Exodus 21-22

(March 6, 2014)
People routinely condemn the Old Testament for its cruelty and barbarism (as they suppose it).  I see things differently.  Just as children progress from stage to stage in life, so too we progress as a society (and as the House of Israel) from stage to stage.  When I am parenting my children, I sometimes feel the only message that I can manage to get through to them amounts to nothing more than ‘don’t hit your sister!’  But as my daughter has grown into a borderline young woman, we are able to talk about far more interesting and sacred topics.

This seems to parallel what has happened in the scriptures.  In the beginning, God spoke to the patriarchs and individuals and rarely to communities.  It was, though, an individual Gospel for the most part – it was God’s message to Adam and Enoch and Noah and Abraham.  Then, at the Exodus, we have Moses creating the first God-centric society.  The very idea of the House of Israel was in its infancy.  Being slaves for generations, they were like newborn babes as a society – taking their first steps into a larger world.

So it is not surprising that the message of the Old Testament is not overly sophisticated.  Like children, the society of the House of Israel at that time could aspire to nothing more advanced than ‘don’t hit your neighbor (or hit on your neighbor’s wife),’ ‘do your homework (the rituals and performances,’ and so forth.  They were not just the Children of Israel, but were also children in Israel.  They had a great deal to learn as a society.

Christ coming, then, seems almost as a baptism in this metaphor to me.  Having laid the foundation for childhood, the House of Israel progressed to the point where they were ready to be taught the adult truth of the world as a whole (it had been revealed to individuals anciently).  Christ then revealed this truth to them.  That is one reason why the Book of Mormon had much more of the Gospel than the Old Testament did – it was a smaller society and carried the truth far easier as a result (as did the patriarchs of old).  But the Gospel message was always there in the Old Testament text – from caring for the widows to seeing no one as strangers (or appreciating strangers, as they were strangers in Egypt).