Wednesday, March 20, 2019

day no.14,758: shifting reference points

"No one should ever be allowed to tear down any fence unless they could explain why it had been erected in the first place." - G.K. Chesterton

For all of the things that God takes time out of His busy eternity to detail for us, His concern with landmarks cannot go unnoticed.

Proverbs 22:28
Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set.

Proverbs 23:10
Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless,

Deuteronomy 27:17
Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary stone.' And let all the people say, 'Amen!'

Deuteronomy 19:14
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.

Job 24:2
Men move boundary stones; they pasture stolen flocks.

Q: Why all this interest in stones and landmarks?

A: For all the reasons Chesterton points out. It isn't to say that some things can never be moved, but rather to say that you ought to have a VERY good reason to move them. And furthermore, some landmarks are so fixed that a good reason to move them hasn't been found for thousands of years. Progress doesn't require you to shift every reference point, rather it requires you to know the old references so that you can measure what progression actually is.


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