Robbing God Blind?

Malachi 3:8-10: Robbing God Blind?

If you could turn with me in your Bibles to Malachi 3:8-10, we'll read the text for my message:

"'Yet from the days of your fathers You have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,' Says the Lord of hosts. 'But you said, "In what way shall we return?"

"'Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, "In what way have we robbed You?" In tithes and offerings.

"'You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation.

"'Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,' Says the Lord of hosts, 'If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.'"

And, starting out, I guess it would be a good idea to address one of the assumptions underlying this verse: Is it possible to rob God? The whole concept of robbing God might sound weird to our modern ears, because, to a large extent, we have been programmed to believe that a rich person cannot be robbed. And, as Scripture teaches time and time again, God is not poor.

In fact, in Psalm 50:9-12, God shows us some of the resources and assets in His portfolio: "I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness."

Going one step further, God also proclaims, "The earth is the Lord's, and all its fullness. The world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters."

In fact, in Ephesians 2:4, Paul describes God as being "rich in mercy". Doesn't it then stand to reason that He would not want or need to rely on us to give Him our offerings? In fact, isn't it the height of arrogance to say that God needs anything at all from us?

The best way to answer this foolishness is with a quote that I first heard attributed to Vince, who said, "The short answer is a 'yes' with a 'but'…the long answer is a 'no' with a 'because'." And by that I mean, denying God His tithes and offerings is indeed robbing God, in the sense that we are sinning against Him. It is not robbing Him, however, in the sense that we are wounding Him. It is the height of arrogance to say that we are in some way reducing or negating His strength when we refuse to give Him His due.

So then why does He command it? He commands us to give, just like all His other commands, because He knows it's what we need. He commands us to pray so that we can align our hearts with His, and that is the only cure for a sick heart; He commands us to love Him because a life spent doing anything else is wasted; He commands us to serve Him, not because He's understaffed, but because that is the only place where true fulfillment can be found; and He commands us to give back to Him because in doing so we make ourselves truly thankful for His blessings and open ourselves up to receiving further goodness from His hand.

So let me start off by giving some historical context to this passage. From my research, Malachi's prophecies took place after the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple, but before the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. Some of the exiles had already returned to Israel, but the region was still under the yoke of their foreign oppressors. In essence, the people of God were under the thumb of a foreign government who didn't acknowledge Jehovah God even existed, much less was worthy of worship, and the quality of leaders ranged from those who viewed the Jewish people and their God with benevolent ignorance, to those who saw this allegiance to a sectarian religion as a threat to their political dominance. Moreover, with the beauty and fertility of the Promised Land, Israel was a bone of contention among Egypt, Assyria, Persia and Babylon, among others. The latter two especially exerted their dominance over Israel at this point in time.

And yet, the Persians and Babylonians were not entirely unlike our government today. They, especially, had legal codes and levels of governmental authority intent on changing government from a volatile art practiced by the capricious to a systematic, scientific process to churn out justice and efficiency. Without God in the picture though, this was a losing battle. As we learned in the Truth Project, a State that refuses to recognize God thinks that: they are worthy of worship, that they give us our rights and freedoms, and that they hold the keys to truth, falsehood, life and death.

This is the kind of environment that is perfect for Satan's work. In a deep despair because of God's apparent departure from Israel's future, the Israelites became sloppy and careless in their worship of God. They soon began believing they were no longer the elect of God, and began behaving like all the other nations. I know I can definitely relate to this. When I lose grasp of the vision God has given me, and for who I am in Christ and in His plan, I become so much more susceptible to temptation. I begin focusing on my own little story, and begin to convince myself that that story is the only one there is. I conveniently forget about the God who commands me to live for Him, and gives me the grace and strength to do so victoriously. I don't know about you, but for me this is a necessary reminder that my beliefs determine my behavior, and the decision to walk in the Spirit or the flesh is made in my mind well before it is lived out in my life.

