For Christ's Sake. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson

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      Within the Catholic Church, a whole world of teaching on all aspects of sex is usually given under the commandment concerning adultery. I believe that this is a restrictive understanding and I suggest that this commandment should rather be seen in terms of respect for the relationships that give life meaning.

      There would be little quarrel about the importance of life, possessions or a good name; but the Ten Commandments insist that we add relationships to the list, for much of our life depends on them. Furthermore, just as ‘you shall not kill’ includes ‘you shall not wound or harm physically in any way,’ so not harming the relationship of marriage through adultery includes not harming any relationships that are important to people in making meaning in their lives e.g. relationships with parents or children or siblings or friends.

      I suggest that these four commandments are meant to be taken together, for when taken as one whole, they are a powerful affirmation of one’s neighbour’s dignity. If one respects any three of the four, but violates the fourth (e.g. relationships), this is not a 75% success, but a basic failure to respect one’s neighbour.

      In the fifth of the series, the commandments forbid even desiring to harm one’s neighbour (‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour’).

      There is a powerful new understanding of God in the idea of an essential dignity in every human being that demands respect and that gives rise to binding rights.

      As well as being a great step forward, the Ten Commandments are also the essential basis on which any higher level must be built, for it is impossible to truly love another person unless one first has a genuine respect for the dignity of that person and the rights that flow from this dignity.

       Level Two

      The third level was based on negative commandments: ‘You shall not’; that is: ‘Because you respect your neighbour’s dignity, do no harm.’ The second highest level requires that we not merely do no harm, but also do positive good to our neighbour. If I respect you as my equal, I will at least do you no harm and I will wish to see you given all that belongs to you by right. If I add love to respect, I will wish for all that is good for you and that is within my power to give you, even when you have no strict right to it. In other words, if I respect you, I will ask: ‘Do you have a right to this?’ If I love you, I will ask only: ‘Do you need it and do I have it to give?’ It is the level of love built on respect and reflects the god of the Golden Rule: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’,⁵ or ‘in all things treat others as you would like them to treat you.’⁶

      The beatitudes of Jesus start here but then continue into the highest level of morality.

       Level One

      The highest level is also based on love, but this time on God’s love for us. It is the level of the actions of Jesus: ‘I give you a new commandment: love one another … as I have loved you.’⁷ It includes the idea of loving even our enemies.⁸ For Christians, it reflects the God who gave totally-of-self in Jesus. Some might think that this level is a mere ideal that human beings could never live up to and that they can ignore in practice. Just occasionally, however, a story appears on our television screens e.g. of a stranger running into a burning house to rescue children. To do this involves far more than loving as one loves oneself; it is a genuine rising up to love as God loves. None of us will ever know whether we are capable of this level of heroism until we are faced with the test, and then we might surprise ourselves. Surely an overwhelming majority of parents rise to this level at many critical moments in their child’s life, for there are many moments when they must love their child, not as they love themselves, but more than they love themselves.

      There is no one who cannot fall back to the sixth or lowest level at any moment, but there is also no one who is not capable of rising to the highest level. Whenever we fall back to one of the lower levels, we fall back to the understanding of God that goes with that level. Whenever we rise to one of the higher levels, we rise to the understanding of God that goes with that level.

      Frequent examples of all six of these levels of morality are found in the Bible. There were, of course, steps backwards as well as forwards, but in these six levels of morality there is the story of the communal journey of the people of Israel, and it can become the story of the personal journey of each of us.

      Because it is a journey, Jesus himself did not disdain less-than-perfect levels and on occasions appealed to self-interest.

      When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.⁹

      In reading the Bible, it is a mistake to read the words as though they were in every case God’s direct words to us today. The Bible is the story of a journey, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Lamech may be taken as representing the beginning of that journey, and Jesus Christ is its end, with everything else representing some stage in-between. To appreciate any particular statement, we need to assess where it belongs in the journey of the people of Israel. And we need to assess the kind of God that is being reflected by and worshipped in that statement at that particular point in the long journey. There is a vast difference in the understanding of God between, for example, the words of the prophet Micah: ‘Act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God’,¹⁰ and the story of God allegedly slaying 70 000 innocent people because King David had carried out a census of the people.¹¹

       RISING TO HIGHER LEVELS

      Even though Jesus was the end of that journey, and we live in the time after Jesus, the journey still continues for us as we seek to purify our personal ideas of God. Human ideas of God will always be infinitely inadequate, though some ideas can at least assist growth, while others will hinder it.

      To promote growth, we must move:

      • from a god about whom we use many words to a stunned awareness of an ‘otherness’ beyond the reach of either imagination or language

      • from a god who is contained within a book or the teachings of a human authority to a god who cannot be contained by any created thing

      • from a god religious authorities can possess, package and dispense to others to a god of infinite surprise

      • from limited human ideas (e.g. an elderly white male ruler) to a god who is above all limitations

      • from an attitude that we will believe only in a god who agrees with us on all major matters to an attitude of profound humility before our own ignorance

      • from a god greatly concerned with glory and majesty to a god not standing on dignity and not threatened by anything human beings can do, but caring passionately about what we do to each other, to ourselves and to the community

      • from a god whose glory is to be found in our obedience to a god whose glory is to be found in our growth

      • from an angry god, not to a god of soft love, but to a god who, out of love, wants СКАЧАТЬ