A Parable on God as Law-Giver

                                                                                               by Brother Thomas Aquinas


Three college roommates rented an apartment after graduation and were in need of furniture to
replace the pieces that had been provided by campus dorms. Besides purchases for the living and
dining areas, each bought a self-assemble bedframe for his bedroom. Upon beginning to
assemble the bedframes, however, they found the accompanying instructions to be confusing and
not immediately clear.

The first roommate, seeing no help in the instructional guide, threw it away and began forcing
the various pieces together as he saw fit. In the process, some of the components cracked or
broke and had to be discarded as well. When he was finished, he found that his mattress did not
fit properly on the frame because parts of it had been bent in order to fit certain connections
together. And when he laid down to sleep, the poorly built frame could not support the weight it
was designed for and collapsed beneath him.

The second roommate initially set aside the assembly instructions as well but carefully examined
each piece of the kit so as to make sense for himself of the purpose of each. He observed subtle
differences between some components that the first roommate had ignored and ascertained which
fit properly together with which others. But after struggling many hours he could not determine
how one final piece was to be used and, exhausted from the day’s efforts, finally consulted the
instructions. He successfully completed the bedframe but slept poorly, since he had stayed up
late in the night to finish it.

The third roommate, also puzzled initially, studied the full instruction booklet and discovered a
link to the manufacturer’s website with a step-by-step video explaining in great detail each step
of the assembly process. He watched the entire process before replaying the video and following
along, finishing in what seemed almost no time at all. Pleasantly surprised by how simple the
assembly turned out to be, he organized his other belongings and went to sleep early.

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There are some who suppose God to be an arbitrary dictator who issues laws in order to restrict
our behavior. While we certainly are commanded to avoid all forms of sin, God’s laws take the
form not of meaningless constraints but rather an instruction manual, of sorts, for flourishing as a
human being. The bedframe manufacturer understands the design and assembly process of the
bedframe that each roommate bought and provided instructions so that they could use it for its
intended purpose. More eminently, as the author of human nature, God knows which acts will
lead us closer to or further from him, and His laws guide us in choosing the former, that we
might become more like Him, the end for which He made us.

God has written His law on the human heart (see Jer 31:33, Rom 2:15), but in our fallen state it
can be difficult to recognize them as such. Indeed, although the natural law can be discovered
through human reason, on our own this would only come through much time and effort,
requiring errors to be corrected along the way. Thus, in His merciful love for us, God also reveals
His law in the Ten Commandments and in Church teaching, that we might take confidence in his
guidance and more surely seek ever to grow closer to Him in this life and the next.
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