Because He's God and He Said So

I'm sure when I'm a dad and I have children incessantly questioning my decrees, I'll want to use the line "Because I'm Dad and I said so." The same thing seems to happen with humanity and God. People are incessantly asking "Why do I need to follow that weird rule in the Bible?" Because God is God and He said so. He knows a lot better than you.

True, the Bible does have some perplexing commands, as non-Christians see it. It even has some commands that are perplexing to Christians (head coverings for women, for example). We should still seek to obey these things, and I'll explain why, using some Biblical examples.

Back in the Old Testament days, the Israelites had rules upon rules. If this person had a boil that heals, but comes back with a reddish-white spot, the priest must examine it. If the boil didn't meet such and such conditions, the person was to be put in isolation for seven days. To someone who didn't know about the nature of infectious diseases, this must have been a rather strange requirement. But ideally, the Israelites would follow this law, and by quarantining the sick person, they would limit the spread of contagious diseases. The procedures might not have made an ounce of sense to them, but now that we know about germs and disease vectors, we see that God's law makes sense.

Likewise with dietary restrictions. Pigs were regarded as unclean. I have been told that pigs will eat virtually anything that they are fed. This could include all sorts of foul and diseased carcasses that they stumble upon in the wild. They eat the diseased carcass, which could possible spread its disease to the people who consumed the pig. By not eating pigs, the Israelites were protected against trichinosis and other parasites, which back then would've pretty much meant that you were dead. Back then, who knew why you weren't supposed to eat pigs? They probably could've fed a lot of people. But God said no, and that was that. Now we see that it makes sense.

So when someone is complaining about how the Bible is unfair or outdated regarding promiscuity, deviant (gay) behavior, greed, dishonesty, or whatever...tell them it's for their own good, and in a couple of thousand years, we might know why. "Why must we do this or not do that?" Because God said so, and God knows best. There are some things which we have no clue why God commanded it, but in the end, we will probably find out that it is beneficial to us. Not that God's commands always have to be beneficial to us. God is God and sometimes He just might command us to do something for His glory. God wants our obedience, among a few other things.

Instead of trying to figure out the logic behind every strange command that we read, maybe sometimes we ought to just ...do it. It's probably for our own good.