Have you ever wondered why the laws of God in the Old Testament can sometimes seem so specific? Consider Exodus 23:19, which forbids boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk. It is an oddly specific prohibition. To modern readers, such a command can feel arbitrary, even a bit pedantic. Yet what if we have been reading these laws too narrowly? What if the laws of God were never intended merely to regulate behavior, but also to shape the hearts, values, and instincts of God’s people? When viewed this way, even the most unusual commands take on new significance. When viewed this way a law like Exodus 23:19 can actually be about cultivating a high regard for life. The laws of God were designed not only to tell Israel what to do, but to shape the moral imagination of God’s people. Many difficult Old Testament laws become more understandable once we recognize that God was not merely legislating conduct but cultivating a particular kind of people.
What is Moral Imagination?
We live inside stories. Stories give us categories for interpreting our experiences and understanding our place in the world. This observation is not merely a modern psychological insight. Theologians have long recognized the role stories play in shaping human understanding. As theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has said:
Human beings are inveterate producers and consumers of myths. Inasmuch as stories help order and provide meaning to human life, myths – and other forms of the imagination, including narratives and metaphors – are the currency we live by. (Remythologizing Theology, 2)
Storytelling has the capacity, and has throughout human history, of explaining things, illustrating truths, and providing a shared communal foundation for living. In fact, one of the fascinating things about the Bible is that it does not give us merely a list of propositional truths to believe. Rather, it gives us tons and tons of narrative (among other genres). Jesus, in His own teaching, uses stories as well to illustrate points and communicate important key truths to His audience. We live by stories and the Bible fully acknowledges this reality.
One of the key things that stories do, however, is shape and influence our character. They do this by presenting to us a vision of the good life that we feel compelled to pursue. We adopt and adapt our character to correspond to that vision. As philosopher James K.A. Smith notes:
Much of our action is not the fruit of conscious deliberation; instead, much of what we do grows out of our passional orientation to the world – affected by all the ways we’ve been primed to perceive the world. In short, our action emerges from how we imagine the world. And that shaping of our character is, to a great extent, the effect of stories that have captivated us, that have sunk into our bones – stories that “picture” what we think life is about, what constitutes “the good life.” We live into the stories we’ve absorbed; we become characters in the drama that has captivated us. Thus, much of our action is acting out a kind of script that has unconsciously captured our imaginations. (Imagining the Kingdom. 31-32)
Stories do more than entertain. They teach us what kind of world we inhabit, who the heroes are, what is worth pursuing, and what should be feared or desired. Over time, these visions of reality become instinctive. We no longer merely think about them; we see through them.
This is what we mean when we speak about the moral imagination. It is the God-given capacity to perceive reality, evaluate what is good and evil, and instinctively envision how life ought to be lived. Human beings do not merely think their way through life. We learn to perceive the world in certain ways. We develop instincts about what is good, beautiful, dangerous, desirable, and wise. These instincts shape our actions long before conscious reasoning occurs. For example, A Christian who sees a homeless man and immediately thinks compassion is operating from a different moral imagination than someone who immediately thinks inconvenience. A mother who instinctively sacrifices for her child is operating from a formed vision of love. A culture that celebrates self-expression has a different moral imagination than one that celebrates self-denial. We are all shaped by the various visions of the good life that stories have fed us. One of the key things that God does through the Scriptures is shape that imagination.
As we think, then, about the Laws of God, we note that they too are part of a story. The Ten Commandments, for example, don’t start with “Rule Number One.” They start with a call back to the narrative that Israel is living: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery (Ex. 20:2). The laws derive their meaning from a larger story and invite God’s people to participate in that story. And that participation is significant, because our habits reinforce our beliefs. Israel is not merely learning information, the people are learning to inhabit a covenant identity. The law invites Israel to become: a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, God’s treasured possession. Every act of obedience becomes participation in that story.
