Cuando las teorías son injustas

(Deuteronomy 5:21)

Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Deuteronomy 5:21)

In the Authorized or King James Version, the words in the En-glish text are different, i.e., “thou shalt not desire thy neighbour’s wife” in Deuteronomy, and, in Exodus 20:17, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” Both covet and desire translate the same He-brew word. Its meaning can be good or bad, depending on the con-text. Here, of course, the reference is to a lawless desire, delight, or coveting.

This law is closely related to Deuteronomy 5:19, “Neither shalt thou steal,” and it applies to the mind what was previously applied to prop-erty. We have no right to want, desire, or think of gaining whatever is our neighbor’s, and this means that neither in word nor thought, let alone deed, do we think of taking what does not belong to us.

The law speaks to the man, the male. What he must not do neither can the wife nor the children do. The man must set the pattern of faithfulness and obedience. He dare not use his headship to seek ex-emptions from the law, because his headship means that it is he who sets the pattern of faithfulness and law-keeping. This same premise appears in our Lord’s words to His disciples when they sought emi-nence in the Kingdom:

42. But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.

43. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:

44. And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

45. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

(Mark 10:42-45)

Jesus Christ, in His incarnation, kept the law perfectly (Heb. 4:15);

He did not use His status to seek an exemption from it, but, as our

example, kept it fully and perfectly. We are therefore commanded to bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). The expression, “every thought,” can be translated as “ev-ery understanding,” or, simply, “the mind.” In Charles Hodge’s words, “the obedience of Christ is conceived of as a place, or fortress, into which the captive is led.”¹

To covet in an ungodly sense is to resent what others have and to believe that one has a better “right” to them; and it can lead to direct theft or expropriation, or hiring someone to do the stealing for us, or to the popular enactment of legislation whereby the wealth of others is legally expropriated. To covet in the sense of desiring the lawless sexual use of others is to treat other persons as things to be used. This is the essence of pornography, the reduction of persons to things to be used sexually. The current prevalence of pornography is related to the statism of our time. Statism gives priority to the im-personal machinery of civil government. The goals of society cease under statism to be the glory of God and man’s fulfillment in His service. The state becomes the focus of life and thought, and all prob-lems are seen increasingly as matters requiring a statist solution. This is the depersonalization of all things, and this is the same approach to reality taken by pornography.

A lawless coveting strips the world of God and His law, and it also strips people of their status as persons. “Reality” then becomes no more than the self-will of the egocentric willing individual. I was told some years ago of a man, very abusive of his wife, who told her to leave the house: he was weary of her. When she not only did so, but found a rewarding job, became interested in another man, and filed for divorce in order to marry him, her husband shot and killed her. She had, in his eyes, no right to an independent existence and happiness. This is the pornographic mind: it denies an independent existence to any save itself.

The existentialist temper of the twentieth century has been very conducive to pornography. Man, being reduced to no more than an unattached person, without past of future, to life in the existential moment, has no ties to anything. He regards all things in terms of their usefulness to him. Man and the world outside of him become no more than resources for his use or pleasure.

1. Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950 reprint), 236.

The Lawless Mind (Deuteronomy 5:21) 109 This reductionism can be other than sexual. In this century, with the socialist influence on college students, one can find vicious exam-ples of covetousness among students. For example, I have heard ar-guments which, stripped of their “noble” sentiments, meant, simply:

It is not right for people less intelligent than we are (such as capital-ists) to have more than we do. Hence, capitalism is evil.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the egocentric premise of such students is true, and that they are more intelligent than most capitalists. Even then, we must say that man is much more than a mind! He is a person. Moreover, there is far more to capital accumulation than intelligence. Character, work, and thrift are basic to capital accumulation, whereas the socialist mind insists, rather, that it is simply theft: this turns the moral universe upside down, and it tries to vindicate covetousness and theft by redefining falsely every aspect of the economic scene. To neglect the part character, thrift, and work have in the spheres of life is to replace reality with imagi-nation, and this is what pornography does.

The scope of this law is total: It begins with a mention of our neighbor’s spouse. By applying the law to the man, with regard to a neighbor’s wife, the law covers all coveting by family members, by a wife for a neighbor’s husband, or by either spouse for another’s children, and by children for a neighbor to be their parent.

Paul has this law in mind when he writes, “Godliness with con-tentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6). Covetousness has lawless gain in mind. Paul says that godliness with contentment is the gainer.

This law also forbids coveting another man’s employees, his ani-mals, “or anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

Lawless coveting seeks a short-cut to gaining its way and will.

Where persons, such as another man’s wife, are concerned, its goal is possession without any reason other than desire. Family, social, and godly responsibilities are set aside in favor of one’s will. “My will be done” is the sufficient rationale because the person so moti-vated is one who seeks to be his own god, determining law for him-self (Gen. 3:5), and his will is sufficient justification in his eyes.

To covet things lawlessly is to say that character, thrift, and work are morally unnecessary for the attainment of one’s goals.

God’s fiat word created all things, and, as the psalmist tells us,

“For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast”

(Ps. 33:9). Man seeks, by his first willing, to gain what he wants. He

forgets that he is a creature, not God, and that he is a fallen creature as well, so that his will too often is an expression of sin.

The Ten Commandments seek to restrain our words, thoughts, and deeds in their fallen bent, in order that we may be freed to serve God as we ought. These laws govern all men because they are God’s laws, but only the redeemed in Christ find in them “the law of liberty” (James 2:12) whereby they are free from the law of sin and death.

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Chapter Twenty-Three