Right now I'm gonna speak to those of you who've studied and accepted Jewish law. You do know that that law only means something if the person who follows it is living right? It's just like in marriage. A man and woman are only married as long as each person is alive. Once either of them dies, the law binding them together is void. But if the wife sleeps with another man while her husband is still living (or the other way around), she (or he) will be branded an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she's free to move on however she wishes. She can date, marry, play the field, etc. She's no longer bound to the marriage covenant because death made it void.
In the same way, the law that we've been bound to for so long has been made void. Jesus devoted his life to showing us this. He showed us that all this time we'd been so bound up by following the rulebook that it sucked dry our capacity or desire to be in an actual covenant relationship with this God. And God never wanted that from the beginning. It was man's idea to turn the lawbook into a divine being to be worshiped, but it was Jesus' idea to show people that God had already paved the way for us to experience life free from that lawbook.
The laws always show us how bad we are. That's all they do. Everybody knows that rules are made to be broken, and no matter how hard we try, we can't do it. All they end up doing is catapulting us into this cycle of trying to follow the rules, breaking them, telling ourselves we'll do better next time, fucking up again, and repeating. It leads to a death of the heart and mind - a dead end life!
What Jesus wanted us to know was that we don't have to live in that cycle anymore. God loves us and cares for us more than we can ever imagine, a far cry from a bunch of papyrus scrolls with Hebrew letters. Our value and merit is no longer determined by how well we've followed the rules, but is determined by something we can't even grasp - the spirit, or essence, or otherness, or feeling - of God that's found pumping through our veins. All the law did was make us slaves to shame, but now we see that we're free to follow the guidance of that still small voice that resides within. That voice can and should be trusted.
So, since the law produces shame, should we say that it's wrong to follow? Hell no! I can't imagine where I'd be right now if the law hadn't pointed out all of my defects over the years. The law has its function, and our job is to let the law work for us, not to work for the law. Before the laws ever came around, there was no such thing as sin in the way we talk about it today. Back then, it was an archery term. Then, it got turned into a moral term. The language started evolving and before long we had six hundred different sets of laws for things we wouldn't have even considered before. Pretty soon, Israel's whole being, her whole heartbeat, revolved around this new set of laws.
We humans are extremists. And so, there wasn't any middle ground with all of this rule following. You were either in or out. If you were in, you got to the front of the line with your sacrifice and the gods were happy with you. If you were out, you got stoned. There was no middle ground, which set the whole Israelite camp in a tailspin.
In a nutshell, the law is good as long as it works for us - as long as it exists to serve us and not control us. But does the law get to decide what it does? No! We get to decide that. So, we have to wake up first and foremost to the reality that we are free from being puppets to the law, and live under the reign of a God of grace and forgiveness!
The law is spiritual if we let it be. It can be a helpful tool. But, we're sick people. We've got issues. Most of the time, we don't understand our own malicious actions. While our intentions are good and pure, our actions completely hijack our hearts. But it's in those moments when we do want we don't want to do, that the law does its job. It works for us, showing us how and where we screwed up. As long as we're living, there is that tendency inside of us to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and think the wrong things. We've been calling that tendency sin. Call it whatever you want. Nothing good comes from that tendency, yet we all have it. From toddlers to grandpas, we've all got it.
Here's the crux of this topic: anytime we do what we don't wanna do, this beast is at work. It's a beast that rears its ugly head and we really can't do anything about it besides hope that God removes it. We can use our willpower all day long to be as good as possible, but the beast continuously fucks up our plans, preventing us from doing what we originally planned on doing.
Anytime we want to do good, the self is waiting for a chance to take over and screw things up. Why is this? Because we're all wired to do good and to follow that voice inside of us that quietly directs us where to go. But it's like everything outside of that central core of our being is being wired to live by a different set of principles - rules that lead to frustration, shame, and ultimately death, whether that be spiritual, emotional, or physical.
If we're to let the good inside us rule over the bad, then we've got to become better listeners to the voice. The reason people aren't good at this is, they don't trust the voice. But, believe me, you don't want to become a slave to the beast. It'll kill you. It'll drive you to do things you never thought you'd do, just like it did me. I've killed many people, thinking I was doing the right thing, but really I was following the dictates of my sinful self. The small, still voice had been stifled for a very long time and had been hijacked.
But thank God we have a way out! We have a daily reprieve! We have to put ourselves in a posture to listen to the voice that directs us to peace and compassion. And when we do that, we find that we're being rescued from our sinful selves, and we find that that's been happening all along. The only difference is we notice it and can start participating in our very own journeys of restoration.
To sum up, at the core of our beings we are tapped into the divine, powerful, loving essence of God. But outside of that core, we're being tossed around like a pinball, constantly in the tension of selfish and self-seeking behaviors. One leads to life, and the other death. Which one is more noticeable to you today?
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