General Introduction
In the run-up to Shavuot, I put out an article about the very first covenant God gave us, the Universal Covenant. This is the covenant that is instilled within us at the creation of our souls, and gives us the natural but unspoken, unwritten rules of moral and ethical conscience. It enables most of us to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong (with the obvious exception of those who are born with the gene for clinical psychopathy)!
This is the covenant we are supposed to be able to appeal to, if a religious law appears to be unjust or cruel; since YHVH our God is a fair and just God, then if a law appears to be oppressive, we are supposed to look at our consciences, and realise that we are either interpreting the law wrongly, or applying it incorrectly. Because the Universal Covenant is the very first of God’s covenants between God and the human race, no subsequent covenant can overrule, revoke or nullify its eternal standards.
One part of the ideals of the Universal Covenant, is the unspoken principle of ‘mutual responsibility’. This is the idea where we look at ethics as a transaction, but the transaction itself is not carried out with the proviso that both sides repay the standard. We don’t do a good deed for someone, on the sole expectation that the good deed will be repaid.
For example, part of the unwritten laws of the Universal Covenant, are the ideals of hospitality. Very often, when certain standards were automatically expected of people, they were not mentioned in the laws of Torah – it was automatically assumed that people would behave in a certain way (cf. Dt 6:18a: “You shall do whatever Yahveh regards as [ethically] upright and good“). So it was with hospitality; it was expected that a host would not mistreat or take advantage of their guest, but equally, it was also expected that a guest would not be abusive or take advantage of their host. However, the one is not dependant on the other; although this is a transactional relationship, the duties of the guest are not dependant on the same coming from the host, and vice versa.
In Israelite culture, kindness towards animals was the expected, automatic standard for Israelites; that’s why no specific laws were given by God to enforce these standards. Various biblical characters were judged to have good and virtuous personalities, because of the kindness they showed towards animals (such as Rebecca, Gen 24:19-20).
All God’s Covenants are based on Mutual Responsibility
In the Yahwist Israelite way of thinking, every relationship has unwritten obligations and mutual responsibilities. This same kind of mutual responsibility and obligation is inherent whenever we talk about ‘the Covenant’. In fact, it is vital to understand that mutual responsibility and mutual obligation is what a covenant is all about. In the Covenant, we have responsibilities and obligations towards God, but also, God has responsibilities and obligations towards us; that is the underlying basis of the Covenant.
This way of thinking existed with gleaning rights, for example. Landowners were to allow passers-by to take what they needed to sate their hunger, but it was also expected that passers-by should not deliberately set off on their journey empty-handed, or take more from someone’s field than they needed. Another example is that the people were to respect the king and not curse him, but a king also had the responsibility to stand up for and defend his people, to treat them fairly and act as a role model; in the relationship between parent and child, just as a child was to be respectful and obedient to its parents, so also a parent had a responsibility not to be cruel or abusive to their children, or give their children an evil or immoral command to follow.
So also with the rich and the poor – with the tzedakah laws, the rich had a responsibility of charity towards the poor, but the poor also had a responsibility to be honest, and not take or demand more than they and their families actually needed, as well as the responsibility to do whatever they could to improve their own circumstances.
Mutual Responsibility in Yeshua’s teaching
The prophet Yeshua said, “When you stand praying, forgive anything you have against anyone, so that your heavenly Father may also forgive you your sins. For if you forgive others their offences, how much more so will your heavenly Father forgive you!” (Mk 11:25, Mt 6:14)
This teaching gives us an insight into the thinking of the prophet. If we wish to be forgiven our sins, the first thing we should do is forgive others. How can we expect God to forgive us, when we are unwilling to forgive others ourselves?
It says much about our relationship with God. If we are to forgive our debtors, and those who sin against us, it assumes that God will do the same – forgive us our debts and sins. It implies a two-way relationship, with obligations both on God’s part, and the part of God’s people. If people in a society are unaware that this principle of mutual responsibility exists, then some people will be expecting to be the recipient of good things all the time, but will never be the giver of good things. This is the problem that the prophet Yeshua was alluding to when he said,
“If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good only to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.” (Lk 6:32-33)
Yeshua also said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Lk 6:37)
The principle of mutual responsibility is a big deal in Talmidaism, because the Prophet Yeshua made it a big deal.
