Faith seeking understanding

Your laws are always right; help me to understand them so I may live. (Psalm 119:144)

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I expect most people have an innate understanding that nit-picky legalism is bad. We have a variety of English idioms that illustrate the point. In Matthew 23, Jesus said the Pharisees would strain out gnats but swallow camels. Another phrase is penny-wise and pound-foolish; another, missing the forest for the trees. Each one of these illustrate the problem of focusing on small details to the exclusion of the big picture.

Everyone knows that nit-picky legalism is bad, but the problem is no one thinks they're guilty of it. This can be a particular tendency for people who love the Bible—or you could insert any other body of literature. Javert, the primary antagonist in Les Misérables loved the laws of France, but was unable to see in Jean Valjean a man who had not only repented of his sins, but also worked to improve the lives of hundreds. In Matthew 23, the Pharisees would be sure to count their tithes to the penny, but Jesus said they neglected things like justice, mercy, and faith.

The Psalmist declares God's laws are always right. But then he prays, help me to understand them. Sometimes it is hard to understand how some of the laws in the Bible supported justice, mercy, and faith in their own contexts. Sometimes it's also hard to understand how some of the Bible's moral teachings encourage justice, mercy, and faith in our own context. But if you look at the larger story, what you see unfolding in the pages of the Bible is that God, knowing full well that we are sinners, loved us. We see Jesus, knowing we are sinners, died on the cross for us (Romans 5:8). God, across all the pages, all the human stories, all the laws, culminating in the gospel, is taking into himself the very consequence he promised would happen to us if we sin (Genesis 2:15-17). And he is granting to us, if we will have it, all the benefits of his own righteousness: justice, mercy, faith, love.

Why does the Psalmist desire to understand God's laws? He writes, So that I may live. Life and death are more than just physical functions. The Holy Spirit teaches us through the Bible that God is love, and that God has called us to love him and to love our neighbor. The absence of that love is a kind of death. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis imagines hell to be something like a great number of individuals pursuing their own individual interests, all the while growing more and more distant from  everyone else—less trust, less enjoyment, less care, even less notice. Lewis imagines heaven as a place where everything is more real, more solid; people experience more joy, more kindness, more mercy. The Bible presents heaven as a place where we will know God and each other fully, even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).

The psalmist wants to live; he want to love God and love others well. That's why he prays to understand the teaching of the Bible. In John 6, a large group of disciples stopped following Jesus after he gave a difficult teaching. Jesus then asks the twelve if they want to go too. Peter replies, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

So when you see a law or a teaching in the Bible that presents you with a head-scratcher, look to Jesus. Pray that the Lord will help you to understand, so that you may live. He will give you that understanding. God's instructions are always right, and he is more than happy to help us understand and apply them. Remember, God is for you.