Is Robin Hood a Good Example of Living By A Higher Law?

QUESTION: So this is a theoretical question from my recent read of Robin Hood... I know technically he is stealing and breaking a core commandment, but he is also seeking after justice, trying to right the wrongs of another sort of thief, one which abuses those who are powerless to defend.  We have in D&D the concept of alignment. How one views laws of the land or society - from "lawful" to neutral to "chaotic". And also how one views the "laws" of life... Good, neutral, evil.  Robin Hood is the typical Chaotic Good archetype, seeing the laws of their present governments as corrupt and living by a higher law. But what does God say about this?  Thoughts?

RESPONSE:  I tend to look at core moral principles as inviolable, regardless of context, because from a Christian point of view, these laws are the very things that define goodness being derived from God's own nature. Therefore they are always right, even if it turns out wrong, and their neglect is always wrong, even if it turns out right.

I think Paul agrees with this when he responds to slanderers who accuse him of preaching lawlessness so that God gets more glory. He resists this "bad can lead to good" accusation by saying, 

Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just! Romans 3:8 

In other words, it is never right to say or do something evil, that good may result.  Ends do not justify the means.  I know there's lots of talk about situational ethics, and plenty of moral thought experiments where the ends seem to justify the means.  But the beauty of tying ethics to God is that there we find bedrock principles from which there can be no "progression"; no context, no subjective narrative, no relativity, just goodness. 

Now, you mention the laws of the land, which can fit into different boxes.  I fundamentally agree with this kind of evaluation.  There are laws above our laws.  Martin Luther King, who advocated civil disobedience, once said,

“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’" - MLK

He's exactly right.  So the laws I'm thinking of are those just laws, whose justification lies in the very nature of God which is fair, benevolent and just.  About these laws, I think of them very much like I think about the truth and the beauty of math. The right formula is elegant and symmetrical and simple, but its beauty is not soft, not squishy, it's not indulgent of any imperfection, diminution, or flexibility. 

Robin Hood's stealing, which violates as you said,  a "core commandment" or as MLK put it, a "just law", only seems justifiable to us in a world marked by total brokenness. So it can seem expedient that wrongs chase other wrongs to mitigate them or reverse them.  The problem with RH is the same problem that occurs every time we attempt to right a wrong, but we find the thing standing in our way is a moral principle. That problem is our own hubris.

I would point out that the justification for Robin Hood is built on a presumption which his advocates rarely acknowledge: we presume to be sufficient judges of the ends, and also sufficiently in control that we know when to violate a transcendent moral principle and when not to. I mean here principles such as right to life, equality, fairness, truthfulness, respect, human rights.  We imagine that we know when and exactly how much we may violate these, in order to bring in a "greater good". This seems to me, to be God's territory alone. 

And surprisingly, God does what he asks us to do, for he has bound himself to himself, even if some more expedient course seems fairer/better.  Scripture says:

"If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself." 2 Timothy 2:13.

What a fascinating way for Paul to put it!  He cannot disown himself.  Put the two words together and you'll see how stunning this language is.  "God" + "cannot".  Unlike our Muslim friends, there are many things Christians believe God CANNOT do.  And apparently, among these is the disowning of himself.  What does this mean?  

God, Paul says, cannot separate himself from his own good character, as if it was a mere expedient that he made outside himself, which he can manipulate, alter or ignore at will, like the physical laws of the universe.  The irony about laws is that we cannot break physical laws but we can break moral laws.  God is the opposite, God can break physical laws (we call this the miraculous) but he cannot break moral laws which are lodged intrinsically within himself.

Christians envision a Judge of the Universe who is perfect, precisely because that's who he IS, not merely what he chooses to do most of the time or promote in us.  Thus, he is bound in some sense, to himself.  He cannot himself do evil, that good may result . Because that would mean disowning himself.  This "inability" in God, includes being bound to the good moral principles by which he made us.  He is bound by himself into a covenant of non-coercion with us, because the love at the heart of himself and our purpose to love him back demands freedom.

