down, or when we make choices that hurt ourselves or others.
That’s an important conversation, but
I wouldn’t get fixated,
Clint, on a thing like that in a conversation about the Ten Commandments.
I think by necessity,
the commandments show us the highest standard,
Michael.
I mean, they really
picture for us the best,
and they ask us to consider where we do not measure up to the best,
and to strive to lessen that gap to the best of our abilities.
I think
in places where the commandments hit particularly hard in our own personal story,
it is easy
to perhaps feel like they are a club and not a ruler, not a pointer,
not a guide.
But I think the clear intention is that we are to see in them a path by which we might see ourselves
more faithfully fulfilling them.
And that’s well said.
Your words are wise in that there probably
are some of these that hit particularly close to home for some people,
but that’s not the intention
of this.
The intention in each and every commandment is to show us what is the best way for us
in the hopes that we will move toward it.
And I think we see it very clearly in the next commandment,
if we could go on there.
What is the seventh commandment?
Thou shall not commit adultery.
What is required?
The seventh commandment requires the preservation of our own
and our neighbor’s chastity in heart, speech,
and behavior.
You know, this is incredible to me,
Michael, as people who both preach on regular occasions.
I think the temptation is always
just to do too much,
to take a word like don’t commit adultery and know something
biblically about all of the things,
sexuality,
purity.
I mean, this is a massive,
massive scope that we could address this commandment under.
And yet the brevity here,
the one sentence
is amazingly brief and yet amazingly complete.
The preservation of ours and our neighbor’s chastity
in heart, speech, and behavior.
That is the most beautiful kind of simplicity when it says everything.
Well, what about this?
Well, does it preserve chastity?
What about this?
Does it help your neighbor preserve theirs in heart,
in mind, and indeed?
And so, you know,
the divines in cutting to the heart of the matter really sort of cut out all the,
well, what if this happens?
Or what if the R-rated movie,
what if there’s such a temptation in this area of our life
to try splitting hairs?
And I really appreciate that this answer just takes us right to the center
and says, look, here’s a pretty simple standard,
and this really is where we stand.
I think your point is well made,
and I think it’s only emphasized by the following question,
what is forbidden by this commandment?
The seventh commandment forbids all unchaste thoughts,
words, and actions.
And I would submit to you that if we ask this question in the average Christian gathering,
you’re going to get just painfully long pontifications.
You can do this,
but you can’t do that.
That’s acceptable.
This isn’t acceptable.
This, we’re not, we have disagreements.
Yeah, 100%.
What is incredible is within one sentence,
the awareness, that both this has something to say to us.
This has a normative,
directive aspect in our lives,
and also the recognition that we’re going to have to grapple
with what chastity is.
And Clint, there’s something beautiful when the church gives us
words that we don’t use in our daily life,
because it’s a window,
it’s an invitation, it’s an opportunity for us to set aside some of the vocabulary words that have been handed to us by culture,
and to ask humbly for God to teach us a new linguistic way to understand.
And I think chastity is a great word to have in the mix here,
because we don’t use that in our everyday parlance,
and there’s some wisdom in turning back to some of these words and asking, okay,
so what is it
really, truly to be a person of faith who understands what chastity means?
And I guarantee you, if you do some word searching,
both in the Old and New Testament,
if you do some work in
terms of how the church has understood that theologically,
it is more nuanced than what you think,
and it is more open to embrace more of our lives than what is your initial response going to
be.
And I think that’s a helpful frame.
Yeah, you know, I haven’t done the homework,
the word
work.
Recently, Michael, I think I’d submit that the closest English equivalent that we might be
more comfortable or familiar with would be something like purity.
And, you know, again, I think there are two things that are interesting about this.
A, that it’s not only our own.
When it comes to sexual ethics in our culture,
we tend to think what makes me happy and what doesn’t
violate someone else’s rights or their wishes.
But instead here,
this entire direction of what
does sexual purity look like for the Christian,
seen through the lens of the commandment,
it looks like retaining chastity,
purity.
