(Lev 19:18 KJV) Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.
The problem with any rule or law is that they are always made in a certain context and are usually generalisations which suit no-one but an elected or self appointed corporate governing body. Just recently a debate arose again about when a mother should stop breast feeding her child. Seriously, how can any body (or woman for that matter) legislate on the time another mother should stop breast feeding her child… when by the grace of God and natural selection, every woman and every child are unique?
It is important that we personally ‘feel’ and obey the rule of God and nature and not mentally adopt these appointed authorities generalisations by wrote. As Solomon is attributed to having once wisely written: (Eccl 3:1 KJV) To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
The best humanity can ever hope to achieve is an alignment with the seasons and purposes of heaven…. This requires feeling and faith… not law….. Law is a substitute (cop out) for the unfeeling and the unfaithful. Truth is, dependency on the law usually causes an ever increasing abdication of individual responsibility with continual contextual confusion and corruption. Despite (and in many ways because of) our technological ‘advancements’, handheld communications and social networks… we see an increasing disconnection between neighbours. Just as the automobile resulted in the demise of the neighbourly greeting with the exclusive family bubble on wheels… We see the great information highway creating faster exclusive communication between friends, family and strangers…
We also see a complete neglect of local neighbourly interaction and contact. Just yesterday a very neglected 2 year old child was found trapped inside a house for 3 days with her dead mother and the only reason the situation came to light was because one neighbour just happened to notice the washing had not been taken in for many days and she phoned the pastor of the local church, who uncovered the situation.
Travelling on any public transport system into the City these days, you will find many people freely talking or sending messages on their handheld communication devices to people on the other side of the world and yet unable to communicate with the person sitting next to them. On the one hand we have globalisation and on the other hand we have local dysfunction and to be honest…. Which is more important…. What is happening on the other side of the world that you can do nothing about… or what is happening to your neighbour that you can do something about?
Globalisation has become another spectator sport, watching people killing one another, or starving to death on the other side of the world. Throwing some money at Charities to unburden our conscience in the hope that somehow ‘money’ will magically fix the problems our ways have created… Meanwhile the person sitting next to you is quietly starving, but you have no idea, because somewhere along our intellectual and technological way, we lost the second commandment to “love our neighbour”…
(Mat 22:37-40 KJV) Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
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