When Bad Behaviour is all down to refusing to act with mutual responsibility
How you behave towards others will either give glory to God, or condemn you when you come before God. The behaviour of a good and decent person will glorify the holy reputation of God, while the unconscionable behaviour of a nasty person – especially if they claim to be religious – will only bring dishonour to the reputation of God.
If you phone a call centre with a problem, and you begin immediately being nasty, unpleasant and discourteous to the person on the other end of the phone, even though they are doing everything they can to help you, then you are not being a responsible person. The person at the other end of the phone is a human being too, and it is not personally their fault that you are currently experiencing a problem; you will get more co-operation from them if you treat them in a way which you wish to be treated yourself as a customer.
When we interact with a person on the internet – someone we can’t see, and have never met (and are never likely to ever meet), this does not give us the right to troll them, to say nasty things to them, to abuse them or be offensive towards them. They are human beings like us, even though we will never know who they are. Always be as courteous and decent towards people on the internet, as if you were speaking to them face to face.
Or you go to have a meal in a restaurant, and the meal is not to your liking. This does not give you the right to abuse the waiting staff, be angry towards them, or treat them as if they are your personal slaves. If you present your problem in a calm, rational way, they are more likely to want to help you. The saying, ’The customer is always right’ does not give anyone the right to behave like an evil, spoiled brat.
Or if you go to a major department store, do you treat the staff there as your personal servants, there to do your every bidding, no matter how rude, unreasonable and offensive you become towards them? Or do you speak to the store staff as your equals, as fellow human beings, just trying to make a living like you are elsewhere?
Rich business-people will expect society’s laws to enable them to make huge profits, but then they avoid paying their taxes, undervalue their employees, and pay them a poor wage. Wealthy people will expect a government to meet all their business needs, and pass laws which always favour them, but make a big fuss when laws are passed which benefit the other 90% of their fellow citizens – even blackmailing the government to ensure that the economy and its infra-structure only benefit 10% of the population, while being a positive hindrance to the other 90%
Mutual responsibility when interpreting the laws of Torah
When you are a pastor or a counsellor, you get to hear more examples of people’s inhumanity to their fellow human beings than you would normally ever expect to experience yourself. Much of my personal theology of ethics is built upon the things I have actually heard from people’s lives. It breaks my heart to hear what people have been through, but I am here to serve God’s children, and help them to unburden their troubles, and hopefully, to heal.
Religion – specifically, badly applied religion – is the cause of more pain and suffering than I can even dream about in my nightmares. A religious community led by a sociopath, a narcissist or a psychopath, will misuse religious law to create a hellscape. Allowing a psychopath to enter and lead a religious community, is a recipe for turning your community into a living hell on earth.
If a pastor begins abusing their own children, they might tell their children, ‘You can never tell anyone what I’ve been doing, because if you do, you will be dishonouring your father’. They have twisted a good law that God has given, and used it to protect themselves from being prosecuted by the law, for the sins they have committed against their children.
A mother might order her child to do something evil, and tell them, ‘You have to do this, because if you don’t, you will be dishonouring your mother, and you don’t want to do that, do you?’
In the case of God’s commandment, ‘Honour your father and your mother’, the unwritten expectation is conversely, ‘Do not abuse your children; do not order them to do evil; do not teach your children ethical or moral wickedness’. These laws were not written down, because these things were automatically expected of us by God. We are expected to use our common sense alongside the laws that God wrote upon our souls, to do the right thing, and not twist the good that God has imparted to us.
Mutual responsibility in the workplace
There are some companies who think that putting someone with a psychopathic personality in charge of a department, or of one branch of their organisation, will make people work harder and so make them more profitable. It may bring more profit, but it will make their employees hate working for the company, and it will result in workers being unwilling to go beyond what is expected of them. The people who are valued by their employer and appreciated by their managers, will do the best for their employer.
