Following simple instructions can prevent moral confusion, says Sheffield pastor

Recently we bought an old camper van.As we set up the back for our first road trip next week, we went to Ikea to get a small cupboard for storage.
Ikea is famous for its flat-pack furnitureIkea is famous for its flat-pack furniture
Ikea is famous for its flat-pack furniture

This is not the first time I’ve built a piece of Ikea furniture. I glanced at the instructions, seems straight forward, set them aside and started to build.

Much to my satisfaction, it was soon built and looking good. I was pleased with myself.

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Now for the finishing touch, just slip the door into place and get it into the van, but for some reason, the door appeared to be the wrong way around.

The Reverend Peter McCoolThe Reverend Peter McCool
The Reverend Peter McCool

After much head scratching, trying to see the problem and various other ingenious adjustments I decided to go back to the first page of the instructions and follow them through.

I got the first part right, then, step two. One of the side panels has a number one on it, I issed it and put the side panels the wrong way around. The result, dismantle and start again.

How many times in life do we start well? Everything seems straight forward and off we go.

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Soon we are scratching our head, looking at the situation, baffled, and inventing all kinds of explanations and ingenious ideas to remedy the problem.

Many people think God's word is an outdated, old fashioned book of writings from a dictator who loves to control us and tell us what to do!

The reality is that His moral code, His instructions, we call them the Ten Commandments, are what we need to follow, if we consider the kind of world we claim we want to live in.

If we consider how we would like to be treated and then have another look at the instructions of the one who made this beautiful world and then gave us the gift of life, we might just see something different.

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I think we’d be left with two questions to ask of ourselves.

Is this really the ramblings of an out-of-touch, ancient dictator, or, the writings of a loving Father who is trying to help us?

Considering what these short instructions actually say, and not what people have made them appear to say, who is out of date? Us as a race of people, or, the one who made such wonderful instructions thousands of years before we were even born?

After all, He did manage to create an entire universe so beautiful and so huge, we, with all our modern ways, cannot even measure it, let alone know what is actually out there and how it all really works.

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