When Following the Rules Becomes Breaking Them

The thing about reading Exodus is that it starts out with the story of Moses and all the excitement of crossing the Red Sea and then moves into the series of Laws which carries over into the book of Leviticus which is basically a rule book. Whenever I read this I have a few reactions, for one I get bogged down in reading, and two I think to myself how hard it would be to follow every law. There are about 30-40 chapters of laws, that’s a lot of rules! That would be extremely hard to follow every single one, so hard in fact that you would eventually start to focus more on the laws then where they come from. And that is what the Pharisees did; they focused so hard on each law that they eventually forgot the number one law, “You shall have no other gods before ME”, Exodus 20:3. The Pharisees were so absorbed with being like God that they forgot why they were doing it in the first place- to be closer to Him and in the end they never focused on Him and instead alienated themselves from Him. God’s law is important, C.S. Lewis writes that He instilled in us a sense of morality that He clearly defines to break away from that standard would be chaos. But we can’t forget why we do the things we do, if I focus so much on doing x good things in a day they lose their meaning, if I focus on living a certain way at all times inevitably I do x good things a day. It’s like hitting, if I focus on every mechanic in my swing while up at bat then I will be late every time, but if I resolve to have good mechanics every time I get up at bat I will get hits, and hit for a high average too. God’s law is important, but when we focus more on the creation than the Creator then we disobey #1 and thus disobey them all.