Some people have personalities which function at their best when they are thanked or congratulated for their hard work; others will only do their best when they are threatened, pressured, or sternly ordered to do something. If this second type of person is all you ever want to be, then that is all you are going to get, because the company is then going to hire a manager who is psychopathic enough not to care how badly you are mistreated to get the job done. When you are someone who will only do their work when they are mistreated, then the company will hire a manager who enjoys bullying people.
I have experienced this type of manager myself. The end-results were not pretty.
In most western countries, slavery has been abolished, but when it comes to the workplace, some higher-ups treat their employees as if slavery were still an acceptable institution. A religious person might have been told, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ at the weekend by their preacher, but when it comes to the other days of the week, it doesn’t seem to apply, as if God‘s ethics only applied at weekends!
A society run on psychopathic values will drill into their people, ‘You only live to work’, and, ‘If you don’t work every single hour of your waking life, then you’re a bad and lazy person‘ (even if that means that you never get to see your spouse or your children, and your family-life suffers). On the other hand, a society which treats their people with truly godly values will tell their people, ‘Work well to live, and to have a good life for your family’.
Treat your co-workers with respect. If they are your equals, treat them as equals. Don’t get involved in office politics; don’t manipulate others, don’t spread malicious gossip about others, don’t envy someone who is genuinely deserving of their reward.
Thank your colleague for a job well done; help someone who is having difficulty; recognise the effort someone has put into a task; have respect for your co-workers, regardless of their gender, age, religion, culture or ethnic origin.
These are things which most people would think shouldn’t need saying, but you’d be surprised how many people ignore these pieces of advice on a regular basis, and think nothing of doing so (I say these things based on what I have experienced myself as an office worker).
Mutual responsibility in Business
There are some people who venerate the Ten Commandments, but seem to ignore them when it suits them. For example, the 10th commandment is basically not to covet – not to yearn for or seek to possess – something which rightfully belongs to someone else.
However, in life, they venerate ideals such as, ‘I see what I want and I take it’; or, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable’. Big business will engage in corporate bullying to take over companies that don’t want to be taken over; God‘s highly exalted Commandments no longer matter when they are inconvenient.
And there are people who even admire those who have disrespect for God’s highest commandments and values. When they choose what to watch on TV, they enthuse about shows and films that idolise the powerful and the greedy, and those who are ruthless in their pursuit of power or wealth.
Price-gouging and shrink-flation are increasingly common problems in businesses where ethics plays no part. In Torah, honesty is an expected part of good business practice:
“You must not have in your pouch differing stone-weights – a heavier one and a lighter one. You must not have in your house differing measuring-cups, a larger one and a smaller one. Rather, you must have honest and correct weights, and you must have honest and correct measuring-cups, so that you may live a long time on the soil which YHVH your God is giving you; for everyone who engages in such deceitful practices, and everyone who acts with such dishonesty, is an abomination to YHVH your God.” (Dt 25:13-16)
Mutual responsibility in Politics and Government
In an ideal world, government is a two-way deal between people and their leaders. What should happen is that leaders agree to govern fairly and justly, enacting laws which benefit the majority of their citizens, and in return, the people agree to be governed by their representatives and leaders. Hence the inclusion of this section in my article about mutual responsibility.
I’ve written and rewritten this section so many times, because when I started out I was only thinking about the situation with religion and politics in the UK. However, with each rewrite, I’d realise that a particular sentence didn’t apply to this or that country. Some countries have a problem with decent ethics being kept out of politics and government by the far right (like in countries where religious people are relatively moderate), and some countries have a problem with extreme religious ethics having too much influence in politics (like in those countries where it’s the religious people who are the extremists). So generalisations are just not possible, even in democracies.
