Order and hierarchy have been inherent in God’s plan from the very beginning, whether among the angels, in the Garden of Eden, among men, or within families. Although the laws that govern spiritual authority are not as readily subject to experiment and objective verification as the laws that govern chemical reactions, they are just as real and just as inviolable. A man who continually drinks dilute amounts of drano will eventually suffer from alkaline poisoning whether he learned the lessons of high school chemistry or not. He might get away with it for a short while, but the consequences of his actions will catch up with him. The same is true of those who reject spiritual authority. Women who reject the spiritual covering of their fathers or husbands, men who reject the authority of God’s anointed prophets and judges, children who reject the authority of their parents…They might live indefinitely believing that they have chosen their own path, that they have found freedom in self-governance. Really, they have left one service for another and gained nothing lasting in the transaction. After all, who is more free? The slave whose master will defend him and who trusts him with a great deal of autonomy? Or the escaped slave who has no resources, no shelter, and who has become an open and defenseless target for abuse and re-enslavement by another master? The latter may appear to have more freedom in the immediate sense of having no allegiance and no duty to a higher power, but in the long run, his available choices will be severely limited and possibly eliminated altogether.

Shabbat: Doesn’t the Letter to the Hebrews say that the blood of bulls and goats never took away anyone’s sins and that Gideon and David and all the other ancient Israelites who lived before Jesus were saved only by faith in a future Messiah and not by animal sacrifices at all?

Sunday: What’s your point?

Shabbat: Exactly.