Torah and the Rule of Law

Ultimately, we want to be guided by the Spirit in our all of our actions, but until we can achieve that level of spirituality, God has given us His written law, which is a stepping stone to greater righteousness. Moreover, the Spirit will show us how to live on a higher level and still fulfill Torah law.

The Torah includes within its pages not only a history of God’s dealings with humanity and the descendants of Jacob, but it also includes a written system of law as a basis for a nation under God. This system of law restricted the arbitrary exercise of power, which prevented the abuse of individual, family and societal rights. This idea is known as the rule of law - where law rules and not the whims of kings, dictators and cult leaders. Since the Torah includes God’s Law, we can be assured that it affords the highest protection for the rights of all groups. The Torah goes on to established that these laws were to be immutable - Deut.4:2.

Religionists through poor scholarship have rendered God’s law as being archaic and irrelevant to modern society; and, in so doing have removed important protections to the rights of all groups. A result of discarding Torah law is that now leaders in and out of religion can create laws without any basis in truth. Religious Movements established without true law and principles make laws unto themselves and open themselves up to abusing the rights of others. The following is my own story about how a religion not following the rule of God’s law violates individual rights and leads to abuse.

A Personal Story

I was born and raised in the religion of my mother’s fathers and had embraced this faith for 55 years.  I am a sixth generation adherent of this particular religion. I have ancestors who gave their lives for what they believed fleeing religious persecution. Additional sacrifices were made immigrating a long distance and settling in a harsh desert climate.  In 1996, I started examining ideologies that were not fully embraced by my religion such as homeschooling, natural healing, and constitutional government. Now that I look at this beginning in retrospect, I realize that I was not finding my faith fulfilling and that something foundational was missing. In fact, now I look back and realized that I was spiritually dead and didn't know it - practicing a religion out of habit. As I started to critically examine what I believed, there was a subtle but growing awareness that at some point my efforts to examine what I believe would come in conflict with my Church’s doctrines. That day arrived in May 2012. I was called in to a church court and many of my member privileges were suspended. I was “counseled” for two years by my local congregational leader. My local leader asked me to bring the books in I was reading so that he could examine them. Most of the conditions to have my privileges restored I felt I could agree too except one. The one condition I could not accept was being told what I could or could not read - essentially what to believe. Being told what I could or could not read is essentially mind control.  Being told what I was to think was completely unacceptable - I held my ground. After two years of counseling, a higher level court was held with fifteen men. At this court I was forced into making a choice between following the Church’s top leader or hold to the laws of God set out in the Bible, which I felt were still valid - I was ejected from my Church. After having been ejected from the church of my fathers in June 2014, I realized that the law God revealed to Moses affords protections from overreaching and unrighteous leaders and institutions. One particular quote from John Rushdoony summarizing the law is quite powerful and which gave me solace,

“According to the rabbinic reckoning, the Torah has 613 laws.” “If, as Scripture makes clear, we are to live by what at most can be called 613 laws, then we cannot have a power-state nor a power-church, because their sphere of relevance is limited to a very few of those 613 laws. It means also that those laws of 613 which are not reserved by God to His own enforcements, or are given to state and church, are placed in the hands of individuals and families.”  (Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. III, p 1,3)

As I continued to study God’s written law, I found that the religion I had spent my whole life embracing had abandoned God’s written law in the Torah because they had determined that it was no longer relevant and had made laws up of their own. I discovered that my Church was oppressing the poor by requiring the payment of excessive tithes - forcing the poor to tithe from their basic needs. I also discovered my former Church had stripped fathers of their sovereign authority over their families - Deut 1:13, Acts 1:15-26. And what even made this more disgusting is that my Church required this as a condition of me being with God and my family for eternity.

My Church had clearly violated my rights as an individual to search for truth, by stealing my financial resources forcing me into deeper poverty, usurping my authority as a father over my family and delving out emotional and psychological trauma; all, because they had abandoned the rule of divine law.