Chaste also has the sense of being disciplined in heart,
speech, and behavior, not just for self,
but for neighbor.
And where we might be tempted to talk
about what is permissible and try to say,
“Well, what can we do?” This says that anytime that takes
us into impure thoughts, words, and actions,
unchaste, undisciplined,
unhealthy, or unwholesome thoughts, words, and actions, we are outside the teaching of the commandment.
This is, you know,
again, it’s unfortunate the language is sort of archaic because this is remarkably
helpful, I think, to modern ears if we could put it in our context and wrestle with it.
I think it’s helpful.
I also think it is troubling.
I mean, if,
to be honest, if we hear this rightly,
this is going to both trouble the lists that we’ve made.
The list that some of us,
if we were going to be honest,
the list comforts us, right?
Well, I haven’t done this sexually,
or I haven’t done that thing that would be reprehensible,
whatever thing gets put on that list.
And then that becomes a shield from us evaluating the thoughts,
the words, the ways that we have put blockades in front of other people,
that we’ve made it about our own interpretation
of sinfulness rather than seeing what is true.
And that is our relation as humans to a wholly,
perfectly pure God, right?
And the idea that this idea of adultery,
which I think we often
give a very specific cultural meaning to,
if we’re willing to see it broaden as the framers do here,
and I think very troublingly,
if we’re willing to allow them to be so concise in their language,
and therefore call everything else into honest assessment.
I mean, I think that there is a really
unnerving kind of openness here in this phrase,
both for us to question some of the assumptions that we made,
and also for us to find ourselves at the center of some judgment here.
If we
just lead and say,
well, I’m glad, check that one off.
I’m not an adulterer.
I’m not sure that you’ve exactly heard what’s being said here,
because I think the response
to one who’s heard it may be,
I too have sin in my own heart,
and I also can’t meet the perfect
place that is set out for us here in this commandment.
You know, if you know your Bible a little bit,
you’ll know that this very clearly
follows the teaching of the New Testament.
Jesus is asked about adultery,
and he talks about lust.
I think these two questions follow suit in that they both go beyond action to heart and speech.
They both internalize the conversation so that it can’t just be about,
“I’ve done this thing,”
or “I haven’t done this thing,” that it’s a deeper struggle than that in a world that is
flooded with pornography and sexuality,
in advertising in our homes,
on our phones, with just the amazing,
unbelievable proliferation of the way those technologies are used in those
arenas and for those purposes.
This is a challenging call to faithfulness for Christians
in the modern world.
It’s surprising, perhaps, that it could come from a very different time and place,
but I think remarkably current,
remarkably applicable.
Michael, if we can listen
to it.
Yeah, and I think that’s going to only continue when we move to the next commandment, because, like adultery,
stealing Clint is a thing I think that we often think in very concrete terms of,
“We know what that means,” and that’s about to get troubled.
Yeah,
question 73, “What’s the eighth commandment?
Thou shall not steal.”
What’s required in this eighth commandment?
It requires the lawful procuring and furthering
the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.
What is forbidden?
The eighth commandment forbids whatever does or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor’s wealth or outward estate.
So,
I think this one is fascinating because it is so entirely biblical.
It would be impossible,
I think, to read this.
What does it require?
Well,
lawful gaining and furthering of wealth,
and when it says lawful,
it doesn’t just mean legal in the sense of does the place you live
condone it.
It means biblically.
It means morally.
The law being spoken of here is a higher law than
the law of the land.
The righteous procuring and furthering of wealth and outward estate
for self and other.
And what is forbidden?
For procuring or unjustly gaining,
either to our self or our neighbor,
hurting,
doing something unjust to our neighbor’s wealth
or outward estate.
And I think what’s fascinating about that,
Michael, is I can imagine immediately
the question follows,
“Who’s my neighbor?” Which is the question of the parable.
This is the question
when Jesus was asked these kind of things and said,
“You’ve got to care for your neighbor.”
We want to start defining it.
We want to start pinning it down.
And essentially, a commandment that starts with,
“Do not steal,” in which most of us can confidently say, “You know,
I don’t really do that.
I’m okay on this commandment,” very quickly becomes
a measure to examine whether our own situation unjustly affects the situation of others.
And that is a very different and very much more difficult and troubling conversation One of the innovations of the 21st century Christian church,
and only certain branches of
church, but a real innovation is this idea of God blessing us,
this prosperity kind of gospel.
And I submit to you that any gospel,
any theological way of understanding God and God’s
work in the world and in our lives,
that does not cause us to do real measured and sustained
self-examination.
It does not call us to ask real questions of our motivation and the outcome of our work,
Clint.
If there is any gospel which tells us that everything is about you becoming richer and more wealthy,
more prestigious,
more capable,
and never calls you to take account of your soul,
of your effect on another person,
you have not heard the Ten Commandments in their fullness.
Now, that’s not me saying,
I want to be clear,
that’s not me saying that God does not bless us
with things, make us stewards of things that we might be able to bless others,
of course.
But the Christian tradition for thousands of years has been framed and shaped by this eighth
commandment, Clint.
And our forebears have told us,
be very, very careful with money.
A kind of caution, by the way, which is incredibly biblical to your point.
I mean,
Jesus’s own teachings on
money would lead us to be very,
very cautious about how we might use that tool against others,
or towards our own ends.
And to whatever extent we find ourselves consistently at the center of benefiting,
especially at another person’s expense,
there is no place for it in the biblical code.
Yeah, I think there probably are parts of the Old Testament where you could
read in the idea that you could be blessed at someone else’s expense.
I think that largely,
if not completely, disappears in the New Testament,
Michael, with the idea of sacrifice,
with the idea of service,
with the idea of go the extra mile and give the extra cloak.
I just think that that would be a very,
very difficult case to make from reading the New
Testament and through that lens.
And I think we see that reflected here in this, so that stealing
is not simply the taking of what someone else has,
it’s the preventing them from having it.
It’s the lessening of their livelihood for your own gain.
I think this is a call to ethics in a much broader context.
And again, one of those that I think is remarkably modern,
is remarkably applicable, even in our very different time and place.
You know, Clint,
there’s an interesting and difficult tension here,
as there is with the
other commandments as well.
But I think in the modern age,
a lot of our conversations about
do not steal have actually been very political conversations.
And by that, I mean they’ve been
very nation state kind of conversations.
And I want to be clear,
I think that there are real
implications for Christians who live in a country in which they have the privilege of getting to
vote.
If you live in a place where you get to have a say in the governance of the people,
then this has implications for how you conduct that power in the world.
That said,
it is very easy to externalize this and say not my problem.
Well, I’m not the one that passes laws,
or I’m the one who adjudicates those laws.
There’s a way in which this calls us to ask very real questions about,
you know,
do I need an extra shed for all of my stuff?
Do I have I acquired
to an extent to which I have not given someone like a John Wesley would call,
I think, the modern church to ask some real questions about consumerism and the temptation to acquire.
If we’re willing to allow this question to set the tone and the parameter claim,
I think my point is there is a
lot of places that we could be critiqued and we can allow ourselves to be convicted.
We don’t have time for all of that here the day.
But if you just say,
Hey, I didn’t walk into a store and
steal something from that store.
That’s the bare minimum to add extreme.
That’s the bare minimum
of what is at play in a question like this.
And I think that only continues and maybe even
increases a little bit as we go to commandment nine,
Michael, the ninth commandment thou shall
not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
What is required in the ninth commandment,
the ninth commandment requires the maintaining and promoting of truth between men and men, people,
and our own and our neighbor’s good name,
especially in witness bearing.
What is forbidden, the ninth commandment forbids whatever is prejudicial to truth or injurious to our own
or our neighbor’s good name.
Classic case in point to what you were just saying, Michael,
if we think that the ninth commandment is going to let us off the hook because we haven’t quote unquote lied,
though our social media feed is filled with slander and name calling and whatever,
we are going to be hit between the eyes with this interpretation from Westminster.
It is whatever promotes truth and whatever upholds our neighbor’s good name,
what is forbidden,
anything prejudicial or injures that which injures our neighbor’s
good name.