So we see in God the unwillingness - the inability even - to violate the good principle of our free will, even if such violations would achieve the end of all human suffering. All God has to do is snap his fingers like Thanos and make the world good again, or go away altogether.  But he will not, because he cannot!  Not because he lacks the power, but because the Judge running things won't violate goodness (himself) in order to do good!

Yet we act as if we have more knowledge or control than God when we act like Robin Hood. Take affirmative action. I think it was judge Roberts who said, "finally the only way to stop treating people differently because of race, is to stop treating people differently because of race."  Just one example where we've found this to be true: you don't fix wrongs with other (well motivated) wrongs. In fact, we make things worse. 

This is true in banking, where all the rules that were gamely fixed by smart men prior to the collapse of 2008 - men who just about brought the world system to its knees - were all rules first designed to solve some perceived Injustice. They were rules like those allowing (demanding!) people with crappy credit to get mortgages.  Those rules were all about "giving" to the poor; ostensibly to help others and do good, by violating some principle of goodness, like truthfulness in reporting income or credit score or the value of MBS.

Then, as we all saw, in a terrible reversal of Robin Hood, our violations of truth and fairness in the name of good, wound up stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Same thing for the oligarchic powers who at the same time declared, "we must violate the principles of the free market to save the free market."  If some core moral principle lies beneath free markets (and I believe one does), then this was wrong even if it "turned out right" - and some might quibble that the world system being "saved" means things turned out right.  Delayed an inevitable and horrible day of reckoning may be be much closer to the truth, and kicking this can down the road for our children or grandchildren to eventually deal with, exposes us as reprobates, not Robin Hoods.

Isn't Eden our best example? "Eat the forbidden fruit, get your eyes opened, know Good from Evil" - which had to be a good thing, right??  Isn't knowledge always progress? No!!  Not if it's gotten the wrong way. Isn't more equity always right? No!!  Not if it's gotten the wrong way. 

Isn't this also what the last century of socialist experiments taught us? Take over the means of production by any means possible - Robin Hood writ large, encoded into political philosophy - to get us some more equality!! 100 years later, 100 million dead and counting.

OR, we could do what we can lawfully to bring more equity, while humbly submitting to that transcendent goodness behind: "thou shalt not steal." (Exodus 20:15)  And trust God with what results.

Why Don't Christians Honor The Sabbath?

QUESTION: I’m a Christian, but one of my big unanswered questions is this: why don’t we honor the Sabbath?  It’s a commandment and it’s NOT SUNDAY – Sunday is a Pagan holiday!

ANSWER: I actually agree that we should honor the Sabbath as an ongoing part of the moral law.  However, I think that the controversy about how we honor it and when, stems from the fact that Jesus said things that altered the believer’s relationship with the Sabbath.

For example, by the time of Jesus ministry, the Sabbath had turned into rules upon rules that forbade anything one might deem “work”.  So one Rabbi said (this is not a joke) that he wouldn’t eat an egg on the Sabbath because that meant a chicken had been working!  

Into this legalistic world Jesus disciples were walking along one day and ate some wheat they found at the edge of a field.  The Pharisees were stunned.  This violated the Sabbath because to them it constituted ‘threshing’.  Jesus responded in defense of his followers by pointing to two times in Scripture when ceremonial laws were violated with God’s specific permission, both times violations of Temple procedure. Then He says this shocking thing: 

Matt 12:6-8: “But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here! 7 If you had known what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

This is amazing on a couple levels.  One, it seems Jesus is preparing the ground for the Church to abandon the ceremonial laws of the Torah.  He does this on several other occasions, like when Mark says that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19) or when Jesus mentioned there were “weightier matters in the law” which related to its MORAL duties as opposed to its ceremonial duties (Matt 23:23).

Two, Jesus in this teaching is putting himself higher than the Temple!  And in so doing, declares that He is over the Law!  And he was clearly reserving the right to reinterpret the law and tell us what parts of Moses are being prepared to be laid aside.

