The Finnish interior minister, Päivi Räsänen became the eyesore of the media last week when she said in her speech in the summer festival of the Finnish Lutheran Mission that when the worldly law and the law of God conflict we should obey God’s word.
I think this is rather a no-brainer and I didn’t understand why people were making such a vociferous protest about it.
As I read about it for the first time I automatically thought about ethics:
that people should follow the ethics of their inner being rather than the norms and rules of society. Wayne Dyer talks about this in his presentation How to be a No-Limit Person (video timeline 37:02).
We should do much more than simply obey the law. We are guardians of the law. This way we rise above the law. It is the civic duty of all people to expose the weaknesses of the law and twisted policies in administration and take care that the written laws are consistent with the law of God, with Christian ethics. I see Christian ethics as universal Christ consciousness, which is the natural state of human mind and is not only related to Christianity.
The sin Päivi Räsänen committed was the context, which she put her words into:
that she had the nerve to relate this thing to the Bible. It seems that when one only mentions the words Bible and religion nowadays, one most likely makes people’s hair stand on end, which causes them to lose objectivity.
People say that the interior minister should not express her personal opinion in this issue while she even is in charge of the police institution in the country. But in the matter of fact this ethical approach to law is written on the first pages of a book called ‘The Finnish Law’:
What is neither just nor equitable, cannot be the law
And even more clearly:
The good of the common man is the supreme law; and therefore, what is found useful for the common man shall be deemed the law even if the words of a written law would seem to order otherwise.
These thoughts are attributed to The Rules For Judges written in the early 1500s by Olaus Petri, clergyman, writer, judge and major contributor to the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. Päivi Räsänen could have spoken about the same thing the Finnish judicial tradition as a starting point and not the Bible.
Some people say that as a politician the interior minister shouldn’t express her personal opinion in this issue. At the same time we hear that one weakness of representative democracies is the fact that the members of parliaments, who are elected according to their political views, are not allowed to handle according to their own convictions, but are obliged to follow the ‘official’ opinion of their parties.
Form becomes more important than contents:
‘Wrong’ persons are not allowed to say right things and even the wrongdoings of ‘right’ persons are claimed to be just. Brightness becomes darkness, darkness becomes brightness and angels turn to demons when one interprets the law like the devil reads the Bible.
Citizens are taken to court for their ‘hate speech’ or information leakage as they try to fulfill they civic duty by disclosing weaknesses in society. The concept of ethics brings in mind moral issues and in a ‘free democracy’ people don’t want to think about such old fashioned viewpoints.
Long time ago I read in a nutrition book that if people would choose as carefully the food they eat as they are choosing the fuel for their car we would not be so sick.
The same applies to how we choose our spiritual food: By denying moral and ethical issues we don’t make them go away. They still have an influence in our lives. Our denial only drives us to uncertainty, which increases our ill-being.
Gregg Braden says in his presentation The Language of the Divine Matrix that we have the capability to get connected with the intelligent energy field of the Universe, and the most relevant thing in this regard is, if we know what we are saying or doing (video timeline 0:10:10).
Two weeks ago I found a book, which is said to be written by hundreds of authors during several decades in the early 1900s. Like the Bible the book gives ethical guidelines. The book is called The Urantia Book.
Urantia is the name of our planet and the writings in The Urantia Book instruct us on the genesis, history, and destiny of humanity and on our relationship with our Creator. The book combines aspects of science, philosophy and religion as it describes the journey of humankind from time to eternity.
I have been somewhat sceptical as I have been reading the book. Despite of that I found some passages in the text, which I like very much:
Remember that in the religion of all ages the experience which is paramount is the feeling regarding moral values and social meanings, not the thinking regarding theologic dogmas or philosophic theories. Religion evolves favorably as the element of magic is replaced by the concept of morals. (1132.4) 103:3.4
The pursuit of the ideal — the striving to be Godlike — is a continuous effort before death and after. … … Real religion does not foster moral indolence and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon one as a result of passing through the portals of natural death (or obeying the law, own remark). (1134.5) 103:5.7
When the Father’s will is your law, you are hardly in the kingdom. But when the Father’s will becomes truly your will, then are you in very truth in the kingdom because the kingdom has thereby become an established experience in you. When God’s will is your law, you are noble slave subjects; but when you believe in this new gospel of divine sonship, my Father’s will becomes your will, and you are elevated to the high position of the free children of God, liberated sons of the kingdom. (1588.5) 141:2.2