You and the Basics: Keeping the Commandments

What is His Law, the Way of the First Covenant? It consists of seven broad commandments, which are actually headings, or categories, of law and guidance.

You shall diligently keep keep the commandments of the Lord your God - Deuteronomy 6:19

All these laws deserve to be described in detail; for a good review of the Law and its sources, go to the book The Rainbow Covenant. We set them out here in broad outline.

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These are the Seven Commandments - the Universal Law, the Noahide Code. God requires every society, everywhere, to enforce the Law's bare requirements, against: 

*committing cruelty against God's creatures in regard to what we eat. This is a dietary commandment with infinitely broader implications than merely the dietary, but at its core it's simple: kill your food before you eat it. You shall not eat any piece of flesh torn from a living animal. For more on this go to the law of the torn limb.

*theft or larceny (including rape and kidnapping).

*murder (including abortion, but this isn't as simple a law as some believe it to be). This includes euthanasia or "mercy killing," as well as suicide.

*certain sexual perversions: including the practice of incest, adultery, and bestiality. (Every society is obligated to prohibit such acts - to outlaw them, and take them out of the realm of the publicly acceptable or generally permitted.)

Acts of male homosexuality are condemned: they are outlawed. Permitting them to become mainstream leads to lewdness in the mainstream. This has nothing to do with not tolerating homosexual men - one should hate the sin but love the sinner - and everything to do with protecting society from what demeans women and destroys civilization. This isn't just a law but a value: acts of male homosexuality (deliberately erotic acts performed by men upon men) aren't just prohibited but "abhorrent" (in Hebrew, to'evah - the same term used for oppressing orphans and widows or making a repulsive sacrificial offering) - Leviticus 18:22.

[This is not to say that practicing gay men are forever doomed. Neither, for that matter, are we saying that every thief is doomed. We are speaking of spiritual impediments and moral wrongs, at the level of the individual. In the public sphere, these wrongful acts are criminal, "abominable," "defiling," socially destructive and destructive of civilization generally. See Leviticus 18. By sexualizing what should not be sexual they interject sex and lewdness into everything.]

*anarchy and lawlessness, or the oppression of the weak by the powerful. This is an example of a law, a prohibition, which requires doing exactly the opposite of what it forbids. Every society is obligated to provide a fully functioning system of courts, police and laws to enforce the Law, including every necessary law. The details of these laws, including matters such as penalties, are for each nation to determine for itself.

Since the ultimate benchmark of what is just and right will always be the Torah, the wiser the nation, the more its legislation will reflect the Torah.

Know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord [HaShem] alone is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none else. - Deuteronomy 4:39

* "blessing" the Name [the holy names of God]." This is actually a prohibition against cursing; the crime is sacrilege, or blasphemy. "Human nature cannot bear blasphemy." (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov). "The most abhorrent of crimes." (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch) This is strictly defined as invective directed against God's Name or Names, it's more generally described - as in the laws of most of America's 50 states, until the 1970's - as "scandalous, impious, obscene or profane libel of or concerning God, offensive to religious minded persons and likely to disturb the public peace." Euphemistically, the Torah calls it "blessing the Name."

The opposite of this crime is sanctifying God's Name. This law teaches us, among other things, that life and the earth are real and that each of is capable of glorifying God or, in the alternative, dragging Him down in the sight of our fellow men.

* strange worship (in Hebrew, avodah zorah; avodah: work, service, or worship service; zorah: weird or strange). This is a prohibition against idolatry, and particularly gilulim or "detestable idolatry." The minimal requirment of this commandment is the legal prohibition of cruel, lewd, disgusting, oppressive, or otherwise destructive acts of so-called worship.

Some people call this a prohibition against idolatry. Idolatry is generally defined legally as physically serving any idol or object of worship other than God, HaShem, Himself. In the context of the Universal Law, it's more a matter of serving anyone or anything in a fashion that denies, ignores, or grossly mischaracterizes God's own utter holiness and goodness.

Obviously, idolatry's opposite is serving and worshipping God, HaShem. He permits no idolatrous baggage at His holy service. To know how to properly serve Him, it helps, greatly, to learn about Him. He has given us good instruction on that very subject in His Torah.

I give you good doctrine, forsake not My Teaching. - Proverbs 4:2

The mercy of the Lord [HaShem] is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's children; to such as keep His covenant, and to those who remember His commandments to do them. - Psalm 103:17-18

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