As a result of Jesus, every Christian now believes that much of the Mosaic code is no longer in force for believers.  We do however, carry forward the moral demands of the Law as a guide for discipleship (even as we realize no one is saved by obeying the law, for no one is able to, Rom 3:20-21).

This leaves us with the critical question: is the Sabbath part of the ongoing moral demands of the Law, like do not murder, etc, or is it part of the ceremonial laws which Jesus clearly lifted?  This question is the heart of the controversy about the Sabbath.

Some believe that all obligation to Sabbath keeping is nullified in Jesus words.  John MacArthur just made a pretty strong case about that, if you want to check out his sermon online.  But I don’t agree totally with him.  I think that all 10 of the 10 commandments are the objective definition of loving behavior toward God and toward our fellow man.  If so, there must be an ethical/moral imperative that remains for Christians who are not saved by that Law, but who nevertheless are called to walk in love, which the Law defines.  I believe therefore, that the Sabbath command is part of the obligation we have to love God and love ourselves.

Jesus in fact would say love is the moral force behind the Sabbath when he said in Mark 2:27-28:

“The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath is for us!  We are not made to be slaves to Sabbath rules, rather the idea of rest is built into creation and moral law so that Sabbath serves us!

So if this is an ethical demand that carries forward and it is for us rather than us made to come under a bunch of Sabbath rules, this poses a new question:  does this mean we are free to change the means by which we obey the Sabbath?  Can we find and obey the ethical demand inside the commandment, even if the rigid rules around the Sabbath, which Jesus clearly rejected, are discarded?  I think the answer to that is yes!

I say this because already in the early church, you see them meeting on “the First day of the Week”.  That’s Sunday.  They were mostly all Jews, so that didn’t mean that they were not also observing the Sabbath on Saturday.  But it does mean that already within the first generation of Christians, the worship of God and the observance of rest and reflection was transferring Sabbath qualities onto a different day.

To add to this elasticity about the Sabbath, Paul asked Gentiles to be patient with Jews who considered some specific Days sacred, but Paul clearly was not critical of those who didn’t observe those special Sabbaths which Moses commanded (Rom 14:5).  So, already in the early church, Jesus' teaching on the Sabbath had lifted some of the specific requirements of Sabbath observance found in Moses.  I think therefore, that Christians have freedom to do Sabbath things (Rest, Reflect, Recreate) on different days and certainly not in subservience to the traditions of the Jews – Jesus made that abundantly clear.

What that means is that the ongoing moral content of the 4th commandment is that we must regularly, about once a week, and for a whole day, just rest.  Jesus modeled this rhythm of rest even as he pushed back hard against Sabbath regulations (Mark 6:31)  By the way, Sabbath doesn’t mean "Saturday" - it means, “pause”.  What’s important is not Saturday, what’s important is rest.

Looking at the creation narrative, rest is actually our default posture before God. When we were created, on the first day of Adam and Eve’s life, they entered into rest!  How awesome is that!  God made us in rest.  We work, yes, and we love productive labor, but rest is what we start in, spiritually and physically.  We launch out of rest into work, rather than see rest as the reward for work.  What a beautiful statement about grace!  Work does not save us.  Grace comes always comes before work.  Adam and Eve started in the grace of rest.

I think Christians who take Jesus teaching, “I am Lord of the Sabbath” to mean that we don’t need to feel a moral obligation to rest anymore are sadly mistaken.  Thankfully we are not saved by our perfect adherence to the moral law, but rather by grace.  Yet, on any of the moral commands that we fail to obey, we are failing to love, for Love summarizes all the law, including the 4th commandment.

However, to think that worshiping and resting on Sunday is to somehow honor a pagan holiday is mistaken as well.  Yes, the first day of the week is named after the Sun by pagans, but Thursday is named after Thor.  I don’t think I’m honoring Thor every time I write that day of the week on letters or emails!  If Paul said we are to have freedom regarding special days, then the day is what you make it.  

