Good living looks good. When you see successful living, you want to know how they do it don’t you?
There is a passage in the Bible recording Moses’ words to his people just before they enter into the Promised Land, very near the inception of their nationhood. It reads,
“See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” (Deut. 4:5–8)
In many ways this passage is alien to our ears. First of all, we are not Israel. Specifically, as God’s people, we are not a nation. Christians are brought together from many nations and united through Christ, not land. We inherit the promises of God in Jesus, which are spiritual blessings and not necessarily physical blessings. Also, the “nearness” of God is again more spiritual (through his Holy Spirit indwelling us) as opposed to the tangible pillar of cloud and fire.
Those differences aside, the underlying principle of this passage is still very true in our day and age. The word of God, particularly the ways of God for his people as expounded in his word, brings wisdom – is wisdom. There is a success to life when living in accord to the way we were made to live.
However, this acknowledgement of God’s ways as wise is not always the case. In our secular age where multiculturalism is one of the principles for our democracy, the ways of God (according to the Bible) is just one way among many equally viable alternatives. To measure these alternatives and determine their relative merit for a society undercuts the principle of multiculturalism (for surely the wisest way of living ought to be the way the laws of the land guide us – and one can’t be better than the other in our system, just… different).
On a related note (and pardon me for contradicting myself, but our society is itself a contradiction on this matter), our secular age is in fact built on the foundations of the Christian ethic. So it just so happens that our society is living (to a degree) according to the wisdom of God but they do not even realise it. Such arguments are made by the likes of Tom Holland in ‘Dominion’. But remember we are not a ‘Christian nation’ necessarily because God’s people are not a nation. So it’s not as if ‘Christian West’ outshines Buddhist, Communist, Atheist, Socialist East. Although the Christian ethic that underpins western society does outshine its counterparts in other countries. I think there are many who can see this and maybe many more who see and don’t speak of it (because that’s not in accord with our modern propriety).
So in a sense, this Bible passage has been fulfilled in front of our very eyes. Society has so imbibed the Christian ethic that they think it is foundational to reality (which in God’s wisdom is true). But at the same time it is slowly drifting away. In light of this drift, there is an opportunity for Christians to live according to their Christian convictions and in so doing they will look very different to the society around them. To some this will be the aroma of death in a sense. But to others, it will be a testimony to the wisdom of God’s ways.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 