Some people like to flaunt their faith, hoping to gain approval in the eyes of others or of God. But God is less interested in the flaunting of faith, and more concerned with us living out our faith with integrity and compassion.
Many years ago, a church member told his pastor, Phillip Brooks (the composer of O Little Town of Bethlehem), of his intention to visit Mount Sinai. He told Brooks, “I plan to climb to the top of that mountain. When I get there, I will read aloud the Ten Commandments.”
Thinking this would impress his pastor, he was surprised by Brooks’ reply, “You know, I can think of something even better than that.”
The parishioner responded, “You can, Pastor? And what might that be?”
“Just this. Instead of traveling thousands of miles to read the Ten Commandments, why not stay at home and keep them?”
What is the value of keeping the Ten Commandments? In her novel about Maine, The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sara Orne Jewett tells of a woman walking up a hill to visit the home of retired sea captain Elijah Tilley. She notices a number of stakes scattered randomly about the property, painted white and trimmed in yellow, to match the captain’s house, but placed in no discernible pattern. Curious, she asks Captain Tilley about them. He explains that when he first plowed the ground, his plow snagged on many large rocks just beneath the surface. He set the stakes where the rocks lay to avoid them in the future. In essence, God has given us the Ten Commandments with the message, “These are the trouble spots in life. Avoid them, and you won’t snag your life.”
What are we to do with the Ten Commandments? Your knee jerk answer might be that we are to obey them, with a dictionary understanding of obey as “to comply with the command.” But the spiritual truth goes much deeper than mere compliance with a set of rules.
Robin Smit points out that there is no word properly translated as obey in the Hebrew Scriptures. The closest word you can find is shema, which means “listen” or “hear.” The King James Bible translated shema as “hearken,” which is actually a wonderful translation, for it implies that we are to listen with intent or to listen with our heart and mind and soul.
Interestingly, our English word obey derives from the Latin word oboedire, which consists of the prefix ob, meaning “toward,” and the root word audire, meaning “to hear.” Literally, to obey is to listen toward. In other words, to obey is actually to hearken toward.
Our attitude toward the Ten Commandments should not be just to comply with a set of rules or to fulfill an obligation or even to avoid the snags, but to hearken toward how God is leading us, to listen to God’s directions to us with our heart and mind and soul.