Cause and Effect, God's Moral Law in action

There are so many ways in which we get hurt. All to often, we are the cause of that hurt, a self inflicted hurt, a hurt within. God has placed within all of us a Moral Law. When we are young that law is often seen through the teachings of our parents. We seem to think that it is not a law of love, but someone else rules that keep us bound and restricted. So when we venture out on our own we try to prove those rules wrong. We think we can make our own rules and live free. But what we do not realize is that the Moral Law is like gravity, and we are not trying to just prove our parents wrong, but we are trying to defeat the laws of gravity. We are changing our clothes, putting on a cape and climbing to the top of a large building, looking out upon the world and believing that we can fly. We stretch out our arms and jump. What we discover is that really we proved gravity right and only broke ourselves in the process. This is the Moral Law we see before us. There are certain rules within life and when we venture outside those rules we are broken in the process. All too often we also break others during our fall. For really, we do not just hurt ourselves, but others feel our effects as well

I see this over and over. I have done this myself. Our society has been training us to believe that all truth is relative and that what happened to that person has nothing to do with us. So we venture out and try to fly, each one of us, but all that we are really doing is proving that Truth and breaking ourselves. But we do not stop there. We discover "that" pain, which inevitably has to come after a fall. We feel the pain. The problem is that we do not see the source of the pain, but only feels its effect. We continue to believe that we can still dance in the dark without a great fall.

One example in my own life was sexual sin. I was molested as a child, then date raped as a teen. Those people responsible for my hurt were themselves discovering God's Moral Law. They were breaking that law that was meant to protect the innocent. Throughout my life I kept thinking that I could stop the pain by turning to my boyfriend and letting him rescue me. I kept thinking that, "this time it will be different. This time I will not get hurt, but will fill that void within me." Every time I proved that Moral Law while I was breaking myself in the process. We do this. We turn to the one delivering the painful blows in order to find comfort.

Stalin, he was a man known for his torture and murder of millions of people. What is little known about him is this story: One day someone asked him, "How do you expect your people to follow you if you are hurting them all of the time."
Stalin looked at the man and said, "Bring me a chicken." He took the chicken and proceeded to pull out each feather until the chicken was completely nude. The agony inflicted was horrific, but after the chicken had no more feathers to pluck, he put it on the ground walked away and grabbed some food in his hands. He bent down and called for the chicken. The chicken, shivering and stumbling, went over to him and began eating. After it finished the little grain Stalin had in his hands, the chicken cold and hurting snuggled up next to Stalin for warmth and comfort. Stalin looked up at his questioner and said, "People are like this chicken. You inflict them with enough pain they will follow you for the rest of their life."

We are like that chicken. We set out to disprove God's Moral Law, we get stripped and tortured, but instead of running to God and away from that which is causing the pain, we keep turning to the source of that pain for comfort. The alcoholic keeps turning to alcohol. They know that they should not have been drunk, but they do not realize that it was the alcohol that brought them the pain. They think they can control it. The woman who feels the sting and emptiness of sex before marriage, she does not stop having sex. She somehow thinks that she should have just done it a little different and this time she can defeat the laws of nature. The man who is fired from his job because of time spent looking at pornography on his computer, still turns to porn today. Over and over, we all do it. We feel the effects of the pain, but we do not dive down deep enough to really see the cause. We still see Jesus as a rule maker who is only trying to keep us bound and controlled.

Luke 13:34, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now, look, your house is abandoned. And you will never see me again until you say, ‘Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

Oh how He wants to protect us, not to control us. May we pray this prayer, “Our Mother Hen, who art brooding over us, hallowed be thy sheltering wings … Forgive our unwillingness to come into your embrace.”


Jesus-- Leaning near, listening, watching, thinking about me; covering, protecting, providing for and guiding me, even when I am reluctant to accept these forms of love, unable to believe a Love like this is wrapped all around me, all the time. May we stop running to our assailant and turn instead to the One who wants us to learn to fly under His sheltering wing. He wants us to learn to sing and dance. He wants us to learn the true joy in living free with Him...