Israel’s God commands. Walter Brueggemann calls command the “defining and characteristic marking” of the true God. The most striking characteristic of communication between God and Israel is that of command-obedience. Because we live in a culture where submission to any authority other than our own egos is considered unduly authoritarian and unfair, command-obedience is difficult for us. We have freed ourselves from all external authority except servitude to the self. This we hail as freedom, though Israel testifies that slavery (particularly slavery as the necessity to do “what I want to do”) comes in many guises.
Sometimes slavery comes from Pharaoh, who ordered, “Go and get straw yourselves, wherever you can find it; but your work will not be lessened in the least” (Exodus 5:11).
Sometimes slavery comes from an economy that says, “Buy a lot of Pepsi, get a lot of stuff.”
So the issue is not if we shall live under some external command, but rather which external command will have its way with us.
Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, The Truth About God, pages 26-27
Tag: Stanley Hauerwas
Excerpt #38: America and the Ten Commandments
We cannot understand the commandments, the Decalogue (“Ten Words”), apart from the worship of the true God. Those who do not worship that God will catch a glimpse of that God when they, for example, tell the truth. But the obeying of an isolated commandment is not to know the commandments “perfectly.” The Ten Commandments are meant for those who are known by the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ. The commandments are the way we learn to worship the true God truthfully, not the way we make American democratic pluralism work.
[…]
The commandments are not guidelines for humanity in general. They are a countercultural way of life for those who know who they are and whose they are. Their function is not to keep American culture running smoothly, but rather to produce a people who are, in our daily lives, a sign, signal, a witness that God has not left the world to its own devices.
Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, The Truth About God, pages 14, 18
the commandments as politics
The commandments are our distinctive way of doing politics – the formation of a truthful community (i.e., church). Of course, this is the way God would have all creatures live, so we believe that life in the commandments is evangelistic. It is our privilege as Christians to exemplify a life that is possible for all and, if in our living of the commandments our neighbors are attracted to Christ on the basis of our lives so formed, so much the better.
Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, The Truth About God, page 19
A good reminder for Christians on this Election Day: our politics are not defined by left or right, by conservative or liberal. Our politics are found in Scripture, and that includes the commandments, which suggest a particular shape for our lives.
Justin DaMetz 