I enjoy a good walk in the park especially if I have a golf club in my hand. For that is what golf is to me, a walk in the park. I am a non-linear golf player. Linear golf players believe the object of the game is to hit the golf ball from tee to cup in the shortest number of strokes possible. It usually means hitting the ball consecutively in a straight line.
My experience is that linear players are generally a grumpy if not angry lot. Their goal of perfection always seems beyond their swing. Two years ago, I came as close to perfection as one can get on one swing and hit a hole-in-one, but alas perfection was stolen from me as I was alone and had no witnesses and it was a Sunday afternoon (who could I tell).
I have read there are 24 (down from 34) rules of golf with many sub rules under each category. I confess I have never read the rules but I know the unstated “rules” every non-linear player uses i.e., when to use a foot wedge, a mulligan, or claim a gimmee, all with no penalty. Other phrases you might hear from the average hacker, “go ahead, try again, I didn’t see that.’ Winter rules! “I am picking up the ball – give me a 9 and I am moving on.”
You will not find any of these practices in the rulebook but all golfers know about them. Purists may not abide by them but then they do not play to enjoy golf anyways. Would Jesus have used a foot wedge, absolutely. “Golf was made for man, not man for golf.” (Mark 2.27) (apologies for the gendered language).[1]
In Judaism it is reported that there are 613 rules in the Hebrew Bible, 365 negative laws and 248 positive ones. The 365 negative ones are said to represent every day of the year and the 248 positive ones are said to represent the number of organs and limbs in the human body. The laws include such hits as the commandment to send ritually unclean Israelites outside the Israelite camp, and the prohibition against their entering the sanctuary (Numbers 5:2-3. #362-363) The law that everyone and everything that is under the same roof with a corpse becomes ritually unclean (Numbers 19:14-15 # 398). The prohibition against gashing oneself or tearing one’s hair in the manner done by idolatrous mourners (Deut .14.1 #467-468). The prohibition against withholding a loan to a poor man out of fear that the debt will become uncollectible in the seventh year. (Deut. 15.9 #480). The prohibition of male same sex relations. (Lev. 18.22 #209) and so on.[2]
For many the Bible is simply a law book. Notwithstanding the fact that many of its laws are so culturally and historically dependent that to practice them today would violate any number of other laws. I liken the law to the priestly voice of Scripture. We are indebted to the order, safety and fair play it provides but they are not immutable. They are always contextual and subject to change and interpretation. We need to remember it was a homeland security application of the law that was the death of Jesus.
Nay some say, in Luke 10:25-28 we have two immutable laws.
One day an 25 An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.[j] “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
To which I applaud, except “obligating love” is not a law in any legal sense. If you are forced to love, have you not just negated that love? Forced love is as fictional as giving dutiful roses to your spouse for Valentine’s Day. And wasn’t this the grand risk that God opted for in creating humankind. God gave us the capacity to love and that meant the capacity not to love.
Forced love is as fictional as giving dutiful roses to your spouse for Valentine’s Day.
So why did he do it? Why did God create humans with the capacity to destroy the order in creation that God previously declared as good? Good question, to which the Babylonian Talmud provides this response.
"When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create man, He created a group of ministering angels and asked them, “Do you agree that we should make man in our image?” They replied, “Sovereign of the Universe, what will be his deeds?”
God showed them the history of mankind. The angels replied, “What is man that You are mindful of him?” [Let man not be created]. God destroyed the angels. He created a second group, and asked them the same question, and they gave the same answer. God destroyed them. He created a third group of angels, and they replied, “Sovereign of the Universe, the first and second group of angels told You not to create man, and it did not avail them. You did not listen. What then can we say but this: The universe is Yours. Do with it as You wish.” And God created man. But when it came to the generation of the Flood, and then to the generation of those who built the Tower of Babel, the angels said to God, “Were not the first angels right? See how great is the corruption of mankind.” And God replied (Isaiah 46:4), “Even to old age I will not change, and even to grey hair, I will still be patient.”
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b
Perhaps not the answer we imagine, but it suggests as long as there is life “if I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love…Fortunately love, God’s love is patient. (1 Corinthians 13:1-4).
To be followed: the Prophetic voice
[1] Biblical purists will certainly object to comparing biblical commands to something as entertaining as golf. And they would be right that what is at stake in matters of biblical law is far more serious than golf, but the governing principles are the same. Laws are about control, fairness and providing a safe foundation for the good life. [2] This teaching is taken from the Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 23b. Moses Maimonides in the 12th century enumerated them. For a complete list of the 613 commandments see Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Biblical Literacy: The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible (William Morrow and Company, 1997): 513-592.
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