Man’s complexity: God’s Simplicity

 The other day, as I was listening to the radio, I caught a snippet of the volume of legislation that is produced by our Parliament. In the thirteen years between 1992 and 2004 there were 606 acts of Parliament, enshrined in 30,421 pages of law. This primary legislation does not include the vast amount of secondary legislation, known as statutory instruments. In 2003 there  were a total of 8,942 pages of new SI’s. I am not a politician, and my interest is only in the statistics, but one cannot help observing what a complex society we live in. Our own lives are hurried – we try to cram as much as we can into our busy lives, not just motivated by what we would like to do, but also by those things that we consider our responsibilities. All this is good and proper, but often the complexity of life seems to be an enemy of simple joy.

In contrast the Bible consists of 66 books, 1,189 chapters. In it God provides us with everything He wants us to know to live life according to His will. The Jewish Rabbis identified 613 commandments. Moses was given ten commandments. Jesus himself summarised the law into two commandments – To love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself.

If I am on holiday, I suppose I might read a couple of books, of say 200 pages each in a week, and I would consider that very good going! The fact is that the vast array of legislation cannot be taken in by the ordinary man in the street. In contrast, it is quite possible to read the whole Bible at least once every year and benefit from the wisdom it contains.

The psalmist said, “The entrance of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.” (Psalm 119v130). God has not made it an unreachable goal to read his law and learn of His ways through the Bible!

By Jeremy Childs.  Member of the Dewsbury Gospel Church