Law: 3rd Commandment.
Enforcer: God.
Penalty: Hell.

Charitably, I don't think you are really thinking about what I'm saying, and you are conflating a number of things that are conceptually distinct. For example, if discretionary power of punishment is part-and-parcel of a law-system of penalty enforcement, and to what degree of latitude, if any? Do you, as parent, have the right to imprison your kid for 10 years, for stealing a cookie? Or do you HAVE TO give him on single lash on the bottom with a wet noodle? Or have you been granted a window of discretion in how to deal with the child? That's all part of your scope, and your children are trained to know that range. Or they are trained to know you as arbitrary and unpredictable.

The Mosaic Law was a very thorough legal code, at the top of which was the KING, Jehovah. I was never thinking of the Decalogue in splendid isolation, and I don't think you are correct to do so either. If there was a question about how to handle a specific case, and it needed to be taken up the line, there was gradation of courts, and God at the very top.

Your comments are pertinent, but the answers to them have all been implied by what has already been stated.

__________________
Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


When posting friends, kindly bear those words of earthly wisdom in mind:
Oh, that God the gift would give us
To see ourselves as others see us.
--Robert Burns, 1786 (modernized) ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions? --