Life Lessons

When I was a boy I was fascinated by all things Native American and everything that had anything to do with the outdoors. Spending so much time out of doors I was bound to encounter some of the ‘less-than-desirable’ aspects of nature. When I was about twelve I had one such encounter…with poison ivy. I got it all over me! I was miserable for two weeks itching and trying not to scratch. My favorite uncle, who shared my love of outdoors, told me that he knew a sure fire way to never suffer so again. He told me when he was a boy an old Indian woman taught him the secret to avoid my misery. “An old Indian woman”…that got my attention! He told me she taught him to spit on poison ivy and poison oak whenever he saw them in the woods and he would never suffer their ill effects. I had to try that!

Sure enough over the years when I would see poison ivy or oak I would spit on them. And I have never suffered their ill effects since! I guess it was sometime in my early twenties I was backpacking through the woods when I came across a thick patch of the evil weeds and, true to the old Indians teaching, I spat on them. I then walked around the outgrowth and realized in that moment that every time I had spat on the plants over the years I walked around them. I had to smile at my uncles’ wisdom. He knew that if I would consciously identify the plants I would avoid them and their ill effects. The spitting was just a way to get me to pay attention. I have wondered over the years if there ever really was an old Indian woman. My uncle has long since been dead but I owe him so much for the things he taught me and the ways he did it. That was just one of many things…

I have long suspected that God has attempted to teach us in a similar fashion. He didn’t try to explain to the ancient Israelis that bacteria was the cause of many communicable diseases, He simply gave them laws of sanitation and quarantine and ordered them to follow the law or be cut off from their people. They observed those directives in a ritualized manner for centuries. During the Bubonic Plague in Europe, in the mid fourteenth century, it is estimated that 25 million people, about a third of the total population, died from the disease. The bacteria was carried by rats but the fleas that infested them transmitted it to humans. Once in humans it spread rapidly.

The Jews were the segment of the population least infected by the outbreak. Many Christians accused them of an international conspiracy to kill Christians since they didn’t seem to be so devastated by the plague. But the Jews were simply observing the laws of sanitation and quarantine that had been passed down for centuries as a part of their faith. When the cause of the disease became understood centuries later the importance of sanitation and quarantine practices began to be understood more widely. Had the Jews not practiced the laws that had been revealed to them in the Bible they would have been just as devastated as the rest of the population of Europe.

Our Creator wove spiritual laws into the fabric of the universe just as He wove physical laws into it. Human beings seem to intuitively know that we need to live in harmony with the universe we are a part of. We sense, on a semi-conscious level, that to fulfill our ultimate purpose we must find a way to live in harmony with the laws of Creation. To the extent that we obey those laws we are blessed because we are in harmony with the fundamental operations of the universe. Ultimately every religion teaches some form of this concept. Though our understanding of why may be lacking…God has revealed the ‘what’ to us.

Parents universally teach their children what to do before attempting to teach them why. As the children grow up they learn the whys. Just like a child may want to eat only deserts at a meal, a wise parent knows better than to let them because to do so would eventually harm them. What is needed is a more balanced nutritional approach…even if it must be forced at first. Sometimes to to encourage their children to eat more nutritionally, parents give their children a reason to that may not be related to "just because it's good for you". In a like manner the Israelites would not have been ready for understanding the real purpose behind some of their laws had it been given to them, but they did understand..."if you don't do it, you'll be cut off from your people". The Christian population of Europe had flat out rejected the very knowledge that had been handed down to them in the form of scripture. They threw out the very thing that could have saved many of their lives.

God’s laws were given for our good, some were given to aid in our understanding of spiritual things and some to ensure that the physical, psychological, and social aspects of our lives would be in harmony with the way the universe works. We may not know why some of His laws were given and we may never be able to find their ultimate purpose in this life. An element of faith is always present in the practice of religion. Perhaps to have faith is also to live in harmony with a fundamental law of creation.

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the three great Western religions who base their respective faiths on a body of scripture, there is the additional element of obedience or submission to the will of our Creator. Some laws revealed in scripture may simply exist for the purpose of teaching us obedience. To yield one’s own desires to the laws of God is a true act of worship. To reject those laws is to find ourselves outside of the harmony of creation...dis-ease and death often follow. Our understanding of some of those laws has grown and our observance of them may no longer be necessary because they’ve taught those who have obeyed them the lessons they were intended to teach. Often times, in our stubbornness, we have rebelled against the laws of God because we, like the average seventeen year old, think we already know better. The Christian population of Europe during the Black Plague didn’t think the laws of sanitation and quarantine were any longer necessary because they ‘knew better’. They were privy to the same body of scriptures that the Jews they hated were privy to. The Christians rejected obedience to those laws and they paid a heavy price.

Christians today argue over what parts of the law bind us. We believe many are unnecessary because we ‘know better’. What I have come to wonder is whether we have indeed learned the lessons the law was meant to teach us? Like my experience with poison ivy in my youth, perhaps we should simply obey the advice of a much wiser source and err on the side of obedience rather than rashly disregarding it. If we really believe it's for our own good...what could it hurt? It could be that what is has to teach us…we have not learned yet.