God and The Law ...

Laws are a consequence of evil. Laws are designed in an attempt to contain evil, and limit the damage that can be inflicted on others when naked self-interest runs amuck. Laws are an attempt to restore fairness and equality between people who believe their own interests are paramount. In heaven, before there was evil, when everyone including God, had a serve-others-first way of life – there was no need for laws to constrict behavior. There is no need to set a limit on how much you can love someone else, or how much you can care about them, or do good works for them. In efforts to make someone else’s life better, the sky is the limit. But when your first thought in life is what you get out of it, suddenly and irrevocably the need for laws becomes critical.

Satan’s tried and true methods remain the same; one of the more effective ones it to place upon God the characteristics of himself. Satan called God a dictator, with a rigid set of controlling laws, that if disobeyed would result in death at the hands of God. Satan pointed out that despite their collective ignorance that laws could exist, everyone in heaven was in perfect obedience to a set of implied laws, and the consequences of breaking them would bring about their deaths. Since the initial accusation, Satan has done everything he can to attempt to portray God as an obedience driven, generally angry being, who delights in punishing the wicked for their nefarious deeds. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Laws are a consequence of evil. It is truly ironic that freedom can only be achieved in a self-less society, not in a self-motivated one. Where ambition and avarice rule the day, laws are required to attempt to limit the damage one would impose on others to achieve their personal goals. But where it comes to doing good for others, we would wish no limits in this regard. When Christ walked the earth, He did not stop to heal just one person. In fact, ALL who sought Him for healing were healed. He turned away no-one. Some did not even know who He was before He encountered them. But He knew every name, every soul, every child He had ultimately created. And He met every need He came across, most importantly the hunger for truth and redemption from evil. The impact of His life was so great, in part because He lived it without a thought for what He would get out of it, only what we would.

Those who see God’s laws as constricting their freedom are looking through the prism of evil. It is our natural desire to live for ourselves that sees God’s laws as interfering with our goals and desires. Were we to be freed from our addiction to evil, we would see only the beginning of wisdom in the laws of God. For it is not sacrifice to obey, it is the only plausible way of maintaining a state of joy. The irony of self-service is its inherent link to pain and death. Serving self seems to never bring satisfaction. No matter how rich a person becomes, there seems to be no limits as to how rich they desire to be. The operative word in self-services is always – more. But with the achievement of “more”, there is no relief, no rest, and no relative appreciation – only the desire for even “more”.

Evil, or serving self, has long been portrayed as a “good” thing. Satan’s marketing campaign is well versed in selling us this concept. After all, if you do not look out for number one, who will; the obvious answer, God. But no-one thinks this through very often. Evil itself is actually a simple deviation away from God. And when you deviate away from the source of love, life, and happiness – you are bound only to find pain, death, and misery. This is the true nature of evil. Evil is nothing more than pain and death, sometimes delayed, but always inevitable. It is acts of evil that punish the evil doer over his life, not acts of love and charity. It is thinking incessantly about self-gratification that warps the mind, and keeps one from appreciating beauty and truth. It is the nature of evil to become addictive, to the point of knowingly engaging in life-threatening behavior and being “unable” to stop. Logic is no answer. Will power is helpless against the desires in the mind. Behavior might be managed, but inwardly, evil is a cancer the envelopes the life and degrades the quality of our existence. Evil is the punishment. It is Evil we need to be saved from, not saved to wallow in.

Death is the natural result of evil unrestrained. From homicide to suicide, evil leads nowhere other than the grave for those who embrace it with abandon. This is not a dictate from God, it is instead the nature of evil itself. This is the reason why God contains no evil, He knows what it would do, to Himself, to His creations, to existence period. God is not a balance of good and evil; He is only all that is good. As such our God embodies the ideas of love to others ahead of love to Himself. As John wrote … “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” Imagine that the only thing of highest value in the universe is the life of God Himself, and He was willing to lay that down, in order to redeem man from evil and the consequences of evil. There was nothing more He could have given. There was no higher a sacrifice to make. His every effort designed to reveal to us what love is, and why it is so much better than the evil we became bound to.

So how does a human become in sync with the divine? How do we transcend our evil natures and begin to live lives of perfect obedience when now we sit chained to our self-service? It is not possible for a leopard to change his spots, nor for a human to break his own chains to self. But what man cannot do, God can easily do. It was always and only His plan to do the work of redemption FOR us. As we submit the will to Christ He breaks our bonds and changes how we think, what we want, and ultimately what we do. Not only does Christ alter our behavior, He alters the thinking behind it. In so doing He perfects us. We do nothing more than allow Him to do so. We submit. He heals. We submit. He transforms us. We submit. He brings us wisdom and truth. We submit. He saves us. This is the only method of escaping the fate of self-destructive evil.

