“You see that’s the whole point of being the government.  If you don’t like something you simply make up a law that makes something illegal.”

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As human beings, we have a love affair with the law.  It’s fixed and permanent, rigid an firm.  It protects us and keeps us safe, doesn’t it.

Or does it?

You see one of the largest threads of the narrative of Scripture is God revealing a structure that transcends the law.  Mostly, I believe, because the law doesn’t work as well as grace.  You see the law can only identify where we are breaking ourselves.  It can’t prohibit us from actually breaking it.  In fact, some would argue that the law actually stimulates the idea of breaking it just so we can express our freedom from it. See this section of the movie for an example.

It’s easy to forget that the law is largely a human construct.  Hammurabi’s Code existed 500 years before God provided the Ten Commandments, which were given 2,500 years after the Garden.  The law was not written into the original structure of the Garden.  Grace was.  And I don’t doubt that the idea of the law was also largely an extension of God’s original command not to kill, after Cain killed his brother.  But the fact remains that much of the purpose of the law is to identify a problem, not solve it.

And even after the cross, one of the significant problems in the ecclesia is the return to the law.  And I think the video expresses the heart of why we do.  It’s just easier to outlaw something that face something with grace.  It’s easier to create a construct that will control someone than it is to forgive someone.  And once we do, we are subject to that same law.

Grace is different.  It’s remarkably freeing.  It’s a life altering process so completely different from the law that it’s arguably looney.  It calls me to overcome offense and conviction.  It calls me to transcend the worst, so we can reveal our best.

“All things are lawful…” Paul said.  That’s a frightening statement. But what if it holds the key to what it means to be human?  What if grace IS the operating system of the Kingdom of God?  It would be an interesting world, wouldn’t it?