Beware of the Bureaucrats, In Both Church and Nation

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(2) <Jesus said,>“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. (3) So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. (4) They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”’ (Matthew 23:2-4)

The United States citizen often is not governed by the rule of law but by bureaucratic fiat; we have agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabaco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and many others that have made ‘laws’ not through the Congressional process but by regulatory edicts. Some of these edicts have been challenged in court, and the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has determined some of these rules are overreaching into the legislative authority of Congress and violating the US Constitution. While regulations are necessary to maintain standards in measurements and safety, some regulations become unconstitutionally restrictive to the US citizen. (Think of those mandated ‘no-spill’ nozzles (that don’t work) on a newer 5-gallon gas containers as one example.)

This bureaucratic overreaching is nothing new under the sun as the Pharisees and Sadducees did this with Levitical Law as well to the Jewish people ‘back in the day’.  These church leaders practiced what many of today’s politicians and bureaucrats do today, ‘Those who cannot or will not do, teach or lead.’  The Pharisees were essentially bureaucrats of their time, as they would take what the Lord provided to Moses and add in caveats and additional steps for the Jews to do, before they would pronounce them ‘faithful’. 

God provided Moses a set of rules to be followed, with the premise of intent, but over the years some laws were ignored, some were made ‘lighter’, some were made more strict, all by the bureaucratic fiat of the Levites who made up the priesthood.  Even worse, the Pharisees would place these changes upon the people but then wouldn’t place these burdens upon themselves (much like today’s ‘ruling-class’). 

God, however, did not make the Law or the Scriptures a ‘living’ document subject to changes in the times or society, but a set-in-stone, never changing, static set of principles.  Where the law had leeway was ‘intent of the heart’, where the greater good may sometimes permit the law to be temporarily set aside.  An example was the ‘pulling the cow out of a ditch on the Sabbath’ exception, where it was logical to set aside the ‘no work on the Sabbath’ rule to save the cow from injury or death. 

Jesus, being God Manifested, knew this, and often pointed out this out to the people and to the Pharisees themselves, that the ‘intent of the heart’ was as important as the letter of the law.  ‘Intent of the heart’ must be based on the overarching Commandment Jesus gave us, which is the foundation of the original 10 Commandments, ‘Love one another, as you love God and as God loves you’.

Jesus in Matthew 23 also pointed out that adding or carving out caveats to the Law was wrong, as these changes would distort or even negate the Law.  The Pharisees had been long on the erosion of the Law, to the point where the Temple Court became a marketplace for defective and cheap ‘sacrificial’ animals and corrupt merchants, using scales that were ‘tipped’ in their favor to make illicit profits.  God said only sacrifices without blemish could be made, yet the Pharisees looked the other way. 

Be cognizant of those who proscribe to ‘rules for thee but not for me’; much of our government follows this immoral guideline.  Like the US Constitution, the Bible – God’s Word – is static and cannot be a ‘pick & choose’ menu of what to follow and what not to follow; it is not something to change on the fly based on societal feelings.  Don’t fall for ‘God said this, but…’, it is ‘God said this – period’; rules to be follow, with the only exception when it is superseded by a legitimate ‘intent of the heart’ necessity.