Man requires a savior to be saved. We need help from outside of ourselves if we are to achieve perfection. It is not a question of presenting Christ as the only way to salvation as some sort of threat. It is a question of presenting Christ as the only one who is able to deliver salvation. Many promise, but the results are real with only one. This is why Christ said … “no man comes to the Father, but by Me.” This is not a prideful boast. It is a statement of fact. Only God could redeem us, only love that is so great it would literally die to accomplish our redemption. No other god or man offers us similar salvation, and especially when we were not even looking for it. He did all of this while we were yet counting ourselves as His enemies.

It is our God who wishes us to live truly free, unbound by laws that constrict evil, as evil is to have no place in our hearts, minds, or lives. When we allow Christ to restore our lives to the state of holiness He intends, we become humble servants of others. Our service frees us from the bounds of laws designed to contain evil, and we are free to love unrestricted. We are free to do good to enrich the lives of others. In this alone can we begin to emulate the character of our God. When we live this way, we mimic the lifestyle waiting for us in heaven itself. When we find joy in the giving, we unlock the secret to fulfillment that none can take away. This alone is a life worth living.

The tortured lives of those who reject freedom, reject truth, and reject the love God offers, are lives of purest pain and misery. Death will be the last of act of mercy a loving God can bestow on those whose entire existence is nothing but pain upon pain. Eventually the torture victim begs for death. If allowed, evil would self-destruct. But if unchecked, evil would take out as much as it could with it, along the road to death. This is why God must intervene and save the world from its own demise. It is why throughout history, God had to intervene to protect his people from the extinction that evil would love to impose. And it is why at the end of all time, God will extinguish evil in flames, and will see it slip into non-existence forever more. The second death will be the passing of evil from the universe, and all those who cling to it, refusing to be saved.

It is not God’s intent that we live under the laws designed to constrict sin. It is God’s intent that we live in the perfection of freedom to serve others, love others, and do good for others. In this is true freedom, unbound by any laws. One day, we will return to heaven, where this thinking is the only way of living. One day, our hearts, minds, and bodies will be in perfect sync with the divine. Through our daily submission to Christ, we can begin this journey here and now. And we can begin to see the benefits from it, even in a world filled with pain and agony. For by submitting to Christ, we eliminate the greatest source of our pain – ourselves. It makes no sense to delay this activity for some time in our future lives. It makes more sense to embrace submission immediately and begin to see its value right here and right now. In that event, heaven will be a continuation of what we have learned to do here. And Christ will truly have been allowed to save us from the pain that evil surely brings.

Obey or Else ...

The core argument raised against the character of God since the inception of evil itself has been the positioning of the concept of obedience.  If to obey is required to live then does this not make God a dictator?  Demanding obedience on pain of death, even eternal death, has been a rod used to beat the downtrodden into submission.  But submission to who?  Does God require obedience and offer death for disobedience?  Does the accusation have merit?  It is not only our feeble minds that have been subjected to this argument, it has been told throughout the history of our planet far and wide through the universe.  All other intelligent creations from the angels on down, have had to resolve themselves with this issue.  So do we.

To begin to understand this properly, we need to remind ourselves of the composition of the character of God.  To be a bit simplistic, but also accurate, God is love.  God defines love.  He is an example of love.  He understands love in many forms from parent to child, from friend to friend, from intimate to intimate.  Everything we know about love is everything we should understand about who, or what God is.  God is life.  He is the spark that makes an inanimate object made of dust and water to ‘become’ a living soul.  Notice I did not say that man was already a living soul, when God breathed into him, man BECAME a living soul.  The idea that our souls have always existed and will always exist is not based in scripture.

But if God is both Love and Life, then where does obedience enter the equation?  Anything that is not comprised in the character of God that causes separation from God could be defined as ‘sin’.  In essence ‘sin’ is the opposite, or it stands in opposition to God, to everything we know about God, therefore to both love and life itself.  ‘Sin’ or evil as I commonly refer to it, is the embodiment of death and pain.  What does not lead to love, leads to pain.  What does not promote life, promotes death.  There really are no grey areas, no areas of compromise.  There is only love and life, or pain and death.  Everything we do, we say, we think about, is destined towards one or the other of these end results.  When we separate ourselves from love and life, we embark on the path of pain and death.  It is NOT a punishment, it is a simple reality. 

It is simply cause and effect.  It is like gravity.  Jump as high as you want in the air, but without assistance, you will return to the earth you jumped from.  Coming back to earth after jumping is NOT a punishment.  It is reality.  It is the nature consequence of gravity.  Gravity is not a concept from which one can negotiate through reason and alter the effects.  It is a natural law.  We do not question it.  We have built technology to overcome it, but we recognize that it is an immutable force on our lives.  The ‘laws’ of love are exactly the same.  When we stray from the path of love we find ourselves amidst things that have nothing to do with love.  This is NOT punishment, it is reality.  Existence offers no 3^rd choice, no 3^rd option.  There is love and life, and everything else, everything not of love or life – one or the other.

