“You can't legislate
the human heart” – Matt Chandler
It was
the moment all college football fans had been waiting for. Who would
get to be in the third annual college football playoff? Who would
obtain the right to play for a national championship? The debate had
raged for weeks on end, and one thing was very clear: there were more
deserving teams than there were spots.
How do
we determine the spots? Conference Championship? Record against top
25 teams? Overall record? Strength of schedule? The irony of it
all was that, depending on who you rooted for, you could make a
stellar case for your team, while poking holes in every other team's
argument...except Alabama. As everything unfolded, I found myself
realizing one of the struggles of all the arguments: they were too
simplistic. You couldn't just argue for conference champions,
because the system was designed to all ready leave one of them out.
You couldn't just argue for overall record, because not everyone had
a great schedule. And yet, most arguments included only pieces of
the whole picture, which presented a problem because it was trying to
bring simple objectivity to a system, and sport, that has been
relegated to subjectivism. It's the only sport in which wins and
losses aren't necessarily counted as simply wins and losses.
In some
ways, it's a helpful picture of the laws we employ to reign in the
human heart. A system is put in place to help us know what is the
right thing to do. “Put the best four teams in!” Or, in the
case of our laws, “Do what is right and good! Let people live in
freedom!” And yet, we find ourselves often scrambling. In the
case of the college football playoff, three years in and we still
haven't escaped controversy. In the case of our government, we find
ourselves constantly at war with one another about how to perfect the
system. Why?
It's
because legislating the human heart, while essential in our current
world, is an ineffective way of changing it. And according to Jesus,
we all need change. In fact, in Jesus' view, we need a complete
overhaul.
And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear
me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person
that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out
of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house
and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And
he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you
not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile
him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?”
(Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out
of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart
of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander,
pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they
defile a person.” (Mark 7:14-23)
We often look to the law to
see how not to be bad. And as we look at the world around us, it
occurs to us that something isn't right. “People are breaking the
rules! People are dying! People are hurting! Maybe we need new
rules!” Jesus says, “Listen, the rules don't tell us what not to
do, they expose that what's in us is an innate desire of what not to
do!” In this passage, they are concerned about food making them
unclean. But Jesus is saying, “Look, the problem is not what you
put inside you, but what is all ready residing in you. When you look
at the law and find that you are breaking it, it's not what you have
done that shows your evil, the law is merely proving that we have
been evil the whole time."
It's not to say that we
should do away with the law, Jesus doesn't. Rather he helps us see
why we need it. It shows us our need for a savior, not a need for a
law to show how good we are. The law was never intended to be a
proving ground, but a mirror. When we use it as such, we make the
law into a broken system that it was never meant to be.
College football's playoff
system may never be perfect. However, the human heart can be. But
not by the law. The heart can be healed and transformed by the God
who sent Himself to die for His people. May we not give into the
broken system of a saving law, but rather give ourselves to the
saving one, Jesus Christ.