Now let me tell you some about where this text falls in the book of Malachi. First, there seems to be some debate over whether the term "Malachi" is a name or a title, since it literally means "my messenger". I don't necessarily have a problem with either perspective; it was obviously delivered by someone with a yearning and passion to see God's people turn back to a spirit-filled and truthful form of worship, and not the limp, lifeless, half-hearted version it had become. I pray that we, as CBC, would continually bring ourselves back to that place of worshipping God in a way that is vibrant, humble, thankful and loving. While our citizenship in heaven might look something like filling out a birth certificate—fill it out upon birth and put it in a safe deposit box—our commitment to the Ruler of heaven looks more like filling our gas tank: relying on an outside power to keep us going, with the understanding that the vehicle doesn't go anywhere without fuel and an occasional tune-up.

This book also has an interesting symmetrical structure. In four chapters, it folds itself into mirror images right down the middle. In chapters 1 and 4, the children of Israel ask God a series of amazingly oblivious—not to mention defensive—questions that betray a serious lack of desire to understand God's heart for them.

I'm going to open this up to you: What are some of the questions we ask God, that don't make a whole lot of sense? Am I the only one whose prayers have sounded like a greedy, self-absorbed child asking Santa Claus for a pony and a swimming pool?

Now on the inside, chapters 2 and 3 are where I think God gets down to business. Chapter 2 discusses a series of grave covenants that the children of Israel, corporately and individually, have violated. In chapter 3, as is common with the prophetic Old Testament, God lays out His good plan for dealing with these broken promises. Now you and I both know that God's complete plan for dealing with the promises we break to Him is the work of Christ on the cross. While chapter 3 presents a faint shadow of things to come, God is also beginning to shade in the areas of His plan that had been thus far unrevealed in prior prophecies. The Jews call Malachi's prophecy "the seal of prophecy" because, according to Matthew Henry, "in him [Malachi] the series or succession of prophets broke off and came to a period." Note: this message is delivered within 500 years of the birth of Christ. When you're talking about thousands of years of God's history about to be fulfilled in the Messiah, this is like the 10-second countdown before ringing in the New Year.

Indeed, I don't think it's a stretch at all to point to this book, and in fact, the rest of the Old Testament, as inherently Christological. In Luke 24, Jesus is speaking with the two men on the road to Emmaus, and we're told, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." Realizing this should make the Old Testament come alive. The book of Esther, although it never even mentions God's name, preaches Christ! The book of Numbers, even though it sometimes feels like reading the Hebrew Yellow Pages, preaches Christ! The book of Leviticus, with its techniques for dealing with moldy walls and unclean clay pots, preaches Christ! And finally, the book of Malachi, written hundreds of years before God became man, preaches about the one God-man, Jesus Christ! I pray that God would help me catch the vision of the Old Testament, so that I could see the Word become flesh in every page!

What are some of the unlikely places in the OT where you see Christ?

Hosea is a good example of this because we see the prophet commanded to marry a prostitute, and no matter how many times she violates their marital covenant, he takes her back. In the same way, Christ remains faithful to His church even when it lets Him down.

There's another interesting aspect to this prophecy: in the New King James, Malachi calls it a burden. There's a great correlation with the prophet Jeremiah, who definitely had similar feelings. At one point, Jeremiah is distraught with the persecution he receives because of being God's messenger. In chapter 20, verse 7, he writes, "I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." Clearly, Jeremiah's flesh was crying out against his God-centered sermons. It was saying, "Jeremiah, you're too negative! Everyone will hate you because of how you offend them! You shouldn't relay messages for him anymore—in fact, you should never even mention his name again!" Thanks be to God that He chose to allow that fire to burn continually in Jeremiah's bones. And the same goes for us: if we know the message that God has laid on our hearts, we need to speak out. If it offends the ones we love, those we seek to impress, or even our own sensitive pride, we need to reckon the cost of offending God infinitely greater.

