The Law

Adam & Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder,
 Galleria Uffizi, Milan

I have often wondered why the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, is referred to as the Law. I associate law with a list of definitive No's and some You-May's. The Ten Commandments would be something that fits the bill - You shall and Thou shall not. And there are many other part of the Torah that sounds like that, including the dietary rules of the Jewish people, their festivals and types of sacrifices, and rules on morality. But a large proportion of the Torah isn't like that at all. Instead they are stories of man and their relationship with God, often broken ones.

I have come to understand that the law refers to what is indisputably the truth, like the laws of nature - plants and animals pro-create, fishes swim in the rivers and the sea, the whole universe follows some rules that God came up with, divinely orchestrated. God spoke those laws at the beginning of creation and every piece of DNA works beautifully by design, nothing ever goes out of control. Every outcome was good and perfect. There was never a need of any laws against anything bad because bad just didn't existed.

But then we took a wrong turn. Instead of listening to the universal law that God had set in creation, we decided to listen to a serpent who suggested to us that the law that God set was to limit our potential. We have this tendency to look to others to understand what the truth is don't we? Even a slithering snake. I remember having a debate with my son about what is a reasonable time to spend on mobile devices and his point of reference was his school friends who don't have such restrictions. This was before the likes of Bill Gates came out to tell everyone that they restrict their kids' use of technology, so I was at a slight disadvantage. Ever since we took that wrong turn in human history, laws have been introduced to keep us from fast-track self-destruction.

But God didn't resort to drawing up a rule book that reads like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. His reforms did not look like convoluted tax laws that nobody understands and so many have the urge to hide from. Instead, he used the stories of fallen human to help us understand the law that we have lost sight of - that God is the Creator and He remains sovereign, that He still sees great value in people; that like any good father, He picks us up from the mud and will give His own flesh to redeem ours. This is the law, that's just how it is.

In the course of history, there has been countless attempts to remove this truth from the face of the earth. Attempts to destroy the people who bear witness to those stories in the Torah, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple more than once, discrediting the Bible as the half-truth from God and our culture that slanders the truth like the serpent. But the truth stands the test of time, the law prevails because it is everlasting.


21 Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
    Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
    and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
    and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
    and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
    no sooner are they sown,
    no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
    and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
25 “To whom will you compare me?
    Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
    and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
    not one of them is missing.

Isaiah 40 : 21-26 (NIV)