Read the Large Catechism with me.
Ten-minute studies on short readings from the Large Catechism.
Let's do this.
Click on the link below and read the short assigned reading. Then, if you have time, check out what I have to say about it. If not, no problem. Just soak up the goodness of the LC.
The Eighth Commandment Part 1: Click here and read 254 - 261.
The basics:
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
- After our own body, spouse, and possessions, we have another treasure - our upright name and reputation. God desires that we maintain our neighbor's reputation.
- The first and plainest meaning of this commandment pertains to public courts of justice.
- Men do not like to offend others and instead flatter and speak to gain favor of those who can benefit them in money, prospects, or friendships. Therefore poor men can wrongly be oppressed, lied about, and suffer punishment in court.
- Being a judge or a witness in court requires a godly man with wisdom, modesty, and bravery.
- Everyone should help his neighbor secure his rights and not allow them to be taken away or twisted. He shall promote and strictly maintain his neighbor's rights and reputation.
- This commandment is especially set up for jurists that they deal truly and uprightly with every case, allowing right to remain right, and not making wrong out to be right, irrespective of a person's money, possession, honor, or power.
My thoughts today:
Allowing right to remain right and not making wrong out to be right.
Again, allowing RIGHT to remain right and not making WRONG out to be right.
Luther assumes we are able to decipher between right and wrong. It seems like it should be a pretty simple request, but somehow, we just keep muddying up the water. He says jurists should avoid "by their tricks and technical points turning black into white and making wrong out to be right."
I think that should be a poem or maybe a rap about our culture -
By their tricks and technical points
Turning black into white
Making wrong out to be right.
Allowing right to remain right
Not making wrong out to be right
To be right
To be right
I just need a little help with some beat boxing and I could take this show live.
OK, maybe I should stick to writing a blog read by tens of people.
But you get my point.
Luther assumes rightly that there is indeed a right and a wrong - an assumption which flies in the face of a culture filled with moral blindness.
I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes about right and wrong and light and dark from Concordia Theological Seminary Professor, Rev. John T. Pless.
"I'm told that trout swimming in deep caverns never venturing in streams above ground finally become blind, their vision adjusted to their lightless waters. So too perhaps our spiritual sight becomes dim as the eyes of the soul can no longer distinguish between light and darkness. Like the sub-terrainian trout we become at home in the pitch black of our cultural darkness so everything becomes a drab and dull shade of gray."
