The best lies masquerade as self-evident truth. For example, people are to be valued according to their productive capacity.
The code of conduct for the emerging Hebrew nation flies in the face of this pragmatic assessment at every turn. One’s aged parents, potentially a limping, whining, festering drag on forward progress are to be revered. One day a week is to be thrown to the wind against all economic calculation.
You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.
Both pieces of legislated ethics require a choice. One decides to invest love, treasure, and time in just this way, trusting that the long-term outcome of a society where the aged can grow old without watching their back and the strong do not need to worry about being worked to death trumps the short-term upside of blasting through these restraints and, as we say, going for it.
Health, tranquility, life, these things live along this path and not beside its alternative.
YHWH endorses the thing. But even self-interest, if it can be persuaded to push out its horizon beyond its customary myopia, can glimpse the promise of it.
We all, after all, grow old one day or die trying. We all have felt the lash of non-stop exertion.
Truth has its logic, though it runs counter to prevailing winds. Most of what is good requires leaning into the storm
Leave a Reply