The Insufficiency of Law

This being election season and all, I've been thinking a bit about the divisiveness and power struggles that accompany this whole event.  Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this, but I wonder if one of the underlying issues is the expectation that the enactment of certain laws can transform society.  We vote for certain people to issue (or retract) laws that will in turn (we think) change people's behaviors so we can live in our ideal society.

But why this reliance on law?  Why this belief that if we can get people to act a certain way (under threat of punishment), all of our problems will be solved?

The Old Testament is full of stories of Israel straying from God, returning to Him, then straying again.  I'll admit that I used to judge them a bit for their unfaithfulness.  It seemed incredible to me that a nation could have their God intervene so strongly on their behalf, even erecting monuments in remembrance, then seemingly forgetting all about it just a generation or two later.

Courtesy of http://www.bartcop.com/2895.htm

The book of Hosea has always captured me.  In it, God instructs the prophet Hosea to marry a whore to illustrate His relationship with Israel.  He shows how He has pursued Israel even though they were unfaithful to Him, refusing to repent even as He tried to show them His love.

I wondered how that could be possible.  How could they forget so quickly what God had done for them?

Lately I've been wondering if maybe one of the lessons we can learn from the Old Testament is that the law was never sufficient for lasting change.  That a people could not be won for good by a set of external rules and commands.

In fact, even in the Old Testament, God was promising that one day He would take away their hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh.  He promised that the law would in fact be written on their hearts, that their very DNA would be rewritten.  It seemed that a transition was needed from a system of external restraints to a brand new inward reality.

And then when God came Himself to accomplish all that was needed for the complete transformation of reality, those who were best versed in the law didn't know Him.  Doesn't that seem incredible?  And maybe shouldn't that be a clue that the Law was never enough?  When God came, the same God who gave them the Law they loved so much, they didn't even recognize Him.  In fact, they hated Him.

Why did they hate the Lawgiver?  Well, it may be because their power over others derived from their command of the law.  When the Lawgiver came to fulfill the law in its entirety, He was undermining their control.  No longer would teachers of the law be needed as each and every person could be transformed so that they would naturally live out God's law of love.

And then a funny (not really) thing happened. We've spent 2,000 years trying to turn it back into a system of law.  We disguise it as "Principles" or "5 Easy Steps", but it's all the same.  We don't trust the work of God within a person to replace their heart and transform them from the inside, so we try to manipulate people to behave in a certain way so that they can be pleasing or somehow closer to God.

Maybe this is a sign we're still operating out of a fear and shame based reality.  Maybe this should alert us that our view of Father is clouded with misinformation about who He really is.  I know that I want to move away from trying to control my environment with rules and laws, and instead trust Father to work in myself and others to bring us in line with our new inward reality.

Fear coerces.  Shame manipulates.  Love transforms.  Grace renews.  Which reality am I living in?