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Living under the law

Living under the law

Last updated on: January 10, 2017 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Living under the law 2017-01-09T10:24:29-05:00 Gene Veith

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More from David Zahl., who distinguishes between the big-L “Law” (of God) and the little-l “law” that people today try, futilely, to live by. . . .

The latter too is a sign of how people today are obsessed with justifying themselves, even though they can’t. We need to point them to the justification they can have, freely, through Christ.

I would add that those of us who have that justification should remember it more and should apply it when we ourselves fall into these syndromes of perfectionism and the busyness that Zahl analyzes.

From David Zahl, 500 Years After Luther, We Still Feel the Pressure to Be Justified | Christianity Today:

Luther, inspired by Paul’s epistles, recognized that the law also referred to a kind of overarching spiritual principle of life in the world. It is an elemental force that we all experience every hour of every day, present whenever we experience accusation and constraint and control and condemnation—which we are all constantly relying upon to justify ourselves. This means that the law is at work on us even when we aren’t actually hearing specific divine commands. This means that it isn’t so much what the law says that causes us to lie awake at night; it is how we hear it. . . .

Luther said that the law is “a constant guest” in our conscience. You might say that the little-l law is the air we breathe as human beings, the default setting, the quid pro quo that characterizes our internal life and much of our external one as well. Its underlying logic is embarrassingly familiar: To get approval, you have to achieve. Behavior precedes belovedness. Climb the ladder, or else. No wonder Hebrews tells us that the law is inscribed on the mind (Heb. 8:10).

We see the divine demand upon humankind being reflected concretely in the countless demands we devise for ourselves, religious or not, what we might call little-l law. The woman on the street may not have given the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel a second thought since Sunday school, yet she is likely on intimate terms with the condemning echoes issuing from Madison Avenue (“Thou shalt be skinny, successful, independent, and self-actualized”). She has long since grown accustomed to the internalized voice of a demanding parent, that feeling of never being quite enough which drives so much of her striving and exhaustion. She is, you might say, just like you and me.

In this light, it is perhaps odd that the “secular” world is often viewed as an escape from the oppressive moral strictures of religion. But the secular world can be just as condemning and judgmental as the religious one, if not more so. “Thou shalt be authentic,” for example, turns out to be a crueler taskmaster than “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” The latter at least has the benefit of not being a moving target, constantly changing with the cultural wind. When wedded to an overly optimistic view of human nature—the delusion that we can actually live up to the secular world’s shifting standards—the result can be crazy-making.

Take busyness for example. When asked how we are doing, we used to say, “Fine” or “Well.” Today, as a number of commentators have noted, the default response is “Busy.” And we’re not lying. Smartphones and similar devices have largely chased away the uncomfortable idleness that once characterized society, quickening the pace of life to an almost absurd degree.

But busyness is more than a description of how we’re doing; it is one of our culture’s predominant indicators of worth and value, a measure of personal righteousness. The more frantic the activity, the better. The implication is that if we’re not over-occupied, we are inferior to those who are. As with all law-based barometers of self-worth (beauty, wealth, influence, youth, etc.), there is no enough.

What the near-universal obsession with busyness reveals is that everyone is religious—including the “secular” world, which is why I put secular in quotes—not just those who believe in God or go to church. Works righteousness—the attempt to justify yourself by works of the law (be they actions or attributes)—is the default mode of human operation, not just of the select few who identify as religious. The law reigns over all creation; the question is not if, but which form a person subscribes to. As Bob Dylan so memorably put it, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Whatever its form, the law is never able to bring about what it calls for. Much as we might wish it were not the case, telling people what they should do does not give them—or us—the power to do it. In fact, the law tends to create the very thing it seeks to avoid. Banning a book is often a triumph for its marketing. Suggesting a friend “just relax” compounds their stress. The law increases the trespass (Rom. 5:20).

The world of social media often seems tailor-made for illustrations of both how the Law of Who You Must Be manifests itself and how counterproductive those manifestations can be. We edit our personalities and lives online in order to get the hoped-for response from others—affirmation and attention. Yet if and when that response actually comes, it feels hollow. No surprise that social scientists tell us that the more time we spend on social media, the happier we perceive our friends to be, and the sadder we feel as a consequence.

Of course, we love the law because it promises us agency—it puts the keys to our wellbeing in our own hands. If I can just do x, y, or z, then I will get the result I want. If I can just be a certain kind of person, or project those qualities publicly, then I will be loved. People who are addicted to control—which is all of us—are addicted to the law as a means of control. The sad irony of our lives is that our desire to be in control almost always ends up controlling us. You might say that our relationship to the law is a fatal attraction, albeit one that makes sense of an alarming amount of our behavior.

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Illustration by Sean MacEntee, Creative Commons

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