So again,
fascinating in so many of these that the commandment is really seen from
the perspective of the other,
not simply my own responsibility,
but what it does to someone else.
Does it lift them or does it push them down?
And I think we see here, you know,
the idea of false
witness is a kind of tough,
it’s a kind of tough idea.
Lying is clearer but less helpful in the
sense that it isn’t big enough.
False witness here, the idea that I’m being a bad witness to
the gospel in the way that I talk about or treat another.
And again, Michael, not to say the same
thing just over and over and over again,
but that’s a much wider gate.
That’s a much bigger
net and it’s a much deeper struggle.
I don’t think that this is a hot take.
Maybe it is, Clint.
If we never stand under truth and are found wanting,
we’ve not found truth.
The true things of the world will always convict us at some level.
They will never completely affirm.
Now, this is an incredibly reformed statement,
but I think defensible that
when we encounter truth,
yes, there will be resonances to our own experience.
I mean, clearly
you at some point in your life,
if you’ve been open to God’s revealing,
you have bumped into
truth, but no one can hold on to it and claim it completely.
And if you apply the standard of your
thought and your speech,
and I’m even going to take this a step further and say to what you consume,
what you watch and what you read,
what you listen to,
if you apply that metric or that ruler to all
of these different fields of life,
I submit to you,
you will find that you have both taken in
and you have pushed out things that fall short of the full gospel,
things that fall short of the
truth of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And if we do not confess and admit that to ourselves,
we are fools and we are likely to be led astray by people who tell us this is exactly the whole
truth and I can sell it to you for $50 or whatever the promise is,
or I can promise you a better happy
life if you just vote this way.
I mean, truth here is meant theologically.
It’s meant this idea that when we bear false witness,
it’s not just that we told a white lie,
it’s that what we have
consumed or thought or done has put us outside the perfect revelation of Jesus.
And if that is
the case, the only hope we have is his grace and the only real faithful action we can take is
confession of our failing and a recognition that the truth is outside of us and not contained by us.
I suspect, Michael, that the idea of multiple versions or of things claiming to be true
would likely not be shocking to the Westminster authors.
This is a thing that has been
the case in human history.
Having said that,
I can’t imagine that the men who wrote this
document could begin to wrap their head around the availability of perspectives in our social
media world, in our internet world.
The idea that I can,
for anything I want to believe,
find someone who is telling me it’s true,
that I can reinforce my own perspective,
my own opinion over and over and over again,
and that in the spite of all other evidence,
I can claim it as objectively true with the support of some community behind me is,
I think, a new moment in human history.
I don’t think the human experiment has ever traveled this ground before.
And in that context,
questions like what is true,
what does it mean that something is true,
are we going to tolerate untruth when we see it,
or are we okay if we
think it fits some bigger purpose?
Do we really believe the things that are said,
or do we just
take them as, well,
it’s just part of this game we’re all playing?
I think we live in a moment of
fascinating questions about the nature and the use and usefulness of truth in a way that I
don’t imagine the Divines could have thought of.
I just don’t,
I think they would be
absolutely rocked by the idea of the plurality of things that try to present themselves as true.
And so not bearing false witness has a nuance for us that I think really is going to demand
some very careful thoughtfulness,
some questioning.
And I think we don’t yet,
and I think we’re so
early in it, Michael, that I’m not sure we even know what to do with it.
Yeah, and I don’t want to get hung up here,
but I want to make it clear that I don’t put myself
as outside the judgment of this command.
I disagree with lots of different people or
perspectives in public spheres,
like I’m sure all of us do,
and I have caught myself at times saying
things that are incredibly derogatory about their name,
I mean, dragging people through the mud.
And some of that is endemic to our social media in the way that virality works and people dogpile in other people.
But when I’ve caught myself doing that,
and it’s happened more often,
I’d like to admit,
I have tried to hear a command like this as censuring me,
and I’ve tried to
take a step back and use different language and describe a person with their real humanity.
