they should seek the Law (the Lord) your God; andTorah) at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of
hosts
”- Malachi 2:7, KJB.
In the former verse, the Hebrew word translated as “Law” is “Torah” (meaning, “instruction”, or
“guidance”), while the Hebrew words translated as “messenger”, is the word “Malach” ( meaning both
“angel”, and “messenger”).
Thus, the verse intimates that, if a man is like “an angel (messenger) of the Lord” (in other words, if he is
humble, holy, and separated from evil), we are allowed to seek Torah from his mouth; but if he isn’t holy and
humble, we are not allowed to do so.
God doesn’t condemn our intellectual stupidity; rather, He condemns our moral stupidity
Nowhere within Moses five books of Torah will we ever find God rebuking pharaoh’s pagan theology; nor
does He ever threatens Pharaoh for the gross idolatry of claiming to be a living deity. Yet we do find God
asking Pharaoh to stop enslaving [and slaughtering] innocent Hebrew people, or else face death and
destruction.
And something similar could be said concerning God’s dealings with many other pagan characters
(Abimelech, Balaam, Ben-hadad, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus, etc.)
What moral lesson is the Holy One (blessed be He) trying to teach us with the former tale? Reformed
Samaritanism proposes that He wants us to know that God doesn’t hold us accountable for our “
intellectual
stupidity
”. In other words, He won’t condemn us for having a defective theology. Why? Simply because God
is perfectly fair; and condemning our intellectual stupidity would be a most unfair thing.
And why would it be unfair? Because our theology is the natural result of our limited understanding--
something that isn’t under our personal control, but rather under God control (thus, God can’t judge us for a
limitation He himself has imposed upon us).
On the other hand, the Creator does hold us accountable for our “
moral stupidity
”. In other words, for
choosing to willingly ignore the prompting of our conscience and our common sense, when they tell us deep
down inside that it would be wrong to do unto our fellow beings that which we would hate if done unto
ourselves (injustice, cruelty, murder, theft, fraud, cheating, betrayal, dishonor, etc).
Why it is fair for God to judge our
moral stupidity
? Because although we often can’t change our evil
inclinations, we are always free to stand on the right side of morality. How? By calling “Good” that which
the Creator, nature, common sense, and our conscience calls “Good”; And by calling “Evil” that which all of
the former call “Evil”.
In fact, Hebrew Scripture hints at the idea that, even if our theology seems to be perfect, as long as we insist
upon calling “Unfair” (immoral) what God had clearly declared to be “Fair” (moral), we will remain under
God’s stern judgment. As is written:
“
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