More on Swearing Oaths: Everything Belongs to God

Mat 5:35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.
Mat 5:36 Neither shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.

In all ancient civilizations, a line was drawn between heaven (the realm of the gods and the eternal) and the earth (the realm of humans and the temporal). People would make their vows and contracts based on the gods, heaven, and the eternal, since they recognized that those promises carried more weight. Since Jews were forbidden from swearing on the name of God, they moved to other areas: the earth, (the source of their sustenance) their cities (the source of their social pride), and even their own bodies. All of these were more important that mere words and so they became the basis of contracts and oaths.

Why was Christ against this? The reason is obvious if we look at Christ's words in the Gospels. The focus of Christ's mission is changing our perception of the universe. He was announcing the end of the idea that "heaven" alone was the kingdom of God. His purpose was introducing the kingdom of God to earth. His mission was no less than transforming the world and our perception of it.

Here Christ uses the discussion of oaths to point out that everything on earth, including our civilization is not a product of humans. The world and even our cities are the product of forces much bigger than ourselves. We live in a human created society, but the laws by which we have been able to build this world are from God. We are just fooling ourselves by thinking that they are not gifts from God. Actually, raising up the physical is another form of idolatry, worshiping what we have built by our hands rather than recognizing its basis in the eternal.

Probably the greatest example of this is our own bodies. We talk about our bodies as our own, but we control nothing about how our body works. If it required our understanding to digest food, we would quickly starve to death. Fortunately, our bodies work on "their own," which is just another way of saying that they work by the power of God.

As a cancer survivor, I am more aware of this than most. My body is a gift. Its health is a gift. We live by God's mercy and grace alone. To act or think otherwise is to be the biggest kind of fool.