Perceptions #200019

"BREAKING THE RULE"

by Norman Bales

I grew up around construction people. My father and my uncle were both union carpenters. One day they saw a fellow worker break his folding rule into little pieces. The man had just framed out a window, only to discover that he had placed it in the wrong location. It took him nearly a day to undo the damage. When he discovered the blunder, he vented his anger. He placed the blame on his rule. He yanked the rule out of his carpenter's overalls and reduced it to kindling. Perhaps flexible measuring tapes were invented for carpenters like him.

Of course the measuring device wasn't wrong. The man who did the measuring was the culprit. He wasted company time chopping up an inanimate object. His irrational behavior probably made a dent in his own next paycheck. A carpenter can't do much without a measuring instrument and a high quality Lufkin rule doesn't come cheap. He could have purchased fifty different measuring guides from fifty different companies and every one of them would have insisted on having twelve inches in every foot.

But don't be too hard on this fellow. We all devise ingenious strategies to get around owning up to our mistakes. We deny them, rationalize them, excuse them and cover them up. But guess what? They're still there and none of our attempts at denial will change the truth. The measuring standard never changes and there is no excuse for violating it.

Like the carpenter's rule, the Word of God doesn't yield to our creative modification attempts. Our understanding of it may be faulty, but the Word itself is changeless. Extenuating circumstances, good intentions and ever shifting public morality never turns a wrong into a right. Education, sophistry, ridicule nor late night talk show hosts can repeal the eternal verities. Intellectually honest people eventually admit fault and do everything in their power to straighten out the messes they make.

Paul said, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). That message remains unmodified by modern progress. No wonder Paul spoke of himself as a "wretched man" when he reflected on his own slavery to sin (Romans 7:24). Because God's standards are unchangeable, it has become necessary for us to rely on his provisions for redemption through the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. It's only when we stop playing our silly games of rationalization, blame projection, and denial that we humble ourselves before the cross. Then and only then can we be freed from our own rule breaking.

Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org

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