A Life Unwasted
The other evening I was watching an old movie, and by that I mean from the eighties of the last century. It wasn’t particularly good, but it dramatized a lot about the culture of Washington, DC residents living at the top of the socio-economic heap at the time. One of the characters was particularly addicted to immoral behavior, and she said to her boyfriend as he arrived, “I’m wasted.” The obvious meaning of those words was that she was seriously under the influence of some illegal drug.
My mind went back to the first two verses of Genesis, where the author tells us that at the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth. Science was particularly primitive when Genesis was written, so the author wrote this description of what there was in the first instant. Everything was tohu wa botu. It was “chaotic and wasted.” God then brought what He had brought into existence from nothing into an ordered existence. You know the story from that point. Everything was put into order by the hand of God. Light and matter were created in harmony, and the first man and woman were in perfect harmony with the garden and with God and with each other. God’s law, made for the benefit of humanity was obeyed by everything.
But then the man and woman were beguiled by Satan, our adversary, to commit one act of disobedience, and evil entered the world through the human mind and heart and behaviors. The whole history of the world has seen this battle in the human family develop into wars and famines and plague and death.
Jeremiah, perhaps thousands of years later, looking at the mess the leaders and people of Israel were making of their land and relationships, describes his emotions and physical reaction to what he saw all around them. It’s the classic medical description of a panic attack that he is experiencing. “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent” Why so? “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.” Things were so awful that Jeremiah envisioned all of creation collapsing back into the chaos, the disorder God had to work with in the beginning of time. That was a true waste in every sense. When human beings ignore the law of God, set up for our benefit, laid down so that human families and societies will be places to grow and prosper, everything is constantly on the verge of utter disorder.
A railroad engine is powerful and can move thousands of tonnes of freight or passengers from place to place. But if it has no rails to run on, it is worthless to its owners. That's what the moral law of God, the natural law, does for humans. If we obey it, our family railroad has a way to move us forward toward union with Jesus.
Tohu wabohu describes the scene I described a moment ago. The movie character was addicted to mind-altering substances and sexual experiences with multiple partners. She was looking for love and meaning, but finding neither one. Her search for ultimate goodness, beauty and truth were limited to her nerve endings. She could not think straight, so she couldn’t even earn an honest living.
Moses tells us that our God is closer to us than any of the pretend gods of pagans and secular culture could ever be. The true God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. The true God loves us even more than we love ourselves. But we must take heed and observe His statutes diligently, and teach them to our offspring, even if they don’t listen to us. Jesus did not teach disobedience to the Ten Commandments. St. Paul tells us the same thing as the Gospel. Jesus came to give us access to forgiveness when we break those commandments and screw up our lives, and to the sanctifying grace that will enable us to be in communion with Him and each other, and attain, when we fall asleep here for the last time, eternal fulfillment and joy.