Training the Moral Imagination
The purpose behind God’s laws is not to acquire merely legal compliance, but to create a people who are distinct among the nations. From the beginning, when God first calls Abram, he makes clear that the goal is to establish a communal identity: a great nation through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen. 12:2-3). Before giving the people the Ten Commandments, God calls Israel a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6). In Deuteronomy 4:5-8, God speaks to Israel’s obedience as providing testimony to their relationship with Him. We read:
Look, I have taught you statutes and ordinances as the Lord my God has commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to possess. Carefully follow them, for this will show your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the peoples. When they hear about all these statutes, they will say, ‘This great nation is indeed a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to him? And what great nation has righteous statutes and ordinances like this entire law I set before you today?
The laws are not merely regulating conduct. They are creating a public display of God’s wisdom.
Leviticus 20 is another passage that speaks to the relationship between the laws of God and Israel’s distinction among the nations. The chapter contains a variety of laws addressing worship, sexuality, and occult practices. Yet the culmination of the chapter reveals that these commands share a common purposes: you are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be mine (v. 26). In fact, the Lord says plainly, the the nations He is driving out of the land committed all these abhorrent sins, and if Israel commits them then the land will “vomit” them out. They are to live differently. The law is one of God’s primary instruments for creating a holy and distinctive people among the nations.
Distinctive conduct does not emerge in a vacuum. People live differently because they learn to see the world differently. One of the chief ways that the Law creates a distinct people among the nations is through cultivating the moral imagination of the people. The Laws don’t merely give restrictions and commands; they point to a vision of the good life and cultivate people who not only obey God’s commands but learn to see the world through God’s wisdom. Consider, particularly, the way that Old Testament Case Law does this very thing.
Case Law and Training the Imagination
The Bible is replete with very specific laws that, to the modern reader, can feel random and arbitrary. But, if you notice the structure of these commands, they often operate like mini-stories. Many of these case laws serve to place the people of God in various real-life situations so that they must think ahead about the kinds of people they will be when they encounter this and similar situations. Case laws are exercises in moral formation.
In Exodus 23, for example, the reader is encouraged to imagine a scenario where they encounter their enemy’s ox or donkey lost on the road. The audience must imagine themselves now in this very moral dilemma. The text is explicit here: If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under its load, and you want to refrain from helping it, you must help with it (v. 5). The law does not merely say, ‘Love your enemy.’ Instead, it places the reader inside a scene. You encounter the donkey of someone who hates you. You are tired. You would rather keep walking. What kind of person will you be? It is the kind of command that reshapes how God’s people view their responsibility toward those they dislike.
Case Law operates not merely by giving a command for a specific situation. It trains God’s people to perceive the world through God’s values. The specific example becomes a window into a broader vision of wisdom, justice, compassion, and holiness. In Deuteronomy 22:8, Israel is commanded to build a railing around their roof, which encourages the people to think about love of neighbor through the lens of preventative care. The Gleaning laws in Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 24 encourage generosity to the poor. The command not to take a mother bird with her young (Deut. 22:6-7) urges restraint of power. The command not to muzzle the ox in Deuteronomy 25:4 is famously picked up by Paul as a broad principle of treating workers fairly. Our list could go on and on. Each command certainly gives a very specific command and to many readers they can feel utterly random. We can feel inclined to wonder why God cares so much about birds and how you cook goats. But the purpose of the commands is beyond the specific example. It is about training the moral imagination. Each case law is about shaping character and training people to live in certain ways as the people of God.
Reading for Our Own Formation
With this understanding of Scripture in mind we want to think afresh about how we read the Old Testament law. Sometimes modern readers can skip over the various case laws or detailed specifics of civil and religious responsibilities of the nation of Israel. We tend to skim these sections because we assume they are merely legal details from ancient history. But if the law is about shaping character, cultivating a vision of life under God, then we should read them intently. We should read them and ask key questions of their specifics. Questions like:
- What kind of God would make this command?
- What kind of person would obey this command?
- How would obeying this command influence the rest of a person’s choices and responses?
- What vision of life is this command promoting?
The Law of God is not merely a list of prohibitions and expectations. God is not interested simply in external conformity. He is forming a people who reflect His wisdom, embody His character, and display His goodness before the nations. The specific commands of the Law were part of that larger purpose. They trained Israel to see the world through God’s eyes and to live accordingly. When we read the Law with that goal in mind, even its most unusual commands become rich opportunities to understand both the heart of God and the kind of people He desires His people to become.
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