Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Character
- Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person. It is hearing from God and obeying. It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.
A traditional “blessings and curses” chapter is an excellent
chapter through which we can view the concept of character. Do I have what it takes to live with God in
His ways?
The text gives a default answer of “no.” How do I know this? Well, if the average human being is in a
default setting to abide in God, then we wouldn’t have 14 verses of blessings
and 54 verses of curses! The fact that
Moses spends almost four times as much space on curses instead of blessings
tells me the real answer. The truth is
that by default, our character needs help.
We are going to make mistakes, mess up, and get things wrong. Like any child, we need the parent to
establish rules and structure in our life to help us succeed.
However, like any child there is hope that when we mess up we will
learn that lesson and get it better the next time. That’s why parents give rules, punishments,
and consequences. That’s why we have
structure. We want to give shape to
success when it is not within our nature to do it ourselves. What this shows us, then, is that while some
character is innate, most character can be taught! It can be modeled. It can be assimilated. It can be adopted. The character that is not innately within us
can still find a home within. We just need
the rules and structure to reinforce its presence in our life.
That is what this chapter is all about. For the few people who are innately
predisposed to obediently following God, there are the blessings. Those words will be enough for them. But for the rest of us people who tend to
make life messy, we have the verses on the curses. It is the structure to remind us why God’s
way is better. It is God’s means for
helping us build character that may not already be present within us.
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