The Way Life Is

In my time with God this morning, I pulled out The Hungering Dark, the Buechner book of sermons that I have been reading since March (off and on). The sermon I left off at is entitled "The Two Loves," about eros and agape love. What struck me this morning was the following passage:


"But surely the Bible is not first of all a book of moral truth. I would call it instead a book of truth about the way life is. These strange old Scriptures present life as having been ordered in a certain way, with certain laws as inextricably built into it as the law of gravity is built into the physical universe. When Jesus says that whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will save it, surely he is not making a statement about how, morally speaking, life ought to be. Rather he is making a statement about how life is. When John writes that he who does not have love remains in death, he is not pronouncing an ethical judgment but a universal insight into what it means to be human. Behind all such words is the conviction that God has created life in such a way that if man lives in defiance of God's law, then that man invites his own destruction as surely as the man who lives in defiance of the law invites it" (Buechner 86).

As an English teacher, I spend some of the greater parts of my career trying to teach students to see the theme in literature. Contrary to what many will try to argue, theme is very different from moral. Theme is not the lesson learned (or in Beuchner's words "the way life ought to be"); rather, theme is a truth revealed ("a statement about how life is").

Authors write to explore "universal insight[s] into what it means to be human." And no less in the Bible. In fact, probably more so. Because the One who knows best the laws which govern our world and result in consequences, both good and bad, makes the greatest of efforts to communicate those truths to us, whom He loves and covets for Himself, whom He has created to be in relationship with Himself.

I use the word laws in the context of a law of gravity, not in a set of rules which, when broken, are punishable by the creator of the laws towards those who break them. These laws are inherent in the way the world is set up to work. While scientific laws, like gravity, are easy to prove and verify, I wholeheartedly believe that other laws govern our world, spiritual laws. When those laws are defied, we reap the heart-breaking consequences. When I am tempted to look around for evidence of God (or specifically, for God's work and presence in my life), God reminds me again and again of how I have felt and known the universal truths found in the Bible.

We are a people built to walk the earth, same as we are a people built to love and worship our Creator. Try and do otherwise, and ultimately, we will fall every time.