The Law is Good

The Law is Good

The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

By A.E. Houseman

The laws of God, the laws of man,

He may keep that will and can;

Not I: let God and man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs

Let them mind their own affairs.

Their deeds I judge and much condemn,

Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, say I, and they

Need only look the other way.

But no, they will not; they must still

Wrest their neighbor to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hell-fire.

And how am I to face the odds

Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?

I, a stranger and afraid

In a world I never made.

They will be master, right or wrong;

Though both are foolish, both are strong.

And since, my soul, we cannot fly

To Saturn nor to Mercury,

Keep we must, if keep we can,

These foreign laws of God and man.

Mr. Houseman, in the poem above, expresses what so often people in this world express towards law– contempt. He rightly diagnoses many of man’s laws as “bedevilments”, but foolishly places the same judgement on the law of God.

In 1 Tim. 1:8 “Paul declares the law is good, if one uses it lawfully.” God gave us his law, not to hurt, not to be an unnecessary restriction, but as a guide to his son that gives us “life abundantly” (John 10:10). Likewise, he established governments and laws to also regulate a world of sin (Rom. 13:1-7). Let us learn abandon rebellion and to love the laws God has established for our good.

I love You

Jonathan