How do we know our spiritual weaknesses and blind spots? Given the large amount of biblical law that exists, how do we know which areas we struggle in, not merely in those areas that are meant to refine our character, but which areas do we have beliefs that are contrary to God’s ways and which may jeopardize our salvation. Since there are some 615 biblical laws, it is far beyond my intention to examine each law one by one and the myriad ways in which we may depart from these laws to the right hand or to the left hand, since I would have to write forever to do so.

However, there is an easier way if instead of the infinite ways that we may be corrupted in our attitude toward God’s law, we reflect on the common elements of our hostility toward that law. One of the easiest and also most productive ways to understand our mental and spiritual weak spots with regard to God’s ways is to examine those areas when we spiritualize away the requirements of the law and ignore their physical application in our lives. When this happens, we know for sure that we have a weakness and we can explore why that weakness exists and what we can do about it.

Let us give some examples. The fifth commandment commands that we honor our father and mother that our days may be long on the land. In principle (and as it is explained in scripture), this law also requires our respect and honor for all authorities. The deeper spiritual reason for this law appears to be that we cannot learn how to honor and respect God properly unless we can honor and respect those fallible human authorities that God has placed in charge over us. I will own up to the fact that is obvious to just about everyone who knows me or reads my writing that I struggle pretty mightily with this passage, for reasons that are unnecessary to explain.

They are unnecessary because the real issue isn’t the justification of the departure from God’s standard, but because there is a reluctance or a difficulty in obeying the law itself as written. Whenever one attempts to spiritualize this requirement away by saying that God is our Father and that we only have to respect Him and not our (corrupt and wicked, perhaps) physical fathers and mothers and authorities, we have a blind spot and weakness that could threaten our salvation. It is through respecting physical authorities, even those we know to be flawed, that we find ourselves worthy of respect, because we are all certainly flawed as well, and should we have positions of authority we would rightly expect the respect of others. We cannot learn the balance between challenging evil and loving and respecting others without both giving and receiving love and respect. And that process of education should start in the home, because that should be the easiest place to learn.

Let us briefly discuss the reason why the specific reasons of a difficulty with this law are irrelevant in the present context. We may have difficulties respecting authority because we are rebellious and seditious ourselves. On the other hand, we may have difficulties with respecting authority because of a long chain of abuses in our life that make it difficult or nearly impossible to trust others in power, whether they are in our families or otherwise. Clearly, our feelings about and sympathy toward the people is different depending on the reasons and motives that drive their difficulties, but the spiritual stakes are the same. If God will not grant eternal life to any potential rebels, than we had better know how to respect authority, and we had better work on our own wounded hearts and spirits to the extent that we can endure undeserved suffering and let God avenge without taking out our wounds on everyone in authority forever after, knowing that just as Jesus Christ suffered without deserving it that we understand what it was like for Christ when we are called to do the same, knowing that our reward may be in the future while our suffering is in the present, and knowing also that we will always be under authority. But again, it is irrelevant the reasons why we struggle with respect for authority because if we cannot respect authority we will not enter God’s kingdom at all.

And this same principle can govern all laws of God. Wherever we have a difficulty in accepting the literal and physical and present application of a law, we have a blind spot. Our response, if we are called by God and His Holy Spirit is working with us to refine us for salvation, ought not to be to justify our blind spot but rather to work on it and to see the seriousness that those whose ways are hardened against God’s ways, as expressed in His laws, will not enter His kingdom, regardless of what laws we happen to reject. To reject and rebel against a law of God is to reject a part of God Himself, since the law is a reflection of His perfect and righteous character.

Let us give another example of this. I have read many writers who claim to support God’s law but who have a virulent hatred against the Sabbath, Holy Days, land sabbaths, and jubilees. They claim that the laws are “fulfilled” spiritually in Christ giving us freedom from sin and applied only to the actual land of ancient Israel, neatly removing them from any sort of practical relevance today. Why do they do this? Because they have a massive blind spot regarding their own practice and desire to exploit others economically and the Sabbath is in clear opposition to their greed. They are neo-Confederates, seeking to justify the rape of the land where plantation owners did not give the Sabbath rest to their slaves (contrary to divine law), did not free those slaves that they maimed or that were their children or concubines (contrary to divine law), did not obey the land Sabbaths and therefore wore out their land (contrary to divine law).

To accept the validity of God’s Sabbath laws would be to accept that their ancestors were not paragons of obedience to God’s ways but were in fact flagrant sinners worthy of God’s judgment, which they received in time and in history, through the loss of their slaves and political power and the fertility of their land. It would also condemn them for their present desire to exploit the poor and foreigners for their own economic gain, and therefore they reject the law and reject that aspect of God’s character, even as they seek to enforce standards of penology and obedience in other aspects of God’s laws.

And this exercise could be repeated for any number of God’s laws. Where we do not want the literal and physical fulfillment of God’s laws at the present time and place, suggests we have a serious spiritual blind spot that we need to work on, a serious difficulty that could jeopardize our salvation because of a part of our own nature that is contrary to God that we want to keep while justifying our own departure from God’s ways. It does not matter what aspect of God’s character we differ from while wanting to remain autonomous, because the end result is the same.

It could even be an issue as small as tassels. There are various possible reasons that God commanded the people of Israel to wear tassels on their garment, but among a large group of people who consider themselves obedient to God’s laws there is a strong reluctance to wearing them. There seems to be a fear of looking too Jewish. Even after one obeys the Sabbath, the Holy Days, clean and unclean meats, and so on, there are lines one does not want to cross in terms of appearing or looking Jewish to the world, and that suggests a blind spot, and not a rational one but rather an internal difficulty, a desire to retain as much as possible of one’s ancestral traditions and ways and merely strip them of pagan meaning so as to be acceptable to God without having to change one’s cultural heritage too dramatically.

I could go on endlessly, but I hope the point has been sufficiently made. It does not matter upon which ground we are reluctant or hostile to obey God’s laws, from an eternal standpoint. Whatever law we break, we are guilty of all and deserving of the death penalty. If we are adulterers we cannot look down on thieves or murderers or rebels. We are all in the same boat together–facing destruction and eternal judgment unless we repent. If we are afraid of standing out and of looking funny to our friends and neighbors and family, how are we going to be able to stand up for His faith when it is a life or death issue? How are we going to stand firm for preaching God’s ways, all of them, to a world that is bent on rebellion and hostile to the people and the ways of God, whether that hostility is to standards of sexual morality or economic morality? If we have blind spots where we reject the present and physical application of God’s laws, we have work to do on ourselves. May that work be helped by God’s Holy Spirit, but let us not delude ourselves into thinking we are acceptable to God in our present state when we have not chosen to accept and reflect all of His ways. For that would be to deceive ourselves and to tempt serious judgment for our believing and practicing a lie.