Once we understand there are really only 2 choices for how we exist, we begin to grasp the concept of the consequences of the choices we make.  When God asks us to obey Him, He is not threatening us with punishment, RATHER He is trying to help us avoid all the pain and death that comes as a natural consequence of turning away from love and life.  He is trying to warn us about the results from the seemingly innocuous choices that wind up leading to the addictions of death.  He is trying to spare us pain.  He is trying to bring us happiness.  He is trying to teach us what love is, why it is of value, why we should embrace it, and how.  Obedience to God is not a prison sentence.  It is shelter in a castle against a torrent of pain, aggression, and death.

How do you get through to a stiff-necked people?  How do you make your point to a defiant child determined to touch the stove after repeated warnings not to.  Sometimes you allow them to experience the results of the choices they are determined to make.  Just a few of the natural consequences of the evil choices we make are usually enough to ‘wake us up’.  The entire Old Testament in the Bible is a love letter from an unrequited God reaching out desperately to an unfaithful partner.  Despite gifts and blessings, in the face of shear ingratitude, enduring slander and lies, love still reaches out for us.  But we ignore it, and steadfastly choose our own demise.  So from time to time God removes his protective hand, and evil is given enough latitude to remind us what its true nature is really like.

Again this is not a punishment of God.  This is only Him allowing just a little of the fury we embrace to come our way.  Were God to completely remove His protecting hand from over us, we would be consumed in our evil in seconds.  Cause and effect.  Demons who have long since chosen their own destiny would be happy to destroy us completely and in so doing cause pain to our Father God, were He to allow it.  We rarely see the battlefield we are walking through.  We rarely understand the ferocity of evil that knows its time is drawing to a conclusion.  Desperation leads to even more fury.  And we act as if it does not even exist.

To call God a dictator because he naturally embodies the complete definition of love, is the same as railing against gravity for having the audacity to keep you grounded on this earth.  It serves no purpose, and is completely without meaning.  God is love.  The creator God who existed before time and memorial could be nothing else but love, or he would have naturally expired and existence would not exist.  There would eventually be nothing left under the government of Satan.  Even He would eventually kill himself when there was nothing left to consume.  It is the natural end-state of anything that is not comprised of love and life.

Obedience then is not about threats or punishments, or even cause and effect, so much as it is about teaching and guidance.  We are given rules, directives, advice, and edicts as a way of teaching us that some of our natural desires that are carnally based and routed in heredity of hundreds of years are not the ways of love or life.  We are given ‘commandments’ to teach us the definition of love.  Think of them as a how-to, or a book of love for idiots.  Morality is more than just the subjective measurement of one man over another, it is an objective standard which is defined through the practice of love by the author of love itself.

Amy Grant (and perhaps Brown Bannister if I recall), used to sing the song “I Have Decided”.  Part of the lyrics read … “being good is just a fable.  I just can’t cause I’m not able.  I’m gonna leave it with the Lord.”  I used to think this song was incorrect.  I judged that being good is not a fable, and we could choose to do it.  I was partially correct, but the song was more so.  We have the choice to Obey, in that we have the choice to allow God to control our lives and our will.  When we release control to God, He changes us.  ONLY in this way is obedience even possible.  Now think this through for just a minute.  Not only is Obedience not used by God as a threat; God knows HE is the ONLY one who can affect obedience in our lives.  We CANNOT obey on our own.  We can only choose to allow God control over us, and in so doing find ourselves in obedience.  This destroys the concept of a dictator.  What dictator did you ever hear of that would do the work FOR you, within you, and only hold you accountable to PERMIT Him to do so? 

“To Obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of Rams.”  What the prophet was conveying in this scripture could be applied in our vernacular as … to allow God control over our will, is to learn reform, to learn change. And to reform is better than to repent.  And to listen is better than to regret.  Seeking to align our characters with our God and to find His ways natural to us, is far better than to simply rely on repentance for continually embracing evil, pain, and death.

Everything God has ever done, in scripture, and in your day to day life, has been about leading us all back to Him.  He has been our ever patient teacher, outlining how to live with meaning, how to love, and what is important.  Sometimes the nature of our hardened hearts has lead to lessons that seem harsh.  Sometimes our blindness to the extent to which evil would lead us, has lead to eye-opening seemingly destructive lessons that break our hearts, and humble our prides.  But were it not so, we would be lost without hope.  We must trust our teacher, that to learn the ways of love and life is a prize unto itself.  It is a reward unto itself.  It is the kingdom of Heaven begun right here and right now …