I’ve always thought it was a curious thing that Muppets and cartoon characters had the wrong number of fingers. Rather than the standard five per hand – one thumb and four fingers, they often have only four – a thumb and three fingers. Why is this? Surely, it’s not so difficult to add one more digit to your puppets’ and animated character’s hands. But there you have it, an almost universal law regarding the hands and feet of the folks that children’s artists draw. You may be wondering why anyone should really care. Well, it’s because I think the number of our fingers and toes is meant to teach us something, and not finding that proper number in our culture’s entertainment means that more than just fingers have been deleted. A silent reminder has been erased as well. Allow me to explain.
Look at your hands right now. How many fingers do you count? Well, unless you were born with one more or one less finger, or have suffered some tragic farming machinery accident, you have precisely ten. The same, of course, holds true for your feet as well. We have a total of twenty wiggling extensions between all our four extremities. But more often than not we don’t use that combined number, we simply think of them as ten. Ten fingers and ten toes. It has always been this way. The oldest fossils records of humanity still bear the same five boney fingers at the end of each skeletal arm. It has struck me for many years now that that number is conveniently coincidental with that famous set of laws that Moses brought down from God on Sinai.
I say “famous”, for I don’t think I could find many people – in the West, that is – who haven’t at least heard of the Ten Commandments, though I wonder how many professing believers could actually recite them all in order. Can you, now? They are usually divided into two tables, five commandments respecting God, the other five, our neighbor, though sometimes the fifth is grouped with the later five. This is the Protestant list, of course, since Catholics divide them up a little differently. We tend to separate them by the “You shalls” at the start of each of one, and though four and five don’t start with those two words, they are certainly implied. The list is introduced in the 20th chapter of the book of Exodus. You can turn there now for a refresher if you struggled with my question before.
Classic Christianity has always differentiated these from the ceremonial laws that God also gave to ethnic Israel. These are the laws that are written on our hearts, and I believe referenced by our feet and hands. As Jesus so clearly taught us in His sermon on the Mount, the keeping of these commandments is first and foremost a thing of the heart. But Scripture also speaks of our obedience in terms of “the works of our hands,” and our “walk.” So it seems rather clear to me that number of our fingers and toes is a tacit reminder of the law that is meant to govern all their actions.
Notice, as you look at your hands that the two thumbs, while shorter than the fingers, are the thickest of them all. Surely the two greatest commandments are hinted at in these – “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 22:37-40) One thumb for each hand, one reminder of the focus of each table of the law – God, on one hand, our neighbor on the other.
Now, I don’t think these fingers and toes of ours are meant to make us try all the harder to purchase our redemption through obedience to the laws they represent. Rather, I think they are meant to turn our thoughts toward the fact that we need redeeming. Our hands and feet should remind us that these are how our Savior was fastened to the cross for us. “They pierced my hands and feet.” (Ps. 22:16) When we read in Colossians 2:14 of Him having “wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us,” we also see that it was through having His clean and blameless hands and feet “nailed to the cross” on our behalf.
You may think the connection I have drawn between our fingers, toes, and the ten commandments is just a quaint coincidence that my over-active imagination has conjured up. If so, I think that’s because a faithless world has groomed your mind not to see it. When you consider that the One who made our feet and hands is the very One who gave His law, and greater still, gave His Son to bear its punishment, how can the connection not be made? Place the finger of your faith into those holes that still mark the feet and hands of our resurrected Lord, as Thomas did, and there believe. Then the work of your hands and walk of your life will be motivated by a greater love!