And the early Christians didn’t seem to care what the day was named, it happened to be the day that the Lord Jesus rose bodily from the dead!  If it was a "pagan day" before that, God had clearly robbed the gods of their right to that day and declared it His own, by honoring it with the Resurrection of His Son! 

Or do you think that it was for no reason that the “first day of the week” is mentioned so often in Scripture in this regard?  (Matt 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:1, Act 20:7, 1 Cor 16:2)  Scripture shows the early Christians were doing communion, taking offerings, and worshiping on that day, which means they were having sacred Christian gatherings - church services - on that day, already in 58 AD!

So I think you can be at peace about the specific day Christians honor the Sabbath, but do continue to honor the regular, weekly rhythm of rest as part of your duty to love God and love your neighbor as yourself – for Jesus said, God made the rule of rest, for us!

Do We Shorten Our Lives by Being Disobedient?

Thanks for your question.

The Bible has a lot to say about this.  It does not definitively correlate the length of our lives with our obedience.  However, Scripture does say that when we get on God's page, his commandments are for our benefit and flourishing, and thus would be conducive to long life.

This just makes sense.  If God is our Creator then he knows how the human machine runs best and his moral duties and commands are like the operator's manual for ourselves and our lives with others.  And to not follow the manufacturer's instructions would lead to malfunction and shorter life.  So Moses will say about God's commands:

Deut. 5:33:  Follow the whole instruction the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, prosper, and have a long life in the land you will possess.

And again God's promise to Solomon:

1 Kings 3:14:  If you walk in My ways and keep My statutes and commandments just as your father David did, I will give you a long life.”

Again if you find God's wisdom, you conform your life to God's good way and it leads to happy outcomes including longer life:

Prov 3:13-16
Happy is a man who finds wisdom
and who acquires understanding,
14 for she is more profitable than silver,
and her revenue is better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels;
nothing you desire compares with her.
16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left, riches and honor.

Some of these promises should not be considered to be merely the special favor God supernaturally puts on the obedient.  It's that the obedient avoid life shortening behaviors by living God's way which GENERALLY lead to longer life.

For example, the overarching command to love our neighbor as ourselves, means the obedient will not engage in behaviors that abuse themselves or others, which lead to incarceration, or vengeance, addiction, violence, or other bodily harm.  People in Christian medical sharing co-ops pay very reduced monthly premiums.  Why?  Because the people in the pool covenant to not engage in behaviors prohibited in God's Word, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, addictive substances, gluttony.  They all will (on average) live longer, therefore will pay less medical costs because of their obedient lifestyles.

Now, on the other hand, the Bible takes note of the times when the disobedient seem to live long and prosper.  For example:

Jer. 12:1-2: You will be righteous, Lord, even if I bring a case against You.  Yet, I wish to contend with You: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do the treacherous live at ease? 2 You planted them, and they have taken root. They have grown and produced fruit.

And again:

Ps. 73:1-4: God is truly good to Israel, to those whose lives are pure.  2 But my feet had almost stumbled. They had almost slipped because I was envious of arrogant people when I saw the prosperity that wicked people enjoy. 4 They suffer no pain. Their bodies are healthy.

So there are times when those who are disobedient live long and prosper.  It could be that part of their long life is due to the fact that they obey God's design instructions in SOME areas, but they are disobedient in other areas.  For example, they obey the Bible's instructions that relate to physical health, but in their arrogance they are hard-hearted and greedy and cruel.

JP Getty lived a long time - 83 - but he was a man of 4 marriages, sexual immorality, acrimony and conflict in his home, estrangement from his children and a tight-fisted, angry man who once refused the ransom demand for his own kidnapped grandson.  The Bible acknowledges these examples when disobedience DOES NOT correlate to shorter life.

Then, on the opposite side of this, sometimes, the obedient live very short lives. Very recently, a wonderful man, Nabeel Quarishi, a gifted Christian speaker, a medical doctor, a defender of the Christian faith, died.  Stage 4 stomach cancer found last year.  And he was 34, leaving a young wife and a little daughter behind.  Why?  It cannot be because he was flagrantly disobeying God or his good instructions for life.

