Godblog

Foundations

“And so I want to read a Scripture that kind of lays that foundation for what I will say later. Now there are—when I have a discussion with people—there’s a question that I like to ask, especially those who are theologians or pastors or those who feel like they know the Bible.

“It’s a question that I enjoy having some fun with, and I ask them this question; I ask it of you: What is the very first thing that God created when he set out to create the universe? What was the first thing he made?

“When you ask people that who know the Bible, they immediately go to Genesis 1 and they try to remember what that said and was it the heavens and the earth or the firmament or the light or the deep? What was the first thing that God created when he set out to do that? Actually, they are wrong, because there’s a hook in the question. The answer is not found in Genesis 1 or any part of Genesis. It’s actually found in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 8.

“And in this passage, Proverbs 8:22-30, wisdom is speaking in first person, metaphorically. Wisdom is, as we know, throughout this book, God’s point of view. Wisdom is His way of seeing things. Wisdom is His value system, and so wisdom, here, is talking about itself and this is what it says: ‘The Lord brought me forth as the first of His works before His deeds of old. I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth. When there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth. Before He made the earth or the fields or any of the dust of the world, I was there when He set the heavens in place.’

“‘When He marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when He established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep. When He gave the sea its boundaries so the water would not overstep his command, and when He marked out the foundations of the earth. Then, I was the craftsman at His side.’

“What this is saying, in other words, is that the moral law of the universe antedated the physical universe, it came first. It was not as though the children of Israel wandered into the wilderness and the Lord looked at their behavior, and they’re worshipping idols and they’re doing all these wrong things, and he says, ‘Hmmm. Those folks need some rules,’ and so he calls Moses up into the hills and said, ‘Here are the Ten Commandments. This will help those people do better.’

“It is not that way at all. That moral foundation, that moral law, is eternal because it’s an expression of God’s own nature and it pre-dates the universe and it will outlast the physical laws. You can no more defy that moral law than you can jump off a ten-story building, because if anything, the moral law outranks the physical law. The physical law is going to pass away. His book says, ‘The heavens and the earth shall be rolled up like a scroll, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, there’ll be new physical laws, but the moral law is eternal.’

“He said his Word shall live forever. So that moral law has great significance and it says in the end of that chapter, ‘For whoever finds me, finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself and all who hate me, love death.’ The moral law of the universe.

“What this is saying to me, and I hope to you, is that the universe has a boss. It has a boss and he has very clear ideas of what is right and what is wrong. It doesn’t matter a whole lot what you think or what I think. What matters is what he thinks, because that moral law has been there from eternity and will be there to eternity, and if that is true, then we have an obligation to understand it and to respect it.

“Now, I’m not talking today about dogma. I’m not talking about denominations. I’m not talking about churches. I’m talking about a law that’s written on the heart of every human being.” — Dr. James Dobson, in a speech before the Council for National Policy, 7 February 1998 (emphasis added)