Now let's get into chapters 1 and 2. One of the questions that we encountered in The Truth Project was: "Do we believe that what we believe is really real?" Try saying that one five times fast. To me, this is a great reminder that how I would describe God in a multiple-choice test can be very different from how I describe Him with my life—and so far, I've taken the vast majority of life's tests without the aid of a #2 pencil. The children of Israel encounter the same problem in chapter 1, where God lays His grace and their sin before them. He says He loves them, and they reply with diffidence and doubt: How have you loved us? He answers that He has given them a covenant of grace, choosing them as His own special people. He then says that they have shown contempt for His name, and have defiled His table. Blind to their own shortcomings, they reply, How have we defiled Your table? He reminds them of the defiled food, and blind and lame "sacrifices" they have given him. More like half-hearted cast-offerings.

Maybe you're asking: how is it possible they could be so blind to their sin? Before I get too haughty, let me tell you. I often find myself in conversations like this with Elizabeth. She'll say, "You told me this," and I'll say, "I never told you that. I know, because that's not the kind of thing I would say." Elizabeth will then tell me what my selective memory is lacking, and, to paraphrase Job, I would say to myself, "If only I would be altogether silent! For me, that would be wisdom."

But really, blind and lame animals for sacrifices? That's like finding a broken toy in the Walmart clearance aisle, wrapping it in a torn plastic bag, and calling it a "Christmas present". Much worse, in fact, since they're presenting this gift to their Maker and Master. I hope you've never done this, but that's how I tithe sometimes. I'll say, "Well God, I don't have enough to tithe to you sacrificially or joyfully, but I'll give you whatever is left." But God wants our first and best. He has given us His first and best (Christ is His first, best, and only Son. He was given as a sacrifice for our sins.) God then asks what would happen if we tried giving a blind animal to the governor for taxes. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to get slammed by God like this? Imagine if we told the IRS, "Well, I don't have quite enough this pay period to give you your due, but here's what's leftover. Hope it helps."

So what does this questioning of God reveal about the Israelites' hearts? First, I think it shows tremendous arrogance on their part. They're really approaching the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, ever-present Maker of heaven and earth and saying, "I think you got it wrong." Do you remember what God said when Job was acting up like this? He said, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you will answer me." Here's the picture I get: I'm in the throne room from The Wizard of Oz, and God says in that booming voice, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?...Put yer dukes up."

I think this questioning also shows the Israelites don't believe God is trustworthy. God says He loves them, and they respond that they just don't see it. God's response—for about the millionth time—is the covenant He made with their ancestors. My first thought is, "Don't you think He gets tired of telling them the same thing over and over? When will they learn?" This is quickly followed up by my second thought: "I'll bet God gets tired of telling me the same thing over and over. How much longer till I get this right?"

The third thing I think this reveals about their hearts is the disrespect they show Him. These subpar sacrifices: defiled food, blind and lame animals…this is clearly a relationship that has gone far wrong. This is like bringing home dead ragweed to your wife, and when she refuses to put it in a vase, you say, "What?! Was it something I said?"

Moving on to chapter 2, we see the three covenants that Israel has broken. Things look pretty bleak right now, but this is the bottom of the valley. Not only that, but this lays the groundwork for the rescue mission God has planned—from here, we can see the mountaintop, and in Christ, someday we'll be there. I love that every situation God puts us in, or we put ourselves in, has a great option whereby we can emerge victorious and give God glory; isn't that awesome? In fact, God says as much in 1 Corinthians 10:13—am I the only one who needs this verse every single day?—"No temptation has seized you except that which is common to man, and in every case"—in every case—"God provides a way out, so that you can bear up under it."

