God is law

The universal acknowledgement and exaltation of God as the Creator of the universe, the source of excellence and goodness for humanity, fount of mercy and forgiveness of sins, and the great consoler of pains, who deserves the highest adoration and praises, skews our mind off one of His characteristics: that God is a God of law, and law is order, and by law has the universe been kept going all these innumerable years.

The laws of God work with inexorable exactitude and create results with mathematical certainty, such that the sufferings of humanity must be explained in relation to the obedience or disobedience to the laws that regulate both nature and man.

In other words, does God exercise his mercies outside or within the compass of his laws?

This is what we need to reflect on.

Since the universe is God’s handicraft, it is obvious its governance must operate by the immutable laws that ensure continuance of the universe, and the well-being of humanity.

The laws are several, but we can distinguish laws of the following: planetary laws; ecological laws; spiritual laws; moral laws; personal laws (psychological, social, relational, etc); and laws of governance (justice, economics, leadership, etc).

These laws require separate essays to elucidate them.

Divine laws

Whereas the material transformations of societies have sprung from seemingly only material decisions taken to improve the lot of humanity, we shall discover that back of our achievements are divine laws that God emplaced in creation to facilitate our relationship with him, and also for our evolution as spirit beings, and it is these laws that have informed our various decisions in the organisation and transformation of our nations.

Presently, the state of the nations of the world bespeaks severity of sufferings and manifold challenges of magnitudes defying solutions.

When the United Nations and other international bodies meet, they discuss problems and solutions from the limited perspective of human knowledge and reasoning.

I have not read anything showing reference to God and evaluation of our solutions per His standards, as stated in the various religions of the world.

Admittedly, religion does not feature in such global discussions, for obvious reasons, but, still, any allusion to what I would call first principles, would be determinative of whether humanity is conforming to those basic universal principles or not, and solutions would then be formulated conformable to those first principles.

Illustrate

Let me illustrate.

According to historians, in the earliest known written manuscript of Ptah Hotep, an Egyptian high priest, in 553 BC, is found this inscription: “If thou be among people, make for thyself love the beginning and end of the heart”.

At the first Buddhist Council held at Rajagriha,   India, in 466 B.C., the scribes almost duplicated the advice of Egypt’s priest, in the writing:  “One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself”.

When Alexander of Macedon marched into Persia, 334 B.C., he found there: “Do as you would be done by,” which had been taught by Zoroaster.

Jesus Christ stated the same law of love at John 13: 34: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another: as I have loved you, that ye also love one another (KJV).

Moses stated the extremities of the law in this admonition to the Israelites: I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live (Deut 30:19 KJV).

Laws

The laws of God are several and diverse, but when it comes to man’s evolution and progress, the laws reduce themselves into one primal and fundamental law: the law of love.

This is an instant of what I mean by first principles.

And these principles exist as standards for evaluating our conduct in life.

The fortune of nations is dependent on the degree of adherence to the Laws that exist for humanity’s spiritual, moral and physical growth.

When these laws are endangered, calamity ensues.

The wars in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia have affected the land itself, and nature has also rebelled, and shut off rain from falling.

The consequences are known to all.

Beyond the moral and spiritual laws that we endeavour to live by, the ecological laws of the universe also deserve our highest respect and compliance.

Desertification, greenhouse warming, rise in oceanic temperatures, reduction of ice at the polar regions, and other ecological aberrations could be due to the abuse by humanity of the laws that regulate our relationship with nature.

The laws of God are not religiously denominated.

The laws belong to no creed, no sect, no doctrine, no nation; they are universal principles.

It behoves us, therefore, to know the laws of God, and acknowledge that the truest worship of God, and the surest foundations for any national development and prosperity of the people, is by living in compliance with His laws.

The writer is a lawyer
E-mail: akwesihu@yahoo.com