We don't always know why obedience isn't ALWAYS connected to long life, or disobedience to short life.  But we know that God is generous with everyone, the righteous and the unrighteous.  Jesus said, in Matt 5:45-46: "God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."  It's God's grace to all of us that we live even for the next moment, and the next.  God doesn't owe us a single moment, all of life is a gift.

So with a kind of child-like trust, we entrust to God those situations which do not match, when bad behavior does not correlate to shorter life, or vice versa.  And we can be happy that God is gracious to us all, that in some sense, as measured by the spiritual demands of God's holiness, NONE of us is obedient.  

And so every breath, every moment we live, no matter how long or short, we are living on grace.  None of us has EARNED a long life.  It may be we have done things that on average will lead to a long life, and God's commands and promises should be seen as blessing us that way.  And disobedience can have many natural consequences, some of which are to curtail physical health and longevity.

But the most important thing is that as long as we live, we remember God blessed all us disobedient ones by sending his own Son to extend our lives indefinitely!  I quote the Apostle Paul at length:

Rom 5:7-10: We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. 8 But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.  9 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. 10 If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life!  THE MESSAGE

So the most important thing is that every moment we live we are able to call God our Father, Abba, whether sick or well, old or young, well fed or hungry.  One day, long or short, this life will end.  Then what?  For us in Christ, made new by his forgiving love, true Living only then begins.

Is The Prohibition Against Cross Dressing in Deut. 22:5 Still Valid?

QUESTION: Is Deut 22:5 prohibition on cross dressing no longer a law for Christians since Jesus came and fulfilled the law?  

Deuteronomy 22:5:  A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. NIV

RESPONSE:  You correctly understand that the ceremonial Law of Moses is no longer binding on God’s people.  In fact, the cross lifts all the duties of the Law as a means to be made right with God.  The moral duties, however, remain as a guide for Christian discipleship.  The question for this passage then is, does it fall completely within the ceremonial law which has been abrogated by Jesus work, or is there some moral content which remains that aids Christian maturing?

To find out let’s remember that all the Law is about “being holy as I the Lord am Holy” – and “holy” has a sense of separation as well as moral purity.  So very often, the ceremonial restrictions of the law are about maintaining separateness while there seems to be no moral content to the command itself.  But because a LACK of separation would LEAD to impurity, the two are tied together.

For example, the Israelites were not to shave their heads above the ears (Lev 19:27).  There is no moral content in this command – it’s about hair!  This is ceremonial law with no ongoing responsibility for the Christian believer.  Ah, but if we know the context of ancient Canaanite pagan worship, we see God doesn’t give the command without any moral concern whatsoever. 

In Canaan, many of local priests would shave their heads in devotion to Baal.  So the hair command is about maintaining strict separateness so that Israel will not be like those who worship false gods.  And when we think about all the moral issues that went along with that worship (adultery, family breakdown, disease, prostitution, infanticide), suddenly the weirdly restrictive rules are given a moral imperative.

It’s the same with Deuteronomy 22:5.  A little bit of research reveals that almost every pagan culture has practiced some form of cross-dressing in worship rituals.  Theodore Burgh, in his book “Listening to the Artifacts” said that in ancient Mesopotamia, transvestites, men dressed like women, played and danced in the cult of Ishtar, performing erotic dances and pantomime.

In Canaan religion, their god Baal had a consort, the goddess wife Asherah and worshipers would engage in ritual prostitution with male and female cult prostitutes at hillside shines.  This was to encourage these gods to mate and make the earth fertile.  The Bible indicates that these cult prostitutes has specific dress (2 Kings 10:22; 23:7) for such ceremonies, as they played out the orgies of the gods.

So, the command against cross dressing likely had this in mind.  It was meant to keep Israel away from all practices that had anything to do with pagan worship – which, as mentioned above, led to every kind of evil that destroys people, children and society.

