By Steve Hall
The rules of road traffic come to mind. Who is allowed to go and who must yield or stop? Who can turn and when? Who has the right of way? Who has precedence in interrupting the flow? All of these are ‘arbitrary’ rules drawn up by men. To ignore them, to write one’s own rules, to claim to be the ‘traffic god’ will inevitably lead to death.
Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 28:1-10
Deuteronomy 32:26-27ab, 27cd-28, 30, 35cd-36ab
Matthew 19:23-30
One might readily conclude that today’s excerpt from the Book of Ezekiel is one non-believers would cite as evidence that the God of the Old Testament was a vengeful, wrathful god with little tolerance and, therefore, frequently angry. Here is the prince of Tyre. As per the Scriptural description, someone whom today we would describe as a ‘self-made man’. Yet he is mocked as being ‘haughty of heart.’ He is sarcastically acknowledged as one who is wiser than Daniel, one who can discern any secret, one whose personal wisdom and intelligence have brought him riches … For that he is condemned.
“I will bring against you foreigners, the most barbarous of nations. They shall draw their swords against your beauteous wisdom, they shall run them through your splendid apparel. They shall thrust you down to the pit, there to die a bloodied corpse, in the heart of the sea.”
From this description some might observe that God is narrow-minded, resentful, and prone to punishment. Such a conclusion about the nature of God misses not only the point of the story but also the import of the first commandment. As regards the divine judgment on the prince, the text is clear and somewhat different from that previously described:
“Because you have thought yourself to have the mind of a god, therefore I will bring against you foreigners …“ That’s the point of the story.
But the skeptic would say that merely proves his point: this Old Testament God has no tolerance and therefore condemns those who are merely ignorant and foolish. Only by putting God on a level comparable to man can such a conclusion be drawn. The rules of road traffic come to mind. Who is allowed to go and who must yield or stop. Who can turn and when. Who has the right of way. Who has precedence in interrupting the flow. All of these are ‘arbitrary’ rules drawn up by men. To ignore them, to write one’s own rules, to claim to be the ‘traffic god’ will inevitably lead to death; and that is true, not because of the violation of the law but because ignoring them is counter to the established order. If such is the case with the laws of men, how much more is it true with the Laws of Eternal Facts. One plus one is always two no matter what we may otherwise claim.
Attributing to oneself the nature of divinity or even divine attributes will lead to destruction - not because God gets angry, not because you broke a law, not because God is intolerant - but because there is an order to the universe and a set plan according to which history advances, and it is inexorable, always moving toward that pre-ordained end: “to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
In such a dynamic flow, only one can be truly God: the One who created it, the One who set it on its course, the One who keeps it in existence. Under such circumstances, alignment with the pre-determined purpose is the wise thing to do. That is one reason Wisdom is given such an exalted status in the Scriptures, and why the first two of the Ten Commandments point to the necessity of avoiding someone/something other than the true God.