First, the priests have broken the covenant of Levi. Remembering that Malachi means "my messenger", God accuses His priests of shirking their duties. They're supposed to be knowledgeable and, above everything else, encouraging rather than discouraging. Instead, God justly accuses them of leading men to stumble. There's a passage in Isaiah where King Sennacherib of Assyria mocks Judah's worthless alliance with Egypt, saying, "Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it!" (36:6) That's the picture this priesthood brings to mind, a collection of walking sticks that injure the people they're supposed to support. Additionally, God accuses the priesthood of showing partiality in the law. In contrast to God, who is "no respecter of persons", these priests are playing favorites and leading their countrymen into sin. I think this is part of the reason that James states, "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." The teachers, or priests, with the authority, position and influence they have, should be subjected to greater scrutiny, by both God and man, because without it they run the risk of leading others into sin and error, which also endangers their own ministry and witness.

The second covenant is what Malachi calls "the covenant of the fathers", a call to spiritual monogamy among God's people to Yahweh, who has spiritual headship. Ascribing marital language adds a whole new dimension to the description of Israel's sin. They're taking a covenant—a mutually agreed upon binding contract—that is meant to be permanent, intimate and selfless—and casting it off as if it were yesterday's fad. I really believe that far too many Christian leaders fall into this trap today. The rise of ecumenical religious gatherings, where Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, etc., gather in supposed unity of worshipping "God" is anything but a principled allegiance to the God of the Bible. It misrepresents God because it paints Him as receiving all who claim to seek Him, even though it's only through Christ that we are able to have fellowship with our Creator.

There's a pastor out in Seattle by the name of Mark Driscoll. He said he was once invited to a gathering like this, where everyone, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, etc., would be praying to "God" together. As he said at the time, "This isn't a conference call, we're not all dialing the same number!"

Again though, we need to be considering: Where do I get tripped up in this area? Spiritual prostitution is not always a matter of appearing with the wrong people at the wrong events. It is also—maybe usually—a matter of setting things up in our hearts to take precedence over God. In contrast, my prayer should be like Paul's statement: to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5)

How can we find and root out spiritual adultery in our own lives?

The final covenant that God mentions here is the marriage covenant that the men have broken by divorcing their wives. In typical ignorant fashion, the people only notice that this is a problem when God starts ignoring their offerings. All the marital strife, warning signs, and conviction from God's Word and His people were ignored, but this—this!—makes the issue unmistakable. So when they finally come around, God beats around the bush. He says, "I dislike divorce."…Isn't that what yours says? Maybe you're reading from a different translation. He says, "I'm predisposed against divorce." He continues, "I have personal qualms with divorce, but I'm not willing to force those beliefs on anyone else." No, he says he hates it. He despises it, to the very core of His being, because it rends in two the visible, earthly demonstration of His heavenly covenant with His invisible church. When I smell cigarette smoke on the clothes of someone, I can't help but wrinkle my nose; I never seem to be prepared for it. For God, divorce is like smelling the stench of violence on a person's clothing. Because of the sin of divorce, it's jarring, upsetting, grieving and distasteful all at once.

Before I get too full of myself, let me tell you what I think a spirit of divorce is. A spirit of divorce is any thought, word, action or attitude that seeks to harm our spouse rather than giving them God's best. This doesn't mean that sharing concerns or exhortations with our husbands or wives come from a spirit of divorce; in fact, if done in the right spirit, they can be encouraging and enriching. In that case, where the other spouse might be in sin, hard words from the one we love might actually be godly, and soft words might be from a desire to enable. Proverbs 27:6 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."

What it does mean is that we, as husbands and wives, must act with the end goal in mind. When I find myself in a situation where I'm tempted to fight with Elizabeth, I need to ask: Is this going to make each of us more like Christ? Is this going to improve our witness to our neighbors, coworkers and friends? Is this setting an example for our children so that we can train them to be loving, humble and steadfast? If not, then what is my end goal? There's an old Steve Taylor song that includes the line, "If the Bible doesn't back it, then it seems quite clear, perhaps it was the devil who whispered in your ear." Husbands, especially, need to take their ungodly thoughts captive and put them to death; we have enough influences encouraging a spirit of divorce among us already. In fact, that's why I think it's no accident that Malachi condemns the men for dealing treacherously with the wives of their youth. My reading of Scripture teaches me that men may not be guilty of all the problems in their home, but they are responsible for them. I pray that we, the husbands of CBC, would "brace ourselves as men" and do the job God has graciously given us.