Because we live in a moment,
Clint, where it’s not only tempting,
but it’s celebrated to drag another person through the mud and to say something that is counter to their good name.
I mean, you’re right.
So if that’s the very smallest interpretation of this command,
I think all of us on some level,
if we’re going to admit it,
have some work to do.
Yeah, without a doubt.
And I think the danger of the moment we’re in is that with
so many versions of truth,
we begin to struggle with,
is there any truth?
And in those moments,
that brings us to the final commandment.
What is the 10 commandment?
The 10 commandment is thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house,
nor thy neighbor’s wife,
servant,
ox,
ass, go, anything that is thy neighbor.
What is required in this commandment,
this commandment requires the full contentment with our own conditions,
with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor,
and all that is his.
What is forbidden?
The 10th commandment forbids discontentment with our own estate,
envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor,
and all inordinate motions and affections to
anything that is his.
Here again, an interesting place to end,
but an interesting conversation.
Covet is to want something that belongs to someone else.
Covet is to be jealous.
It is
to be untoward,
to be uncharitable,
to be miserly.
All of this wrapped up in this idea
that what is required of us is a sort of contentment,
a contentment that leads to generosity,
a contentment that allows us to celebrate the good fortune of others rather than to
be jealous of it,
rather than to be injured by it,
to be in good spirit,
and to honor what is
our neighbor’s, both for his good,
her good, their good,
and our own good.
And I think,
you know, there again, Michael,
covet’s a tough word,
not a word that we use regularly,
a deep word that is,
I think rightly so,
takes some effort to unpack,
but most good things do.
And
this idea of contentment,
you know, we don’t live in a society that I think thinks of contentment
very highly or very often.
I think, you know, from the time we are brought into the world as
Americans, we are being led to think about what’s next,
what do we want,
what are we pursuing,
where do we want to go,
what job do we want,
what school do we want.
We’re sort of trained
by our culture to look at the next thing,
and contentment’s a tough word in that arena.
Yeah, as many of you who follow us and join our conversations know,
I’m a tech aficionado,
and I’ll tell you,
tech companies and tech advertisers are built on the premise of
deconstructing contentment, right?
I mean, every time there’s a new device,
what are we told about
it?
It’s faster, it’s more secure, it does more things, has new features.
And all that does is
it helps to destroy the foundation of what you were relatively happy with the day before,
whatever phone you had or whatever computer you used or whatever game you played.
You were relatively happy with what it did,
but what our culture tells us is the next thing is better than
the thing that you have.
And I’m sorry to interrupt,
Michael, but possibly even that you are better
if you have the next thing.
Yeah, because we connected to identity.
And I think the wisdom
here, Clint, is note in ’79,
it’s the house, it’s the place of residence,
it’s the relationship with the spouse,
it is that person’s staff,
is that we might not make sense of the ox and the
donkey, but these are money making devices,
these are the forms and tools of economy.
And then anything that’s neighbors, I mean, the point of this is once again,
in this scope of broadening,
as you start the conversation today,
as we see it happening here,
we recognize that it’s really
every blessing God has given another should be celebrated for their own sake,
that God has blessed them.
Because if we don’t do that,
Clint, then what we fail to see is the way that God has blessed us,
that we fail to see ourselves rightly,
because we’re failing to see our neighbor rightly.
And of course, this is tempting for lots of reasons.
I think culturally, we’re in a moment
where there’s a literal economy built on top of actually working against this spiritual practice.
So that makes it difficult onto its own end.
But friends,
I mean, let’s not pat ourselves on the
back.
This has never been easy.
I’m not certain that we can claim that this is the hardest it’s ever been.
The reality is human nature wants to claim for ourselves.
We’ve always been unhappy
with our station.
That is the fundamental story of Genesis 3.
So I just want to make the point
and make it clear here that we are called to the same standard that as Christians have always been
called.
Now we may have different challenges along the way in our own lives of faith.
We need to meet those thoughtfully.
And we need to be intentional about the way that we live,
and quite frankly, what we consume.
But as we do that,
it’s for the same purpose.
