Season 3 Podcast 212 Recognizing the Hand of God, Pt VI, Logic and Law
Recognizing the Hand of God Pt VI: The Logic of Law
Before listening to this podcast, we recommend, if you haven’t already, that you download and listen to Podcast 211 entitled “Recognizing the Hand of God, Commandment with a Promise.” Podcast 212 is the conclusion of Podcast 211.
Though this podcast isn’t the conclusion to the series, it is the conclusion to the introduction to the series. Other podcasts on this topic will follow periodically.
Why is it so surprising to discover that God always works through law? After all he gave us both natural law and spiritual law. Miracles occur when both are brought together to alter conditions on earth. People of faith see both God and natural law in miracles. Science sees only natural law. They attribute the rest to coincidence just as they do the origin of life, the origin of the universe, and the origin of the Goldilocks zone. Science rejects miracles because they have the false notion that somehow miracles violate the laws of nature.
That can never happen. No miracle has ever violated the laws of nature any more than the miracle of flight violates the law of gravity.
Spiritual law and natural law never contradict each other. Remember the analogy of the Wright Brothers.
The law of gravity says that one cannot fly. A combined set of laws says one can fly without violating the law of gravity. One overpowers gravity by invoking other laws. That is also the way God works. He understands all conditions, and he uses complete sets of laws to perform his work. Why would he create laws and then circumvent them? The law of perfection is comprehensive.
The Ideal quest of any Christian is to examine the commandments (or laws) of God, discover their conditions and boundaries, and obey their conditions. One will discover that spiritual law relies upon the principle of causality in the same way that temporal law relies upon the principle of causality. God creates laws. Man creates mysteries.
But let’s return to Malachi. We aren’t through yet in trying to understand how God thinks. From a logical point of view God did not say it would not rain on non-tithe payers. He only promised that it would rain on the tithe payers. There is a huge difference. Non-tithe payers might get rain because their land is adjacent to the land of a tithe payer, or they might get rain because rain clouds naturally developed. There is a natural, but not a supernatural connection.
In a hypothetical syllogism one can affirm the antecedent and deny the consequent, but one cannot deny the antecedent and affirm the consequent. In other words, the following arguments are invalid:
If you bring all the tithes into the storehouse, [then] I will cause it to rain.
· You didn’t bring all the tithes into the storehouse.
· [therefore] It didn’t rain.
That sounds logical, but it isn’t. It denies the antecedent. The Lord only addressed one issue. He promised that if you bring all the tithes into the storehouse, it will rain. He said nothing about what would happen if you didn’t bring all the tithes into the storehouse. We know that at the time he made the promise there was a drought. We also know that that particular drought was a curse for not remembering the poor and needy. We know that if they paid their tithes and offerings that particular drought would be over. No where did the Lord say that every time that you don’t pay your tithes and offerings, you will have a drought, and every time you pay your tithes and offerings it will rain. Can you see how that would destroy the purposes of God. People would pay their tithes and offerings strictly out of fear and not out of faith or charity.
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