“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” -Isaiah 5:20
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock . . . And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”
-Matthew 7:24-26
Since the Ten Commandments were etched, man has been trying to find ways to justify the breaking of God’s Law, and encouraging others to do the same. In the garden the serpent challenged the voracity of God’s word, and “Did God really say has been echoing ever since. Something in man is not satisfied with the mere breaking of the law; he is compelled to show that it is justified, for God’s commands are unrealistic or deeply flawed. He can’t just disobey he feels compelled to create loopholes for himself.
In our day the entertainment industry is involved in a full frontal assault on Christian morality. It’s strategy is quite simple. 1) Shock the audience by showing someone brazenly breaking a commandment, then 2) Keep showing it broken in film after film show after show, until they are totally desensitized to it, then finally 3) Start making films and TV shows that twist the conscience of the audience by showing people breaking the law in a way that seems justified to the point where you actually begin rooting for the guilty party. Shock, Desensitize, Twist.
This strategy has been so effective that even I find it hard to believe that 70 years ago the presence of the word “Damn” in a film was shocking. Believe it or not there was once a time where lying, cheating, and stealing were ALWAYS wrong. In recent years cable dramas have taken this to a whole new level. Who would have thought you could get people to root for a meth cook? Easy, have a likable high school teacher with terminal cancer start making meth in order to provide for his family after he dies and you have the Emmy award winning series Breaking Bad. Can you make people root for a serial killer? Have a like-able police forensics expert fed up with injustice become a serial killer who kills only criminals who got away with it, and you have average Americans rooting for the serial killer “Dexter”.
How long before Hollywood finds a script which will make us root for child molesters? Unless our morals are built on the rock of God’s word our conscience will crumble under the deluge of Hollywood propaganda.
When a project in the engineering world goes bad, there is a decision that needs to be made in order to correct the failure. That decision is whether or not to scrap the project and start all over, or to attempt to fix the problem on the project already in process. For example, from my own line of work, if I design a cabinet and build it to the specification I made and come across information later that enlightens me to a flaw in my design, I am forced to choose to try to fix the flaw during the manufacturing process, or I have to start all over again. The temptation to start over is often overwhelming. When there seems to be no way to “stretch” the cabinet that is ruined, there, on occasion, is little to no recourse but to do exactly that…start over. On occasion, a solution may be found, but it is often the lesser of two evils. Rarely does a catastrophic mistake or a failure translate into a positive situation (though when they do it is much welcomed.) A good engineer is always an individual who can anticipate eventualities in any given process. They have a seemingly innate ability to “see” a project to completion in their minds.
As I contemplate this, I find myself in awe at a God who chose to redeem man, rather than to “start over” with a new creation (at least not until grace has had its fruition in this and the next epoch.) At the first sign that His creation (man) “failed,” God did not punch a hole in the wall of his heavenly Temple in anger and go back to make a new blueprint. Rather he promised those failures a hope. He promised them redemption through the one who would “bruise” the serpents head. Not only would he redeem man through crushing the serpents head, but he would redeem him through the very act of the serpent piercing His heel. This means that the greatest offence ever committed against the Creator became the very agency by which all the flaws in creation become ultimately corrected. From a novice engineering point of view, this concept is beyond staggering. It is like saying the flaw in my messed up cabinet is going to become the very means by which we (as a business) inherit all the cabinet work in the world and never have to compete again for business, and even that is a pale shadow of grace. Recovering from an engineering flaw in day to day life in the business world is messy and complicated work. So also is redemption. Praise God that he redeems messed up people, instead of writing them off and displaying them as failed exhibits of poor engineering.
“Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!” -Romans 5:20
