Writer Dylan Morrison

Please Keep Off The Grass

Laws are weird little constructs, populating human society and keeping the lid on all things destructive. You either love them or hate them, believing them to be essential for the smooth running of a moral society or chains restricting the desires of the human spirit. Either way they are band-aids at best.

Being raised as a young Presbyterian lad in 60s Northern Ireland I never really questioned the laws that held together the conservative mix of my milieu. One had great respect for policemen, well maybe more accurately a fear of the big men in black. Riding one’s bike on a pavement was a no-no, for if caught by an eagle-eyed constable, a good telling off was the least of one’s worries. If reported to my law-abiding parents, a good clip on the ear may have been an even worse fate.

No, laws or rules as they were sometimes termed, were the bastions of our moral order, the nuts and bolts of the moral order that keep everything societal running along smoothly. Of course that all started to crumble when the infamous ‘Troubles’ broke out in 1969, which led to massive ‘law breaking’ on both sides of the religio-political divide. The human heart and all its inherent violence was unleashed like a tribal twister, scarring the communal landscape of Northern Irish normality. But that’s another story altogether, one for another day perhaps.

Now, as an aging 62 year-old baby boomer, I reckon that laws, our imposed limits on human activity, are fast crumbling against the tide of imitative desire contagion that has been unleashed since the mid to late twentieth century. Our old laws have been replaced by more ‘understanding’ ones, only to discover that they too are now being bypassed by our collective maverick ego. The ‘we’ upon which society operates smoothly has been replaced by the ‘me’ generation, one that believes itself to be at the cutting edge of human evolution.

So where does the Divine stand in this mix of ‘law v liberty’? Well, I reckon that the Divine stands outside the philosophical mind games of society and the human heart. I’d better explain!

The Edenic myth reveals an Innocence of mind and heart that was the designed blueprint for humankind and inter-communal living. An experiential communion with the Divine was all that was required to keep the garden paradise a safe haven for animal kind and human alike. A little metaphor of what society can be like. Of course the introduction of the knowledge or awareness of ‘good and evil’ changed all that. Instead of looking upward mankind began to focus upon the ‘other’, automatically laying upon them the misjudgement of rivalry, one that quickly led to the prototypal ‘murder’ of Abel.

As desire birthed an ‘us v them’ battle for acquisition and security, all hell broke loose among the expanding human tribe, one threatening the very survival of our ancient ancestors. Out of the melee of warring loyalties and internal conflict, the rapidly accelerating embryo of human culture came up with the idea of laws – the initial institutionalization of the god-like ‘knowledge of good and evil’. And so, ever since time immemorial, culture and society have set up their values and laws as the very foundation of the human collective. A semi-effective means of keeping the lid on the violent tendencies of the human dynamic.

Once understood we can begin to understand why law quickly became the guiding principle of the evolving religious movements that bedded in with societal order and security. To be religious was to observe ‘God’s laws’. Not to was to be consigned to the ‘evil’ camp, one destined for a punitive, sticky end. And so, throughout human history, law and religious belief have been accommodating bed-fellows in the push for a pseudo-‘normalization’ of the human heart.

Of course, the trouble is that it simply doesn’t work, at least not in the long-term! Just watch someone defiantly walking onto a well-manicured park lawn, contrary to the attending large sign that boldly declares ‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS’. The mystic Jesus preacher Saul of Tarsus, (aka St. Paul) was spot on in his observation of the human heart. We appear to be wired to kick against the goad of requirement and expectation, whether divine or societal. Laws can be set in stone and invoked but our egos tend to over-ride them given time.

Effective enforcement is a must if laws are to play their partial role in keeping society orderly. The tendency however within many Western nations is to turn a blind eye to violations of minor laws while pursuing those who break the really big ones. The trouble with this approach is that over time we get high on our little misdemeanors, giving us a thirst for more serious law breaking. Once our lawless genie is out of the lamp, it can conjure up all sorts of destructive behavior on both a personal and communal level.

Those of us who follow the Nazarene ought to share his blunt diagnosis of the human condition – a waywardness within the human heart, one birthed by skewed desire. Yet, while useful as a stopgap measure, the use of law to keep us in check isn’t the ultimate answer to our predicament. Rather, an internal awakening and realignment with Source, is the key to defusing our delinquent tendencies -an encounter with Divine Love, a Transcendence that won’t stand for our excuses and ego tricks, yet One that freely forgives and changes us with a fiery passion.

Dylan’s Author Page ~ https://goo.gl/7BJ8JR