Saturday September 9, 2017
Human laws are necessary. They create order and help us regulate our personal and social life. To a great extent, they simplify life. However, they also have their dark side: they stifle personal reflection. With their collective dos and don’ts, they discourage individual morality and situation-specific responses. One of the (many) reasons why Marx and Nietzsche were critical of religion was that religious laws and practices often degenerated into mindless practices that stifled individual quest and discouraged people from making a critique of life from their own personal standpoint.
Jesus reminds his opponents that religion pure and simple goes far beyond collective morality and traditional practices, and truly enables one to respond to life’s challenges from personal convictions. Genuine religiousness facilitates a deeper understanding of the law and its purposes, and provides the freedom to break them when they are superseded by the needs of one’s brothers and sisters.