Can’t Fight Reality

This is a matter of understanding Law as the character of reality.

In other words, we never view Biblical Law as a restriction we have to put up, as if reality was going to allow something that Law keeps away from us. It may seem that you can fight the Law on this, but in the end, it will fail. For us, Biblical Law is reality; it’s simply the way things are.

There is very little clear statement as most people might think of it, but Biblical Law leaves us with a firm conclusion after everything else has been tried and failed. The truth is there in terms of a priori assumptions; you can’t get there unless you start in the right place. It should be obvious, but it’s all rooted in a radically different cultural orientation. In this case, we can affirm that the radical departure from the default is the problem, and our culture is at fault here.

People can change, but the range of possible change is limited. Thus, some things are simply burned into fallen human nature. The Lord shows via human history that some things aren’t going to change much even with the full redemption He offers in this life. The burden is upon us to seek out and embrace what He wants to do, not make up some wild nonsense and ascribe it to Him. Just because you can imagine it doesn’t mean God works that way. You cannot trust your reason to discern whatever it is God might be willing to do; He reveals it only in the heart.

So there are some things you have to accept from the hand of God. This requires a heart-led conviction that what He does is always good and right by definition. If you aren’t held in the grip of that truth, you never will get it. You’ll always suffer that burning sense that God is cheating you out of something until you understand that you are the one who’s messed up, not God. This whole thing cannot work without the conviction; it won’t work as an intellectual exercise. You have to know Him personally in your heart, not via some artificial edifice of taught theology.

A certain level of racism is burned into human nature. It’s there; you have to deal with it. Calling it “evil” and demanding people change is pure folly, not least because it’s just a false denial that you aren’t somewhat racist. If we take it for what it is — a natural human tendency — and try to understand how it’s supposed to work, we have some hope of making life on this earth tolerable. Any other course of action, any other theoretical approach, is doomed to failure.

God’s Law presumes a tribal instinct. We are supposed to cling together for stability and prosperity in clannish ways. It’s the fundamental feudal nature of Creation itself; if we fight it, we will lose. The only sensible hope is to work with it as established and immutable fact. Any imaginary efficiency and improvement is just a lie. Human relations must of necessity include a certain amount of tribalism, so let’s stop wasting resources and effort on fighting it. Let’s take it for what it is, a gift from God for our best benefit. You’ll notice it keeps coming back to the social stability called shalom — often translated as “peace.”

The path to peace, as in harmonious and beneficial living, takes into account the necessity of a somewhat tribal social structure and feudal living. Whatever you propose against such a thing is the real ignorance and evil in this world.