The authority and laws of kings and nations comes and goes. When they crest they appear as mountains, yet over the course of Time they rise and fall like waves on the sea.
For millennia human Consciousness and Authority have been evolving towards greater understanding and articulation of the Universal Law and Right Relationship.
This genuine evolution towards Good and properly ordered laws and society has been offset by the intentional stunting and corruption of that evolution by those who benefit from Ignorance and Lawlessness.
The proper articulation of written law follows the (likely unconscious) acting out of higher order ways of Being, which are eventually consciously recognized as more Good than other ways of being, verbally articulated, and then eventually embodied in writing, and then eventually embodied in societal institutions.
The critical realization is that fact that for most of our human history the vast majority of us lacked our present understanding.
The laws, traditions, and customs of tribes around the world remained unwritten for millennia, passed down as oral traditions.
Moses, for instance, spent years judging the disputes of the Israelites before ascending the holy mountain and receiving the written articulation of the 10 Commandments on stone tablets.
When he descends from the mountain, he finds everyone breaking the most important of the 10 commandments, smashes the tablets, and has to go back up to the mountain.
In the earliest articulations, such as the 10 commandments, there is an emergent and embodied set of Principles finally being articulated into writing. It is a simple clarification of what is already being acted out and seen as Good, for instance “thou shall not kill”.
Later, subsequent evolutions of law came into being that began to develop more differentiated and highly articulated descriptions of the Moral Framework and Ideals behind the stated words.
For instance, relative to simple notion of Killing, a special case is articulated in which: “unintentionally, not hating (the victim) previously”, someone kills another, “such as when a person goes into the forest with his friend to cure wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron head slips off the handle and strikes his friend so that he dies…”
This specific example borne out of experience and documented helped differentiate the principle of premeditated killing, from intentional killing, from unintentional killing.
Over time, the principle of not killing others was elevated to articulate that what we actually should do is not only not kill people, but also love and help them.
This is a tremendous leap from the idea that we shouldn’t kill One Another.
Thousands of years later, Jesus performs an ultimate abstraction of the universal law by saying that all scripture was contained in the single commandment to “Love God (above all and with all your might)… and likewise to love your neighbor as yourself”.
1900 years later, Lord Atkin’s neighbor principle instructing that people must take reasonable care not to injure others who could foreseeably be affected by their action or inaction was considered a major legal event which laid the foundation for modern law on Negligence and Duty Of Care.
Later, in describing what the Love he spoke of looks like when it is fully embodied, Jesus clarified that “greater Love has no man than this, that he lay down his Life for his friends.”
Later, Jesus further clarifies that this Love is not meant to apply only to one’s friends, but also to one’s enemies.
This a fitting story for humanity’s historical interaction with the laws set up to protect them and keep society on the rails throughout the generations.
What we find time and time again is that it is critical to differentiate the minimum level of laws required in a society to establish basic Rights and Responsibilities, from the Highest / Ideal / Perfect Standard that the Spirit impels us upward towards. .
Forward to 9.8 The Lower, Temporal, Secular Law, And The Higher, Eternal, Spiritual Law
Back to 9.6 The Order Of Authorities
Back to table of contents The Book of Lionsberg