- 4 days ago
(a Steve Orr Bible reflection)
When I tell the story of my life, I start with, “I woke up in the seventh grade.” It’s because that’s when I realized I had no guide in my life. I didn’t know if this was a common awakening among middle schoolers or if it was just me. All I knew was that someone needed to take charge of my life, guide my day-to-day, orient me, so to speak, and devise plans for my future. My conclusion: It would be up to me to figure those things out.
As a start, I created some rules to help. Here are two examples:
I will always do my homework.
Rarely had anyone in my home even asked whether I had homework, much less if I had completed it. It was time someone asked those questions. That someone was going to have to be me.
I will never skip class.
I figured I would learn more by being there. I made sure I went to school, arrived on time, and attended every class.
Over the years, I created many such rules, and they became the way I did life. In time, using my rules, I completed public school, junior college, and a Bachelor of Science. That collection of rules was essential to shaping me into an adult.
Once I reached adulthood, though, I no longer needed those rules. I needed an entirely different approach to life, one that was far more flexible than the structures I had used to become an adult. Malcolm Goldsmith shares a similar conclusion in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. And he is right. My adult life works on a totally different level and in a totally different way.
This is not to say that rules are unimportant or that they are no longer useful. This is about subtlety and nuance. When I entered the working world, I sometimes had “homework” to complete before returning to work the next day. I did that work. But I didn’t do it because I had a rule to follow about doing it. I did it because I had chosen to follow a certain path in my work life. Doing that “homework” was a reflection of my commitment to that pursuit.
What we find in this week’s Galatians passage mirrors my newer approach. The Apostle Paul makes the point that the Law of Moses served as our “disciplinarian” until Jesus came to justify us through faith.
My early “life rules” restricted me, but they also guarded me until such time as I could learn an entirely new way to live. That was the role served by the Law of Moses. It set stringent restrictions on God’s chosen people, shaping them into people who could receive Jesus when He finally walked among them. They became a people who could embrace His radical, more adult approach to living.
If we continue trying to live our lives by subjecting ourselves to the Law of Moses, then basing all our choices, words, and actions on love might seem impractical, unworkable, even impossible. Living a life made up of love rather than rules—that would seem radical to a Law-follower. In fact, it only works properly if we start with faith. We cannot hope and we cannot love—we cannot even make sense of Jesus’ teachings—without first believing in Jesus.
The Apostle Paul teaches us that we cannot actually follow those old rules. We will always fail in the attempt, no matter how hard we try. That’s why he calls on us to move on, grow up, and do the right things for the right reason: our faith in Jesus and his radical call to do all out of love.
We need to accept the truth about those rules. Yes, they got us to Jesus. But they can’t take us any further.
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And, if you don’t mind a little ‘80s Christian rock music, here’s Petra singing Beyond Belief (with lyrics on the screen)
