Ethics and Ethos of Commandments
March 10, 2009It’s been a few weeks since my last post. Here’s the lastest.
Last week in the Scriptures we saw the elements necessary in establishing and living our covenant with God as shown through Abraham. Trust, obedience, and sacrifice not only are the elements that lead us to true worship and transfiguration, but are also the elements that lead us to personal transformation; conversion of the heart. If we remove our trust in God, then we perceive him as a “tyrant” and no longer worthy of our trust. We then will fight instead of obey and sacrifice or worship will be replaced by selfishness and idolatry.
In this week’s readings we are presented with the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ desire to purify the temple area. He goes on to make reference to his body by saying, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” He was speaking prophetically about the temple of his body, and for that matter, the bodies, minds, and souls of us all. It was a prophetic statement of his suffering, death, and resurrection; and again of ours. It is precisely this reflection on the theologies of our bodies that holds the key to understanding the Ten Commandments and properly re-orients our hearts toward conversion and proper sacrifice and worship. Much of the following comes from the writings of Pope John Paul II and the work of Christopher West.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt. 5: 27-28). The heart is our deeper interior self where we experience the forces of good and evil fighting and competing against each other. Christ’s words are not so much a condemnation of the human heart, but a calling; they show “how deep down it is necessary to go” to fulfill the law of the Gospel. Are we to fear the severity of [Christ’s] words, or rather have confidence in their power to save? The heritage of our hearts “is deeper than the sinfulness inherited, deeper than lust. … The words of Christ … reactivate that deeper heritage and give it real power in our life” (TOB 168). His words “demand, so to speak, that we enter our full image” (TOB 107). We “must perceive anew the lost fullness of our humanity and want to regain it” (TOB 159). A person cannot rise again until he/she realizes that they have fallen and are in need of a savior.
Pope John Paul II develops this thought with reflections upon Ethics and Ethos. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:20). “You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Mt. 23:26). We all know it is possible to follow rules without ever attaining holiness. It’s called “legalism” or “moralism.” “Ethos” refers to a person’s inner world of values; what attracts and repulses him. In effect, Christ’s teaching about lust expresses this: You’ve heard the objective law and what it calls you to externally. Now I tell you what this means subjectively – what it calls you to internally. In other words, “You’ve heard the ethic. Now I tell you the ethos.” In the new “ethos of redemption,” through ongoing conversion of heart, the subjective desires of the heart gradually come in harmony with the objective norm. “It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandments by imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart,” namely mercy (CCC. 2842). Laws are for disordered hearts; once in conformity there is no longer need for the law.
“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt. 5:17). If “you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal. 5:18). Christ did not come to give us more “rules” to follow, but to change our hearts so that we could “fulfill the law.” In effect Christ says, “You’ve heard the commandment not to commit adultery, but the problem is you desire to commit adultery.” The goal is to interiorly discover freedom of our desires. In the Sermon on the Mount “the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desires, those inner movements that animate our lives (CCC 2764).
As I stated above, when God is conceived as a jealous tyrant, we are goaded to do battle against Him so as not be to enslaved. Faith leads to “receptivity” before God; lack of faith leads to “grasping.” Humanity has two dispositions before God: receptivity or grasping.
“Questioning in our hearts the deepest meaning of the donation, that is, love as the specific motive of the creation and of the original covenant, we turns our back on God-love, on ‘the Father.” In a way, he cast Him out of his heart (TOB 111). John Paul II states that “This is truly the key for interpreting reality … Original sin, then, attempts to abolish fatherhood” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p 228). “Christ, through the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear”(Gaudium et Spes 22). If original sin is the denial of the gift, “faith, in its deepest essence, is the openness of the human heart to the gift: to God’s self-communication in the Holy Spirit” (Dominum et Vivificantem, n. 51). It is Original sin and its consequences in our lives that precisely continue to break down the body from within. Jesus saw this in the money changers in the temple and sees it today in us. This is what causes Jesus’ righteous indignation and invitation. Restore the concepts of trust, obedience and sacrifice and we will find ourselves living not just the letter of the law spelled out in the commandments but in a true “God-given” ethos that leads us to liberation and in right relationship before God. This is precisely what God covenanted with us in His Son Jesus Christ and is the very heart of true worship.