I also think it's interesting that God singles out this one sin, of dealing treacherously with our wives, as the thing that shuts off our ability to offer our acts of worship to God. Why not lying, or cheating on our taxes, or yelling at the guy who cuts us off in traffic, or talking about our boss behind his back—these are all bad enough, but God says even those don't try His patience in the same way that divorce does. I don't have a verse for this, but my hunch is the reason lies in the visible picture of heavenly reality that marriage was designed to be, and that very few other things incur His wrath in the same way.

Moving into chapter 3, we see these three covenants being repaired by our good and gracious God. The first and greatest covenant, that of the mediator between God and man (for which the Levitical priesthood was just a shadow of things to come), will be repaired by the arrival of "my messenger"—there it is again!—Jesus Christ, to bridge a gap that man, on his own, only had the capacity to burn. The use of the "messenger" term is another reminder: God will come even closer than He already is.

The second covenant, between the children of Israel and their God, will be repaired in two ways: verses 2 and 3 of chapter 3 say that some of Israel will be cleansed and purified, as if they had been scrubbed with soap or refined like metal in the fire. Then, verses 4 and 5 say that, eventually, in spite of his merciful longsuffering, God must purge the wolves from among the sheep. He has to do this, or He is not being faithful and just to the rest of the nation of Israel. Again, we see the picture of God becoming ever closer to His people, this time to cleanse them of their sin and excise the diseased portions of their body.

The third covenant, and this is possibly the most confusing part, is the marriage covenant between the men of Israel and their wives. This will be repaired when the people repent of their divorce, so that they can now worship God in spirit and in truth, by giving acceptable tithes and offerings to God. See, what I am seeing here is a vicious cycle between a spirit of divorce and a spirit of stinginess to the God who made them. The divorce makes their offerings meaningless, which prevents God from being able to bless them as He wants, which makes tithing seem impossible and the marriage relationship strained, which leads to divorce, and on and on. The picture I get is of Satan playing pinball with the children of Israel, bouncing them between one flapper and the next, until they don't know whether they're coming or going.

For those of you that are interested, that was my introduction. Now let's dig into today's text.

So, when we look at verses 8 through 10, why do I think marriage has anything to do with it, since it's never actually mentioned? First, as we've already discussed, I think the symmetrical structure of the book suggests it. Obviously, a literary interpretation like this is an opinion at best, so I'm not willing to live or die by this interpretation; it's just how it makes sense to me.

The second reason is this: we already know Israel has a real problem with spiritual adultery, and this unfaithfulness is just played out in their unwillingness to make God a higher priority. The lack of commitment shows up in their marriages, their worship, and eventually, in their checkbooks.

The second reason is the strong connection I've seen between marriage and money in my own life and the lives of those around me. In fact, according to financial counselor Dave Ramsey, the leading cause of marital fights in North America today is money and money problems. Moreover, I think that Elizabeth and I can trace a lot of the marital strife we had in the past to miscommunication (or lack of communication) about money. About three years ago, we started to work on that, and we found that we began communicating more effectively about it. This was not an astounding surprise, but what knocked our socks off was what happened next. We were soon amazed at all the other areas of our life that were suddenly much easier to talk about. Things that had brought on tremendous conflict in the past soon became easier to address realistically and with humility.

I want to stress that this newfound vocabulary had almost nothing to do with the amount of money I was making, although learning to work together better has enabled us to make more money. Instead, it has everything to do with priorities. When you spend money on something, you are making a value judgment of its worth to you, and you're stating where it stands in your list of priorities. A guy goes out and buys a 60-inch flat screen TV to watch the Superbowl: TV must be important to him. Another guy goes to a secondhand store and buys a TV you can fit on a nightstand: TV must not be that important to him.