Since we don’t live in Canaan where such pagan rituals thrive, what is there to take from such a command?  First, this command confirms that there is male and female dress codes in all cultures and all times.  Second, this gender dress-coding is independent of the actual styles or modes of dress.  Which is to say that what exactly constitutes male and female dress is a culturally bound thing, but having differences in male/female dress is universal. 

For example, we can’t just think of pants as male, and dresses as female (as my grandma used to think).  Ancient peoples wore robes, both men and women, which to us all look like dresses or skirts, but somehow they knew the difference between male and female robes.  Dress codes change constantly, but everyone in all cultures knows when someone is trying to dress like the opposite gender.

Now, if we don’t follow the dietary restrictions of the Law, should Christians ignore this concern for gender distinction in clothing?  

When it comes to sex and gender Jesus taught us that the lasting moral designs of God are embedded in the creation account… which supersede Mosaic restrictions and permissions (Deut 24:1).  There we see God’s sexual design infused into the duality of human gender, male and female.  He makes us distinctly bifurcated into two and yet both are made in his Image.  So the difference is as sacred as the Image itself.  When Eve is made from Adam, we see God in their diversity – but then this very diversity is blended into a communal oneness of marriage when the “two become one flesh”.

All of this is holy. 

• The Image,
• The separating of the Image into Two,
• The blending of the diverse image bearers into marital oneness again.

This all is holy because it is like God.  God is a unity of diversity.  So any world where one or all of these three things are diminished or denied is a world of weakened human flourishing.  Because it’s a world where the beauty of God’s unity-in-diversity design is marred.

Ironically, the modern doctrine of gender fluidity destroys the beautiful complementarity between the genders, while at the same time invoking the sacredness of gender to do so!!  How?  Well, the message today is that you can pick your gender.  But when you express a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth, everyone knows exactly the mold you must fit into in order to be that gender!

If a man wishes to be a woman, he mustn’t simply declare it.  He knows instinctively what he needs to do to express that gender: soften his skin, surgically shave his brow and chin, acquire breasts, wear softer, more colorful clothing, soften his voice, grow his hair long and paint his nails and face.   In other words he must conform himself to instinctual patterns of femininity.  “Gender is a social construct,” we hear, therefore the line between male and female must be very blurry indeed.  But if we wish to cross that line embrace this ancient gender archetype!

Well, Christians believe that these gender archetypes are so enduring and inescapable precisely because they relate to our spiritual makeup.  Thus masculinity and femininity are sacred because they both, in complementary ways, express the Image of God.  That’s why Christians treat them as inviolable and resist transgenderism (even if we readily acknowledge and have compassion for that real and troubling psychological condition).  God speaks through Nature and human nature is clearly built on male and female, therefore we Christians don’t presume to challenge that or erase what is inerasable.

But it’s not surprising that when cultures suppress this truth, sex starts to become a free for all (see Romans 1).  Ideas have consequences, and if a society carries the idea that sex is not designed and carries no implicit higher meaning, then whatever makes you feel good sexually becomes our only guiding principle.  In such a world, unlimited sexual experimentation would not only be allowed, it would be encouraged because we are now the gods who get to invent meaning.  We get to take this accidental outcome of Nature (sex) and express it however we want (even while we bow to these inbuilt gender archetypes!).

So, we may not live where priests cross-dress to incite sexual intercourse that spills the bounds of committed, monogamous, heterosexual love - but given our current doctrines on gender, perhaps we do live in Canaan after all!  To this extent, Deut 22:5 may not be binding on believers, yet it hints strongly at the beauty and inviolable duality of human gender from Creation.

Now let me be clear:  this doesn’t mean Moses should be used to dictate any particular modes of dress for male or female Christians today.  Styles are very culturally relative and similar modes can have male and female versions.  Even so we affirm gender distinction, expressed in our clothing, built on the sacred masculine and sacred feminine and the dance of Oneness between them.  This duality reflects God back to us so beautifully, Christians cannot go along with  any way of thinking or dressing that intentionally tries to blur it.