What toddlers tell us about the law

Deuteronomy 5:1-21, 6:1-9

So, I have a daughter who is nineteen months old. She’s off with mom today at her grandpa’s installation as a pastor in North Dakota, which means, like any good pastor, I’m going to use the opportunity with family not here to talk about my family. I miss Natalie, of course. I miss all sorts of things about her. Her giggles and her cute little grumpy voice and the way that she runs with her arms out and has at least a 30% chance of flopping on her face every time she gets up to speed. I even sort of miss meal times and bed times and waking up times; at least when she’s got that happy little dopey I-slept-the-whole-night-long face.

            Now, I’m no expert on raising this toddler. Mostly, Kate and I figure things out as we go along, but one thing I’ve noticed—that I probably always knew looking back on my old childhood—is that the surest way to make sure our daughter does something is to make sure she knows she is not supposed to do it. Perhaps you have noticed this about children: the more dangerous something is the more obsessed she is with doing it, and if we make a rule against it we are assuring it will become her life’s purpose to… climb on the table, or run into the road, or give the cat a bath…. That was a bad day.

            I shouldn’t be surprised by this, because it’s the oldest story in the history of humankind. Adam and Eve had this problem. Do anything, God told them, except eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do anything! Just not this one thing. Oldest story in the world.

So when we tell Natalie not to touch that hot mug; she’s going to touch it and she’s going to give that little look of shock and use all three syllables to say “Oww—wow—wie.” And then she’s going to look at mom and dad like we betrayed her, as if it is our fault that this hot mug exists. She is more than happy to make decisions—to choose to watch Scooby Doo rather than go to bed, to choose bath time over going to bed, to choose milk over going to bed. OK, well she’s at least good at making one choice, but she’s pretty terrible at avoiding things that will hurt her.

            We know this about toddlers, but we’re less likely to admit how little this changes as we age. Now, we have boundaries, mind you. We only take a dip into doing things we know we shouldn’t do. It’s like a former president saying he took a whiff but he didn’t inhale, or a different former president trying to argue that sex isn’t sex because it’s not really sex. This is so human nature.

            When we read scripture and we come across the law, especially the Ten Commandments that we read today, we imagine that the purpose of these passages is to keep us from doing bad things. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t think bad thoughts. We imagine God like we imagine ourselves as parents telling our children not to do things. The problem with this is that adulthood is not a cure for childhood. What I mean by this is that we all become adults by virtue of getting older, and that’s maybe worthy of some congratulations. Congrats, you are still alive! But that doesn’t mean we grow out of becoming children. We are all children of God, regardless of age, and some of us have more than a little child in us even in adulthood.

We all have at least a little of that childish defiance in us. So, even though as adults we know what the commandments are for—to remind us what it looks like to follow God and be a good neighbor—we still tend to reach for whatever it is that we know we shouldn’t have. It’s not enough to know that if we take something from somebody our relationship with that person will suffer. It’s not enough to know that if we commit adultery we have broken a relationship of trust that is not easily healed. We already know all these things. We even know deep inside ourselves—even if we don’t want to admit it—that that business about Sabbath is important too, because we are human beings and we need rest.

            The Ten Commandments don’t tell us anything we don’t know, but they do convict us as guilty, and really that’s their primary point. We have the advantage of living several thousand years since Moses and so we know we have a Savior in Jesus who is needed to right our sinful selves, but the primary reason we know we are sinful at all is because of scripture like this. The law condemns us… then it drives us to Jesus. These are the two essential purposes of the law, and for those 9^th graders and parents who were in Confirmation last Wednesday I know you’re thinking, “Oh geez, not this again.”

            So, let’s take a slightly different tack today. Instead of only focusing on what the law does and why the law is needed, I want to talk about what is the most important point of the law. Firstly, I suppose I should point out that there is a most important point in the law. When Jesus is asked to sum up God’s law he doesn’t say, “Oh, all of it is equally important.” No, he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” And then he adds, “And Love your neighbor as yourself.” Two commandments: Love God, love your neighbor. The rest, we might say, is commentary.

            This is the Ten Commandments from a different perspective, because loving God is not the same as not doing bad things. The law still condemns us. To say it plainly, none of us love God perfectly and none of us love our neighbors perfectly. But this shall always be your guiding principle.

            Now, I get that we all have different ideas about how to love. Tough love. Preferential love. The love of a brother. Erotic love. All of these are different. But, at the end of the day, love is the guiding principle not because of how great we are at loving God or one another, but because of how great God is at loving us. We don’t fulfill the demands of the law, because they require us to be like Jesus, to be perfect. Instead, we receive this gift of love that comes from God, and this is why Jesus reframes the law in terms of love. He loves us so much. He loves us more than I love my daughter; more than you love your children or grandchildren. It doesn’t seem possible, because in those relationships we find ourselves most closely attuned to what love truly is, but still we’re not there. Still, we are in need of something better.

            The law of love leaves us yearning for something more complete. The knowledge that we can’t perfectly protect the ones that we love leaves us desperate for a fix for our vulnerability. Our human nature betrays our fears of what may happen. So we live in a world that talks about law as if we just could get it right then we’d be safe, then the bad guys would be put in their place, then our children would be guaranteed the life we imagine for them. But what in human nature suggests that is the case?

            As long as toddlers reach for hot things, climb to the tallest point on the flimsiest tables, and let go of their parents hands the second they walk out in the road, we are subject to a deeper law; a law that reminds us that we are mortal and in need of something—a Savior—to make it right. We need Jesus, because Jesus shows us how to love. And we know we need this because the law tells us what we already know: we are imperfect.