Making Life Work

From Ronald L. Dart's Born to Win notes.

    If you asked 100 people where the expression “free love” came from, I doubt you would find more than one person who knows. I surely didn’t. I thought it originated back in the 60s with the flower children. But I was wrong. The term originated in the 1850s in a religious commune in Oneida, New York. Called the Oneida Community by some and the Oneida Experiment by others, it was an experiment with sexual freedom under religious auspices, and quoting Scripture for its justification.

    I’m not sure what sent me looking for this, but I found an article in Touchstone Magazine titled, The Oneida Experiment, What We Have Discovered About Not-So-Free Love, by Frederica Mathewes- Green. Oneida was founded...

From the program notes of Ronald L. Dart

    In the movie, The Ten Commandments, a voice said, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and the inhabitants thereof.” Did you know those words were inscribed on the Liberty Bell in 1753?

    When you think about it, the dominant theme of that movie was liberty—liberty for a people who had just been set free. In the same way, the central idea of what Jesus taught is liberty or freedom. That was intended from the beginning. Jesus wants us to have freedom.

    The purpose of the Law was to guarantee freedom. The whole idea was freedom for man. When at last you are given freedom, you don’t want control to rear its ugly head. The Law and freedom are no problem until man steps in and tries to control...

By: Ronald L. Dart

Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4-5 NKJV)

    It must have been a hard decision for God to make. I don't mean to suggest that anything is really hard for God, but the decision had consequences that even God could not have treated lightly. The decision to put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden had consequences for all of history. By putting that tree there, God effectively created a gate out of the Garden of Eden. He gave man a choice about the kind of a world that he would live in. If Paradise became boring for man, he had an alternative.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Was there something wrong with the Ten Commandments? Were they weak legislation in the first place? Or did they somehow become obsolete with the passage of time? If, as some suppose, the time came for the Ten Commandments to be abolished, there must have been a reason for it. The idea of the abolition of law is not foreign to us. We "abolish" or repeal laws often enough. But when we do repeal laws, why do we do it? There are many reasons. The law may be unenforceable. It may be unpopular with the people, and because of massive disobedience ("They can’t put all of us in jail"), the law simply can’t be maintained. The classic example of this was prohibition.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    If Jesus told you not to think something, would you believe Him? Or would you continue to suppose that something were true when Jesus told you plainly it was not? For example, if Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets," would you assume that Jesus came to do away with the law?

    Surprisingly, many Christians think that Jesus came to destroy the law when He said specifically that He did not. He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

By: Ronald L. Dart

    It had been a hard three days. David and the handful of young men with him had left in a hurry and had taken no food. By the time they got to a place called Nob, they were in a bad way. They needed food and there was only one place David thought they might get something to eat. The Tabernacle at Nob.

By: Ronald L. Dart

Did Jesus adjust God’s ancient laws of clean and unclean meats? The answer shouldn’t be hard to find. It should be right there in the four gospels.

    Everyone is concerned about health these days. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject, and yet people often neglect to consider what the best selling book of all time has to say about healthful eating habits.

By: Lenny Cacchio

    "How do I answer the guy who tells me the law is done away?"  The question came up in our new small group Bible Study.  "He says Galatians 3 says that Jesus has saved us from the curse of the law."

    While the group began to decipher the intricacies of Galatians 3, I reached over, grabbed the inquisitor’s drink, and put it over on my side of the table.  The I took his notebook and put it by my things as if I was going to take it home with me.  His curious glances led me to take his pen, and then as I reached for his wide margin New King James Bible, I commented that really wanted to have it.

    His puzzled and almost aggravated expression broke into a wide grin.  He got the point:  if the law is done away, then...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    "The Ten Commandments don’t have any footnotes," said the pundit, the point being to take them literally if you are going to take them at all.

    I appreciate the sentiment, but I disagree with the premise.  Yes, those commandments mean what they say.  "Thou shalt not steal" is a good command to live by, but what if you and your children are starving and you have a chance to slip off with an apple from the produce the aisle.   Are you committing a crime worthy of jail?  A Biblical footnote, if you will, says, "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry" (Proverbs 6:30).

    From this one might conclude that extenuating circumstances and the offering of grace can temper the commands...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    My daughter recently sent me on a rare but rewarding foray into the world of fiction.  The book is The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.   The Hosseini family was granted political asylum in the United States in 1980 after fleeing their native Afghanistan.  Dr. Hosseini’s novel betrays an evident love of his native land, and while the book is fiction, it certainly reflects something of what Hosseini recalls about being a boy in Afghanistan during the upheavals of his youth.

    This is a book about Afghanistan, both warts and diamonds, as much as it is about a young man coming of age.  If you want some insight into Afghanistan and the Afghani way of thinking (and you should), then read this book.   Insights abound, and...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Shortly after the 2004 elections, I spoke with a despondent elderly gentleman who didn’t know me as well as he thought he did.  “This isn’t the same country I grew up in,” he said.  He was bemoaning the fact that social conservatives had gotten their way.  “I see no difference between them and the Taliban.” 

    I was so taken aback by this that I flat-out didn’t know what to say.  I am clearly a social conservative and some might argue a member of the religious right (though I doubt they would accept me given my unorthodox theological views), and yet I have no desire to string infidels up by the neck from soccer goals.  In fact I would fight till exhaustion for the ACLU’s right to proclaim their opinions, though contrary...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    To many people, the Law of God is a set of “have to’s”.   “I have to watch what I say.  I have to keep my mitts off other people’s property.  I have to tell the truth.”  And so on.

    But in reality, the Law of God is a series of “get to’s”.  If everyone kept the law, we would get to live in safe neighborhoods.  We would get to leave doors unlocked.  We would get to have honest and noble civic leaders.  We would get to have strong families and loving relationships.

    And there is something else we would get to have.  We would get to have some time for the important things in life.  It’s a sad commentary that our fast food, 24/7 world leaves us less and less time to cement relationships with those who should...