Living With Lawless Hearts

What would happen in our world if there were no rules? What if there were no consequences for our evil? What would happen to our world if there were no laws, no international treatys, no geneva conventions, no boundry lines? What if there were no courts to insure that justice was to be upheld for the offended and against the offender? Imagine a world with no police, no law and order, no electric chairs or lethal injections.

What would people do given the ability to "get away" with it? What would you do? What is that secret desire, urge, notion or rage that you have kept down over countless days? What harnessed rage would vent into full scale slaughter? What lustful eyes would find fulfillment in remorseless rape? What greedy hands would grope the thing longed for? How many vulgar, harsh and sensual words would fill the void of verbal nicetys we use in common everyday speech?

Where does your heart wonder to given the chance? Where would your desire roam if freed from the oppressive expectations of civility and order? Where would you be? What would you do? What do you wish you could get away with? When was the last time you were faced with the very real desire of doing something you knew/felt to be inherently wrong and evil? How many days or hours or seconds have passed since that last thought pressed itself upon your desires?

I've asked this question again and again of the young in schools both middle and high school...and the answer is always the same, "If that happened then there would be no one left," or,"People would be killing and raping and stealing and doing everything they're not supposed to do." I then narrow the point and question them, "Are you saying that you yourself would be doing such things too?" The result is a wide-eyed unexpected realization of their own inward tendencies.

Two very important observations are clear from such pondering. First and most obvious, we do not live in such a lawless world. Thus, the question is only partially hypothetical. We live in a land of rules, laws, police, courts and justice. Even if we are critical or skeptical of such forms of law and government, we certainly breathe a sigh of relief knowing that there exists some sort of social barrier intended to seperate and protects us from the manifold evil desires pulsing in human hearts. This last thought brings us to the second more subtle yet more disturbing observation, evil desires dwell within us all.

We have to face the fact that we live in a land of laws, police, courts, prisons, locked doors, burglar alarms and lethal injections ultimately because we all are quite aware of something germane to humanity, namely, a desire to commit evil and get away with it. We are leary not only of others but of ourselves as well.

Signs in a bank which say, "Please stand in line and wait for the next available teller" exist precisely because deep down inside we do not really want to wait in line and certainly should not have to wait for the next available. The sign indicates something else as well, we affirm that there is a way things should go. That is, there is a way of living with others and individually which demands something above and beyond whatever our hearts desires might be.

My point in discussing all of this is to point out the problem of evil in our hearts and the problem of good in our hearts. When I say the problem of good, I mean that twist of conscience, shame or holy outrage we feel when we see evil committed against others, commit the evil ourselves or have it committed against ourselves. These are universal responses. There is not a single culture, no matter how divergent which does not have some sort of social moral code which deals with and directs human behavior. The problem of evil in our hearts arises from the sense we have in ourselves that we would like to break these rules or codes of behavior given the right combination of circumstances.

There is only one faith in the world which deals with this heart issue and it is Christianity. Traditional Judaism misses the point of the Law and misses the clear indication that the reason there is Law is because we are by heart lawbreakers, inventing ways to do evil, thus the inherent "need" for a Law. Islam enforces a code of worship and behavior based on reward and punishment, missing too the point and neglecting to ask the question, "Why do I need this leverage to induce my behavior?" Many of the Eastern religions simply reply to such questions nonsensically by saying that distinctions between good and evil are illusory, that they are somehow beyond good and evil, while never facing the fact of the question itself. That is, the fact that there is such a question itself begs to be answered and faced because we sense deep down a wrongness over evil and a rightness over good. Silly koans or a pantheistic monism will not dissolve the crisis we all sense within ourselves and view in others. We have some idea of what is good but love inwardly that which is evil. We are torn and weighted down within by such things. The undertow of our own being pulls us toward the darkness yet in many there is a longing to have their desires changed so as to love what is right and holy. And it is like an old longing to return to something we remember as better. Many have a the sense that there must have been a time when things were not as twisted out of shape as they are now..

Only Christianity states emphatically that mankind is dead in sin and tells why and what has been done about it. Christianity faces the problem squarely and tells us that many years ago when God created our first parents, that given the chance to love Him who is Holy and do the right, our first parents chose instead not to bow the head but rather to raise themselves against a Sovereign Creator. His response was as if to say, "If you consider my Love slavery then you will have this freedom from Me. I will give you over to your desire and you will be free to sin...freed from God yet slaves to sin...wherein you will never ever be fully able to love what is Holy and Good, namely, Me."

Thus we have lived a long time in this ruined city which was first built to house the Holy but was devastated by the fire of sin and left blackened and brokened...beyond human repair. Or perhaps, stated differently, we are only broken pieces of a multicolored stained glass first intended to fit within the framework of God's house, to cast His Holy light through us, shining with brilliant intensity and diversity of color in the Glory of His Son. This is the way it was supposed to be. Yet now are we fragmented and broken sitting unfulfilled longing to cast a more beautiful and pleasurable light. We settle for shades and glimpses of what was that first Light.

The sadness, anger and angst that follows such a loss has echoed throughout humanity and is heard in the longing for something better, something right, something more pure, something more holy, something more real, something redemptive and new...yet never satisfied, a hungering which leads men to numbness and dumbness of soul. Numbing ourselves with mega buffets, illicit, immoral and unnatural sex, psychotropic drugs and endless forms of entertainment, endless games, endless tv shows, endless songs and dances. We try to convince ourselves daily that our technological advances will one day herald a new Utopia somehow overcoming our unnatural bent...yet beholding that the same nuclear technology which gives energy to run our refrigerators and circulate our aircondition also gives the ingredients for weapons of mass destruction. We dumb ourselves by refusing to face the hard reality of our own souls...that apart from God in Christ, we are dead and empty, that we are miserable wanderers longing for Home.

The hope, through Christ, is that in Him we are made a new creation...new bodies, new minds, new eyes to see a new City indwelt by God Himself...enabling us to enjoy Him and love Him and obey Him...replacing the slavish fear of His Holiness with the enjoyment of a son or daughter who revels in the strength, beauty and greatness of their very own Daddy. Christ our Brother, Who died that we might be born again, makes us sons and daughters of His Father...welcomes us, loves us, satisfies us with Himself. Henceforth, we are no longer numb but rather deeply experiencing as we ought; aquiring new "taste buds" which cause us to savor and hunger for a thousand different joys in Christ. We are no longer dumb but rather faceoff and engage with a sort of critical realism ourselves and the world surrounding us.

This is our only Hope.

(I am indebted to Dr. Jim Cofield for the idea of stained glass as an analogy to our falleness)

*note: these thoughts came quickly today. As stated in the previous post my intention is to be quiet and think and read and pray...and wait in silence for the Lord. Today was fruitful and I felt obliged to share this.