The Death of Ought
From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the unholy and the profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manlayers.
“Accumulating orthodoxy," observes Brian D. McLaren in Generous Orthodoxy, "makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.”
Perhaps this kind of enraging bondage of once genuine and liberating faith is what Paul has in mind in his leap in describing depravity in 1 Timothy 1:8. He affirms for Timothy that God's Law exposes the lawless and insubordinate for what they are. OK. If I don't know not to boil young goat in its mother's milk, as the Law of Moses rules against, I am likely to do it inadvertently. If I do know that the Mosaic law prescribes this practice, I might, just might, do it anyway because I see this regulation as pointless and want to rebel where I can. In this, in truth, I am both unholy and profane because I am declaring that in my one-man "kingdom" God has no right to regulate my culinary practices.
How do we get from there, from offending God's holiness in daily practice, to rebelling against Him, to throwing our lot in any meaningful sense with those who would violate the taboo of nearly every society and kill their parents? Objects in the mirror of the Bible's focus are closer than they may appear. Unless our conscience has been completely seared, we can only tolerate so much of directly challenging God's authority to be right and tell right. Lest we be convicted and repent of this most heinous and blatant of sins, life in a fallen world provides us with plenty of flawed stand-ins to rebel against, to tear down, without directly declaring an insurrection against God.
In His Word, God declares that He is the ultimate Father figure. He gives us actual parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures who for brief flashes of time can reflect His glory into our lives. Before we are even able to form the words in our baby babble, begin to understand, THIS is what God is like. Dad provides, so God provides. Mom protects, so God protects. My teacher sets standards, so God sets standards. As we begin to believe the standards passed down to us are beyond us, or that they interfere with what our desires tell us is good, we have two choices: go to God and tell him henceforth we will be our own god, or stage a lifelong campaign alternating between manipulation and resentment of the authority figures He puts in place. In retrospect, it is easy to see why the second choice is easier and far more common.
What McLaren referred to as accumulating orthodoxy deepens the roots of the weeds of our resentment. Not only do parents and surrogate parents present us with, to varying degrees, God's Word and His righteousness, but they also saddle us with their preferences and peccadilloes. To the degree that people can suggest what we ought to do, or demand what we ought to do, and to the flesh these two are received in the same subliminally spiteful spirit, we can store up resentment against the most benevolent of human influences. We can, says Jesus, so seethe the in that poisonous brew of bitterness that what reminds us of God in others it actually triggers hatred, hatred that would perpetrate what He calls murder in our hearts.
If resenting the righteousness with which others present us is not enough of a rigged game, we can equally resent any areas in which we believe others have used their influence to limit our soothing sense of promise. Corey in a memorable episode of Boy Meets World actually articulates this brand of bitterness well. He charges his father with settling for a mediocre middle-class life which put a ceiling on Corey's opportunities to excel. If those who go before us emphasize this instead of that, set a standard that is in our lofty estimation not high enough instead of too high, we have a lifetime of excuses to avoid approaching and loving them as dynamic people still capable of growth.
As ugly as these exercises and self-justification are in classifying us as murderers in the first degree, while there is breath there is hope. The life God gives almost inevitably presents us with opportunities to see people as more than unreasonable sources of accumulating lists of oughts. We may discover that the expectations with which we have been oppressing ourselves bear little resemblance to their origins in parental guidance, classroom procedure, company culture, or discipling decorum. Authentic encounters which reveal ongoing, multi-dimensional dependence on the grace of God can reset our relationships and allow us to aim our mutual animosity in prayer as we plead for the coming of the Father's Kingdom and, meanwhile, for intermittent instances in which His will will be done on earth as readily as it is in Heaven.
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the unholy and the profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manlayers.
“Accumulating orthodoxy," observes Brian D. McLaren in Generous Orthodoxy, "makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.”
Perhaps this kind of enraging bondage of once genuine and liberating faith is what Paul has in mind in his leap in describing depravity in 1 Timothy 1:8. He affirms for Timothy that God's Law exposes the lawless and insubordinate for what they are. OK. If I don't know not to boil young goat in its mother's milk, as the Law of Moses rules against, I am likely to do it inadvertently. If I do know that the Mosaic law prescribes this practice, I might, just might, do it anyway because I see this regulation as pointless and want to rebel where I can. In this, in truth, I am both unholy and profane because I am declaring that in my one-man "kingdom" God has no right to regulate my culinary practices.
How do we get from there, from offending God's holiness in daily practice, to rebelling against Him, to throwing our lot in any meaningful sense with those who would violate the taboo of nearly every society and kill their parents? Objects in the mirror of the Bible's focus are closer than they may appear. Unless our conscience has been completely seared, we can only tolerate so much of directly challenging God's authority to be right and tell right. Lest we be convicted and repent of this most heinous and blatant of sins, life in a fallen world provides us with plenty of flawed stand-ins to rebel against, to tear down, without directly declaring an insurrection against God.
In His Word, God declares that He is the ultimate Father figure. He gives us actual parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures who for brief flashes of time can reflect His glory into our lives. Before we are even able to form the words in our baby babble, begin to understand, THIS is what God is like. Dad provides, so God provides. Mom protects, so God protects. My teacher sets standards, so God sets standards. As we begin to believe the standards passed down to us are beyond us, or that they interfere with what our desires tell us is good, we have two choices: go to God and tell him henceforth we will be our own god, or stage a lifelong campaign alternating between manipulation and resentment of the authority figures He puts in place. In retrospect, it is easy to see why the second choice is easier and far more common.
What McLaren referred to as accumulating orthodoxy deepens the roots of the weeds of our resentment. Not only do parents and surrogate parents present us with, to varying degrees, God's Word and His righteousness, but they also saddle us with their preferences and peccadilloes. To the degree that people can suggest what we ought to do, or demand what we ought to do, and to the flesh these two are received in the same subliminally spiteful spirit, we can store up resentment against the most benevolent of human influences. We can, says Jesus, so seethe the in that poisonous brew of bitterness that what reminds us of God in others it actually triggers hatred, hatred that would perpetrate what He calls murder in our hearts.
If resenting the righteousness with which others present us is not enough of a rigged game, we can equally resent any areas in which we believe others have used their influence to limit our soothing sense of promise. Corey in a memorable episode of Boy Meets World actually articulates this brand of bitterness well. He charges his father with settling for a mediocre middle-class life which put a ceiling on Corey's opportunities to excel. If those who go before us emphasize this instead of that, set a standard that is in our lofty estimation not high enough instead of too high, we have a lifetime of excuses to avoid approaching and loving them as dynamic people still capable of growth.
As ugly as these exercises and self-justification are in classifying us as murderers in the first degree, while there is breath there is hope. The life God gives almost inevitably presents us with opportunities to see people as more than unreasonable sources of accumulating lists of oughts. We may discover that the expectations with which we have been oppressing ourselves bear little resemblance to their origins in parental guidance, classroom procedure, company culture, or discipling decorum. Authentic encounters which reveal ongoing, multi-dimensional dependence on the grace of God can reset our relationships and allow us to aim our mutual animosity in prayer as we plead for the coming of the Father's Kingdom and, meanwhile, for intermittent instances in which His will will be done on earth as readily as it is in Heaven.
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