So what does our checkbook say about our priorities?

Now let's look at the actual sin the children of Israel had committed. God restates His case (because He must know how much in need of repetition they are): defiled food, blind and lame animals. Let's also look at what God's Word says about these types of sacrifices. Leviticus 22:22 says, "Do not offer to the Lord the blind, the injured or the maimed….Do not place any of these on the altar as an offering made to the Lord by fire."

In Deuteronomy 15:19-21, God goes one step further, saying, "Set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male of your herds and flocks. Do not put the firstborn of your oxen to work, and do not shear the firstborn of your sheep. Each year you and your family are to eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place he will choose. If an animal has a defect, is lame or blind, or has any serious flaw, you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. You are to eat it in your own towns." So not only is God saying not to sacrifice this kind of animal to Him, He's saying He doesn't even want them to eat this type of meat in His presence for a festival. In other words, God has provided some very clear direction.

Now we come to the test. God's test. A test will be administered which the children of Israel are unable to pass. What's more I can't pass it, and you can't pass it. Even with the power and riches of the Holy Spirit, and the redemption that comes through Christ, no man can pass this test. This is because God is the one being tested.

Now normally, this would be seen as a bad thing. Remember when Abram comes close to testing God? You can hear the fear in his voice as He says, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found [in Sodom and Gomorrah]?" Later on in the Old Testament, Gideon does the same thing: "Then Gideon said to God, 'Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew." (Judges 6:39)

There's also a time that someone refuses to test God, and so God sets His own terms for the test. The passage is Isaiah 7:10-14: "Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 'Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.' But Ahaz said, 'I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord!' Then he said, 'Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.'" This is a different type of testing from the previous two, because in this one, as in Malachi, we see an example of God being tested to expose the hard-heartedness of men's hearts. The irony in the Isaiah passage is, even in Ahaz's refusal to test God, he is still trying God's patience.

In Malachi, the children of Israel are using God's withholding of material blessing as a pretense for their withholding of their tithes and offerings, but as we've already seen, God has refused their tithes and offerings because: (1) they were unacceptable on their own merits, (2) they were unacceptable because the people were concurrently worshipping idols, and (3) they were unacceptable because of the marital unfaithfulness that had gone on in the community.

God's test contains the following assumption: until we give God tithes and offerings that are acceptable—and delivered in the proper spirit—He has no reason to trust us with material blessing. This is not the same thing as saying that our tithes and offerings guarantee material blessing from God, in that we would somehow be able to force God's hand, but that that is the minimum requirement for God to bless us how He wants. In other words, this is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

So in conclusion, let me share with you some of the objections that are floating around inside my head. First, but what about this economy? We've all seen the news stories, with the news anchors biting their nails, feverishly awaiting the newest statistics. What we need to keep in focus is that God is orchestrating all of it. He is Lord of the unemployment numbers. He is Lord of the State budget. He is Lord of a shrinking GDP. He is Lord of all, and in control of all. Since God has a purpose for everything He does, we would be mistaken to assign a purpose to these events too quickly, but we would be remiss to throw up our hands and write the situation off to "chance," "fate" or "luck." Doing so disregards God's omnipotence over our lives and avoids an opportunity He may be using to show us something.

But my circumstances have changed. One of the things that has been hard for me to understand as I've been growing in Christ is that God's rules don't change with my circumstances. For instance, God says I can't use wrathful words on someone even if they're tearing me down. God says I can't overeat even if things are going crazy at work. Believe it or not, this is ultimately a good thing, because God's law remains consistent, even while we are not. If it weren't, then we could just say: God's law applies to my life unless I'm tempted to do otherwise. That may be the rule that our society plays by, but as the people of God, we're called—I'm called—to answer to a higher authority.

So tell me…what did I miss? What do you think of all this?