When the Hebrew prophets proclaimed their God-driven criticisms of their societies, they didn’t just criticise ordinary people’s behaviour, they also criticised the behaviour of their rulers. Some religious teachers have deliberately conned their people into thinking otherwise – that ethics and morals in government should not be the concern of religious people. This seems to happen mostly in countries where the religious are moderate, but the government is extremist; the government demand that moderate religious people stop sticking their noses into government affairs, and religious people have ended up agreeing that they should stay out of politics – even to the point of making it a virtue, and denying that biblical prophets ever criticised their leaders.
When a religious moderate agrees with the mindset that ethics should stay out of politics and government, then you end up with the subconscious impression that your God is not everywhere, and does not have universal dominion.
In other countries, people have been taught that religion has no place in politics, mostly because in the past, religious fundamentalism has historically been used to oppress and persecute people; fundamentalists tend to emphasise and value all the wrong things, and we end up with religious fascism (people end up thinking that their extreme political views are God’s views, and they allow their politics to overrule God’s decent ethics).
On the other hand, if you are someone who thinks that ethical ideals in politics should never be of any concern for religious people – not even decent, fair and humane ideals – you shouldn’t be surprised when you never have a government that you can respect or have any faith in. And when a government enacts laws which make life difficult, miserable and fraught with struggle for the majority of their people, the government should not be surprised when the majority of their people take every opportunity to vociferously oppose them.
In Judaism and the Israelite faith, there’s a different way of looking at things – the ethical standard of how leaders behave is very much a part of what is expected by God. One ideal in the Israelite faith, is that the judiciary must be completely independent of the civil authorities (in ancient Israel, the judges were chosen from among the respected elders of each tribe [Dt 1:13], rather than being political appointees of the king). Therefore, it is a Torah ideal that the judiciary must be independent of politics. In modern Israel however, there have been huge demonstrations ongoing for many months, because the far-right government wants to introduce the provision that, if the government disagrees with the supreme court’s ruling, they can legally overturn it. This is completely contrary to the ideals of Torah.
The Davidic Covenant was put in place by God, to ensure that the king would not, amongst other things, become an authoritarian tyrant (cf Dt 17:20; despotism and dictatorship are completely against God’s values). For God’s part, God shows concern for how God’s holy nation is to be run, but if there are too few people who believe that ordinary people should have any concern for decent ethics in government, then how else is God supposed to push through God’s will for social justice, except by causing the country to fall? If the underlying message behind God’s laws is to have a just and responsible leader, one who is concerned for the welfare of all their citizens and not just a small percentage of them, then what alternatives does God have, when too few people are even bothered with God’s standards?
The Scandinavian countries have some of the most ethically driven economies, environmental policies, and systems of government, where the government behaves in such a manner which causes them to be trusted and respected. They also have some of the happiest people in Europe. Out of the Top Ten happiest countries in the world, five of them are Nordic / Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland).
Ironically, the Scandinavian countries have the lowest numbers of religious people in Europe, and the highest numbers of atheists. It actually doesn’t surprise me at all. Some countries are faced with extreme religious people who interfere too much, or with religious people who believe that ethics in politics and government should not be any concern of its citizens. When no religion in a country can represent people who value decent, moderate and fair political ethics, then of course religion is going to fall out of favour in a country that values good ethics in government.
Torah is not a system of rules and laws that were put in place to oppress people; the rules are there to protect the weak and the vulnerable, who are otherwise unable to stand up for themselves. Torah was ancient Israel’s constitution, put in place to give ordinary people an ethical standard that they could hold their leaders to. It is neither God’s nor Torah’s fault if people then choose to ignore those standards (or even worse, misuse them).
Summary
The reason why some obvious laws are not included in Torah, is because they were automatically expected values of those who love YHVH. When a law is explicitly given – especially laws which govern human interaction – we are meant to look at the converse responsibility as well. Mutual responsibility was the underlying basis of several of Yeshua’s teachings, and for that reason, is part of modern Talmidaism.
Sadly, many religious people don’t apply their religion’s good ethics in their daily lives; Talmidaism is very much its daily ethics. When you see just how much of life is covered by God’s good and positive ways, you realise that God is in everything, in all life, and everywhere around you; God’s Kingdom is everywhere and within you.