Motley

One thing it seems I have known all of my life is that what you believe about God is important.  My mom and her parents are all very dedicated Baptists, a deacon, a Sunday School teacher, and the church pianist.  I was there every time the doors were open, even when I got kicked out of children's choir I still had to go cause my mom had to be there.  Yes, I did get kicked out of children's choir and yes having to go hang out there anyway was pretty awkward.  My father's family on the other hand are Catholics.  My father is I guess a non-practicing Catholic not really sure how that works.  And his father was a Jehovah's witness.  When I was about 5, Granddaddy Carl told my dad that we could either become Jehovah's Witnesses or never see him again.  My dad told him to go to Hell, and he since has followed that advice.  The point of all of this is that it was burned into my mind at an early age that religion is the center of human life.

I spent the next 14 years trying desperately to not go to Hell.  I spent everyday trying to stop sinning and trying to believe in Jesus but it never worked.  I definitely didn't stop sinning and anything "spiritual" was a complete mystery to me.  The interesting part of this story happens when I am 19 and away at college.  I was unable to make any friends, basically my only human interaction came when my mom and my brother came and visited me.  And I realized with a cold shudder that neither one of them liked me.  They were nice to me because I was a son, a brother but never because I was me.  And I came to see that this wasn't something awful, it was in fact exactly right.  You see there was nothing likable about me.  And as I looked I realized that there was nothing good about me either.  I came, with great sadness, to see why all of my efforts to be saved had never gotten me anywhere.  You see, me and my sin are inseparable.  My self and my sin are one and the same.  Sin is my essence-in other words I would not be ME if I was not sinning.  If you took the sin away there would be nothing left.  And at that moment I was glad that I was going to Hell.  I knew, for the first time, that Hell was exactly where I belonged.  My damnation would be the removal of a plague from the world.  Damning me is exactly what a real Savior would do.

And so I prayed, harder than I had ever prayed to be saved or to stop sinning with real earnestness for the first time, I prayed that God would kill me.  I had finally found a God worth believing in- one who was willing to damn me for the sake of the world was a God worth worshiping.  I believed that I had screwed up the Gospel, I was the one that the forgiveness of sins could never reach.  I knew then that the Law was good and the commandment good, and holy, and just.  And it entered my mind that such a God could do the impossible.  I had despaired of all of the systems and solutions I had heard about all of my life.  But this one fugitive hope was left to me, the God who does the impossible.

Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? ² For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. ³ So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. ⁴ Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. ⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. ⁶ But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Romans 7

I didn't know it, but I had been made free from the Law, by my prayer for death being answered.  I believed then in what is called the "Third Use of the Law", that Christians although they won't be punished for not following the Law are still required to follow it.  You can be a Christian without following the Law just not a "good" Christian.  At the time I still thought that "the Law" only described the written code, actually I thought that the only part of the Law we had truly been set free from was the "ceremonial law" and that the "moral law" was still binding on us.  God had revealed Himself and His salvation to me but they were obscured by the traditions I had been taught in the church.  The interpretations that we give to the Bible had made the Bible itself of no effect.

I know now that the Law cannot be divided.  This is a very imaginative way that we have come up with to make the Gospel meaningless.  As James teaches the Law stands or falls as a whole, if you offend in one point you offend the whole Law.  Nowhere in Scripture are we told to divide the Law or where and how to do such a thing.  We simply made up a division because freedom is too frightening to us.

Another division that existed in my mind was between the Law and Love.  I thought that Moses Law was an old law which had between replaced with a new law, a Law of Love.  But Christ teaches that the whole law hangs-literally "depends"-from love.  Perhaps the sense will be conveyed if we reverse the imagery, Love is the foundation of the Law.  The command to love is a legal command.  And so, I believe that the Law, in Romans 7 as elsewhere, refers not simply to the written code.  It refers to all of justice, all of common sense, everything that is obviously and naturally right.  It is all of those things that have failed us, or rather that once we failed them they were able to do nothing for us.

I hope I have already sufficiently described the goodness of the Law.  Let me be clear, the Law's failure is not a failure of something bad or weak, the Law's failure is the failure of the best created thing.  Higher than any archangel, the Law blazes forth a fire and a light revealing all things, but everything it reveals is corrupt.  It is a light shining on a wasteland where our sins have like locusts destroyed everything good.  The kindly Law sees our misery even when we cannot and would peacefully put us away like a lame horse.  The Law is not helpless, it is armed to fix what is wrong with the world, it is in fact a Savior, saving the universe from me.

Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. Romans 7:13

My sin has corrupted the best thing that God ever made and all lesser things with it.  That is the one true measure of my depravity.  It is so bad that it has made everything that nature and sense can find that is right into a tragedy.  Creation which was once very good; I have made very bad.  But, if all of Creation, all reason and sense are corrupt what remains?  The Creator Himself remains- and so does Nonsense.

When the world was made, good things were obviously good and bad things were obviously bad.  Goodness made sense.  But we corrupted all of that and left nothing to God except for Nonsense.  This is the foolishness of the Cross, and this is why the kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of Children.  The wisdom of the Greeks is in the same boat as the law of the Jews. And so with Divine foolishness, Our Savior kills men and makes them alive.  The Righteous Judge condemns the Innocent and acquits the guilty, and is all the more righteous for it.  The loving Father murders His Son and the Lord of Hosts sues for peace.  A man ready to murder his son becomes the Father of the Righteous, and an adulterer is a man after God's own heart.  So hear the words of a man who abandoned the zenith of religion to be a joke,

¹⁸ Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. ¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”;  ²⁰ and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 1 Corinthians 3

 ⁹ For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. ¹⁰ We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! ¹¹ To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. ¹² And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; ¹³ being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now. 1 Corinthians 4

 What does all of this mean?  Throw away the systems and the wisdom of Christianity.  Let the Christians do what they will, join the company of the Apostles.  Put on the motley and you will have a place in Heaven for the Fool is always called into the King's presence.  

When Christianity came into the world, it did not need to call attention (even though it did so) to the fact that it was contrary to human nature and human understanding, for the world discovered that easily enough. But now that we are on intimate terms with Christianity, we must awaken the collision. The possibility of offense must again be preached to life. Only the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists’ sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again. Woe to him, therefore, who preaches Christianity without the possibility of offense. Woe to the person who smoothly, flirtatiously, commendingly, convincingly preaches some soft, sweet something which is supposed to be Christianity! Woe to the person who makes miracles reasonable. Woe to the person who betrays and breaks the mystery of faith, distorts it into public wisdom, because he takes away the possibility of offense! Woe to the person who speaks of the mystery of the Atonement without detecting in it anything of the possibility of offense. Woe again to him who thinks God and Christianity are something for study and discussion. Woe to every unfaithful steward who sits down and writes false proofs, winning friends for themselves and for Christianity by writing off the possibility of offense. Oh, the learning and acumen tragically wasted. Oh, the time wasted in this enormous work of making Christianity so reasonable, and in trying to make it so relevant! Only when Christianity rises up again, powerful in the possibility of offense, only then will it need no artful defenders. The more skillful, the more articulate, the more excellent the defense, however, the more Christianity is disfigured, abolished, exhausted like an emasculated man. Christianity ought not to be defended, at least not on the world’s terms. It is we who should see whether we can justify ourselves. It is we who must choose: either to be offended or to accept Christianity. Therefore, take away from Christianity the possibility of offense or take away from the forgiveness of sin the battle of an anguished conscience. Then lock the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement which stand open all day long! -S. Kierkegaard

 God's Own Fool