If God Doesn't Control, Why Does the Bible Have So Many Rules?
This post is a response to an incisive comment from Saving Faith subscriber, Frances Dahlenburg.
Frances asked, if God is not controlling, then why does the Bible have so many rules? Why do many of those rules forbid people from using their free will, even to resist others who misuse and abuse their free will to commit harm?
This is an incredibly insightful question. Open and Relational Theology suggests that God’s loving nature determines how God exercises power — it is uncontrolling, not dictatorial. Yet this belief seems contradictory to Scripture’s many prescriptions and prohibitions. How can ORT square these things?
Let’s examine the first two of the Ten Commandments and how they plays out in the Exodus.
The First and Second Commandments
The Ten Commandements begin with:
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”
Then in Exodus 32, the Israelites create the infamous Golden Calf as an idol to worship in place of Yahweh:
He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
God gave clear rules against idolatry. But God did not prevent the Israelites from practicing idolatry anyway. They had, and abused, genuine free will.
Then God sent Moses to correct the people instead of mind-controlling them. God exercised uncontrolling, relational influence rather than dictatorial control.
Enforcing the rules takes a backseat to free will.
The Rest of the Bible
What about the other 600-plus laws in the Hebrew Bible and the slew of moral advice in the New Testament?
Going through more examples would further prove the argument above. Many examples come to mind in which God gave a rule but then allowed people to choose whether to follow it. Indeed, the existence of the rules implies free will.
This suggests that God is uncontrolling by nature, choice, or both.
Further, all of the prescriptions and prohibitions in the Bible should be interpreted contextually. Many laws and admonishments were intended for particular people in a specific time and place; they weren’t necessarily intended for us today.
That doesn’t mean we can’t find wisdom in the spirit of the laws and admonishments, the purpose underneath them. But it does mean that the Bible is not a rulebook but instead a guide to wisdom.
Not to mention, much of the Bible points toward what not to do. It requires wise reading to recognize that many Biblical laws, customs, and “heroes” should not be emulated.
The wisest reading is a Christ-centered reading. Would Jesus command genocide? No. So, does God actually command genocide in the Hebrew Bible, or did an Iron Age people portray God as doing so? A Christ-lens reveals the best interpretation for then and for us today.
We Are Free
We are free, then, to interpret the Bible contextually and determine the spirit behind its laws and morality. We are free to adopt a Christ-lens for understanding Scripture and determining what wisdom it offers for us today.
And we are free to believe in God’s uncontrolling love. Even the Bible tells us so.
We aren't puppets or mindless creatures. We should use our reason, our experience and our traditions to determine which prescriptions are still beneficial for today and try to live as Christ would have us live.
God's "moral code" is a suggestion - like a social contract - to me, it is prescriptive - a design for living. Of course, humans are free to ignore it or follow it only in part. Believers gather to learn to practice this design together - in community and in the world. The Old Testament is full of examples of God setting out a way to live and people veering off that path. When they come back, God is there - loving them, showing them the way. "This is the way," God says - and we are free to do with that information what we will.