16 The Cement of Society
The Cement of Society
So far, we have treated the Commandments as God’s address to the individual (“you”), whereby he isolates us from the crowd in which our identity would otherwise be sunk and requires of us responsible personal reaction to what he says. This is a true view of them, but it is not the whole truth. For the “you” whom God first addressed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 was Israel corporately, the nation-family which he had redeemed (“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out . . . ”). And what God was teaching was his will not only for individual Israelites, but also for Israel’s community life.
This too is truth for us, because it is truth for humanity as such. God made us to live in societies—family, church, body politic, the communities of business and culture—and the Commandments show God’s social ideal, as well as his purpose for individuals. Indeed, the furthering of good order in society was for the Reformers, as we noted earlier, the first use of the law.
The Way of Stability
What is God’s ideal? A God-fearing community, marked by common worship (1, 2, 3) and an accepted rhythm of work and rest (4), plus an unqualified respect for marriage and the family (5, 7), for property and owner’s rights (8, 10), for human life and each man’s claim on our protection (6), and for truth and honesty in all relationships (9).
God’s concern for communities must not be thought of as second to his concern for individuals (the way our own concern so often shapes up), for in him the two concerns are organically one. This is clear from the way in which the Old Testament repeatedly sums up his promise, which was Israel’s hope, in one treasure-chest word, shalom. Shalom, translated “peace,” proves when unpacked to mean, not just freedom from war and trouble, sin and irreligion, but also justice, prosperity, good fellowship, and health, and all-round communal well-being under God’s gracious hand.
Modern Western Christians, who have been conditioned by their culture to wear the blinkers of a rationalistic individualism, and who are constantly being deafened by the clamor of humanists, for whom society’s whole purpose is to extend the individual’s range of choices, may find the unity of God’s concern for the-individual- in-community and the-community-of-individuals hard to see. But that is our problem. Other generations could see it, and in Scripture the matter is clear.
So God’s Commandments are in truth cement for society. It is clear that where these values are acknowledged, communities (our own, for instance, in the past) hold together, even in this fallen world; but in proportion as these values are negated, society falls apart. This can be learned both from the paganized world of injustice and revolution which was the northern kingdom of Israel (trace its sad story in 1 Kings 12-2 Kings 17, and the prophecies of Amos and Hosea), and also from the revolutions and counterrevolutions that rack the world today.
The Secular State
Till recently most Western nations saw themselves as a continuation of medieval Christendom—that is, as social and political entities with corporate Christian commitments and ideals for living which, at least in intention, were controlled and shaped by Scripture. But now this ideal is being displaced by that of the secular state—a community that is officially without any religion or ideology save that of maximizing freedom for citizens to pursue as individuals whatever interests, religious or otherwise, they happen to have.
The change is gradual, and so the issue it raises is to some extent masked; but it is important to get it clear. Christian civilization, with its concern for the individual’s health, welfare, and dignity, for integrity in public administration, and for a family life in which womanhood is honored and children’s claims acknowledged, is a distinctively Christian product. Western society today is busily secularizing these concerns—that is, detaching them from their historic rootage in Christian faith, and dismissing that faith as no longer a viable basis for community life. For the moment, Western society seems so caring and compassionate that some view the secular city of today as the modern form of the kingdom of God. But, true as it is that through God’s common grace good moral insights are regularly found among fallen men, Christian standards and values cannot last in a society that has corporately apostatized from Christian faith.
Judgment
Why is this? Not only because denying the absolutes of faith undercuts moral absolutes too (though indeed it does), but also because moral corruption and the misery it brings are part of God’s judgment on apostasy. “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct,” says Paul, and continues with a sample catalog of horrors that reads like a summary of the news in this morning’s paper (Romans 1:28-31). Our much-vaunted “permissiveness” is actually a matter of divine curse, as was the idiotically cheerful lawlessness of Jeremiah’s day. What thoughtful person can look ahead without a shudder?
What then should we say of the modern secular society? Should we see its emergence as a sign of progress? Is it not rather a sign of decadence, the start of a slide down a slippery slope with a pit at the bottom? When God’s values are ignored, and the only community ideal is permissiveness, where will moral capital come from once the Christian legacy is spent? How can national policy ever rise above material self-interest, pragmatic and unprincipled? How can internal collapse be avoided as sectional interests, unrestrained by any sense of national responsibility, cut each other down? How can an overall reduction, indeed destruction, of happiness be avoided, when the revealed way of happiness, the “God first, others next, self last” of the Commandments, is rejected? The prospects are ominous. May God bring us back to himself, and to the social wisdom of his Commandments before it is too late.
Further Bible Study
Dynamics of the permissive society:
Romans 1:18-32
Analysis of the apostate society:
Isaiah 1, 3, 5
Questions for Thought and Discussion
Do you agree that the Commandments are meant for societies as well as individuals? Why or why not?
Does a society’s attitude to the Commandments affect its future? In what way?
What replaces the Commandments in the secular state? With what result?