We’re going to the same end,
and that is recognizing the God who is given all things and being grateful as those who received
what God’s given.
I think the ultimate danger of a sin like coveting,
Michael, is that it,
in the final analysis,
convinces me that my wants and needs are most important.
Because the church has misused this commandment.
We have pointed it at people who were being abused,
who were being kept in low stations,
who weren’t given the opportunities.
And we told them,
“Well, you have to be content.
God wants you to be content with what you have.” All the while,
on the other side of the commandment,
someone trying to get more.
And I think that the protection
afforded to us is that if we look past ourselves to our neighbor,
and we are genuinely and truly
concerned with their wellbeing and condition,
as we’ve seen in these other commandments,
then we are protected from the kind of misuse.
Because discontentment can be a powerful motivator.
Some wonderful things in the world have been done out of a discontent.
But I would argue, at best,
for Christians, the discontentment is hopefully when I’m discontent on someone else’s behalf.
When I see someone else and I say that what is happening to them isn’t right, it isn’t fair,
we need to work to do better rather than to tell someone,
“Well, I’m sorry things aren’t going well
for you, but you don’t want to covet.
You don’t want to look at that nicer house.
You don’t want to.” That is clearly,
that’s a misuse of the commandment.
It’s a misuse of the Scripture.
It’s just something that we shouldn’t do,
and I think we can’t do when we understand that the
commandments ask us to take this perspective not only of self but of the other.
As we make our way through these commandments that call us to evaluate our relationships,
our orientation in relation to our world and our culture,
Glenn, I think what we find over and over
and over again is the human temptation to try to turn all of these things to our own benefit,
to our own enjoyment,
our own pleasure, our own use.
And the commandments will consistently
demand that all of this is God’s,
that all of these serve for the purpose of us,
wait for it,
glorifying God.
At this point Westminster,
that is not surprising language to us.
And if you allow
that interpretive frame to guide our reading of the Ten Commandments,
then really what I think we
learn is that these are spiritual guideposts on the journey to use one metaphor.
Maybe another metaphor would be they are the tools of our exercising faithfulness.
Maybe that would be
a better way of thinking of it like going to a gym,
that when we practice charity,
when we practice,
speaking of others, even our enemy,
in ways that honors their humanity.
I mean, maybe we could think of these as opportunities and invitations to living our lives in a way that looks
faithful.
However you want to think about whatever metaphor is helpful for you,
I think I want to just make clear at the end of the conversation,
this is not about you being an A student.
It’s not about you getting it right.
It’s not about you looking really good in front
of a church community and you pointing the finger at others who fail to keep these.
These commandments,
if we hear them rightly,
should unnerve us.
They should put us off balance because then they will
move us towards the one who wants to take us and put us back into balance.
This is all about God.
This is serving God’s glory and God’s purposes.
And if we hear this other than that,
then I fear that we’ve not heard the commandments as intended.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think Michael, if we approach the Ten Commandments with the idea that there are a list of rules that I’ve kept mostly,
and
you know,
I can keep mostly,
I think we’re going to miss the depth of them,
which is to engage us
in a conversation about holiness and our own falling short of it.
Have we hurt our neighbor’s name?
Have we been untrue in relationships?
Have we cast false versions of ourself?
Have we been unchaste in thought and in word?
Have we been impure?
You know,
that is a much deeper, much more profitable,
have we preserved life for others?
I think, you know, ultimately, that’s a path that’s going to lead to a much deeper consideration and conversation
about what it means to follow Jesus Christ.
And I think our ancestors
blessedly and rightly understood that that is the best way to engage what seems like a fairly
straightforward, simple list of things you should and shouldn’t do.
And fortunately, I think they’ve helped us get under that and mine the much deeper value that is found in that.
It’s a great summary.
I hope that there’s been something in this conversation that you found
encouraging and challenging.
If friends want to make note,
maybe you already knew that this
series is all contained in our audio podcast.
So if that’s a better format for you,
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We’re glad to get to spend some time with you.
And we look forward
to continuing this conversation with you next time.
Thanks, everybody