law of christ
13 - 02/17 /17:45
Texas just sent Rosa Maria Ortega to prison for eight years because she voted. Ms Ortega was brought illegally into the US as an infant. Her formal education ended about the sixth-grade. Now a permanent legal resident who holds a green-card, she testified “All my life I was taught I was a US citizen.” Only she wasn’t. Ms Ortega was indicted for voter fraud in November 2015. She didn’t operate a voter-fraud ring. She did cast an illegal ballot. Is there wisdom in treating an illegal voter like a violent felon?
We have a cultural hallucination that the right laws can fix what’s wrong with us.
Try telling that to African-Americans. First in the 1860’s and then again in the 1960’s, Congress enacted a flurry of laws to protect the rights of Americans of African heritage. Didn’t work very well. What greater equality that has finally, belatedly developed is a result of increased socio-economic status which grew out of good hard work, cultural transformation and expanded educational opportunities. Yes, the law helped, but only partially and only after 100 years of failure.
Title IV of the Higher Education Act governs the federal student financial aid program. Its about 500 pages long. A lawyer told a college President he wouldn't understand Title IV law because that lawyer couldn’t understand it. Their law firm has a highly-paid specialist whose only job is to understand this one federal law. Its complexity explains why colleges are so deferential to federal education bureaucrats—they interpret this incomprehensible law.
In 1883 Alfred Edersheim wrote that at the time of Christ, Jewish law equalled about 2,947 pages. Today's US Code of Federal Regulations totals some 180,000 pages. But all that law makes little difference. There remains a lot wrong with us. Ancient Jewish law and US law both demand outward obedience to complex, contradictory, even incomprehensible rules.
What is often called the Law of Christ, Jesus’ sermon on the mount, fills less than four pages in the New Testament. You can read it aloud in 15 minutes. The simple, clear Law of Christ has done more to heal humanity's wrongs than all human laws ever written.
If you read Jesus’ sermon on the mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) each day for eighteen consecutive days, it will change your life. ~
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard
Try telling that to African-Americans. First in the 1860’s and then again in the 1960’s, Congress enacted a flurry of laws to protect the rights of Americans of African heritage. Didn’t work very well. What greater equality that has finally, belatedly developed is a result of increased socio-economic status which grew out of good hard work, cultural transformation and expanded educational opportunities. Yes, the law helped, but only partially and only after 100 years of failure.
Title IV of the Higher Education Act governs the federal student financial aid program. Its about 500 pages long. A lawyer told a college President he wouldn't understand Title IV law because that lawyer couldn’t understand it. Their law firm has a highly-paid specialist whose only job is to understand this one federal law. Its complexity explains why colleges are so deferential to federal education bureaucrats—they interpret this incomprehensible law.
In 1883 Alfred Edersheim wrote that at the time of Christ, Jewish law equalled about 2,947 pages. Today's US Code of Federal Regulations totals some 180,000 pages. But all that law makes little difference. There remains a lot wrong with us. Ancient Jewish law and US law both demand outward obedience to complex, contradictory, even incomprehensible rules.
What is often called the Law of Christ, Jesus’ sermon on the mount, fills less than four pages in the New Testament. You can read it aloud in 15 minutes. The simple, clear Law of Christ has done more to heal humanity's wrongs than all human laws ever written.
If you read Jesus’ sermon on the mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) each day for eighteen consecutive days, it will change your life. ~
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard