lchang@udel.edu (Boris Lchang) (08/17/90)
The other day, I attended a Bible study meeting. We happened to look at the book of Roman, chapter 7. This chapter gives me a great deal of thoughts. In verse 5 of chapter 7, it's written 'For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death'. And in verse 7,8,9; it's written 'When shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.' (New International Version) I am moved when I read these verses. The Bible has given a clear ground of letting people revealling their own 'sin'. And to my understanding of these few verses, God imposes the law not just to regulate the order, but also to let people to know law is not the final way to lift the 'sin'. As verse 21 says, 'So I find this law at work; When I want to do good, evil is right there with me'. Therefore, comes Jesus Christ for the unfulfilled part. The understanding of the Bible by me may not be accepted by all as most of other things don't. Recently, the world has been stirred by the crisis of Persian Gulf. US has been a major role in uniting vast of influential countries to drive Iraq back to its own territory. In this world, every one would like to say 'I am on the side of justice to against your action'. In small scale, we see it in daily life, and in large scale, it happens between nations. At this moment, the history is still unfolding. Most comments have been heard is the parallelism to Hitler and Vietnam war. Maybe this period of history still affects most of us today. If history can reveal itself more evenly and fairly, the parallelism is the whole history of human being. One side proclaims justice is on their side by law (agreed or not), to press the others by forces. Still the law is hold by the hands of power. This rule has never changed for thousands of years. And usually, executing the law means justice. The Opium war against China in late 18th century, we see the justice has been put on the world table. The Crusade recovering Holy Land from the Moslems in 11th to 13th century, again we invite the justice to play a major role. Jesus had been crusifyed, the justice has been used to kill the owner of justice. Strangely, the history has speaking the same words as the Bible does. The law companying with justice have served their term by the hands of God to reveal the selfish, greedy, and self-justifing sin rooting in human being. And those sin diversify themselves through modern technology to nations. While writing this, I am astonishing in hearing about how US to fight Iraq, only hesitation lies on crossing the line of justice or not. Does that matter? The justice has once more been called for providing backup for the Mr. right in executing 'inevitable' tragedy. But one would says the 'law' is what we have to evaluate what comes to us. If we throw it away, what else can we do? The answer is already shown in the question. A knife, it has two edges, a dull and a sharp, good and bad. As all tools, justice is a tool. It takes thousand years for human being to see this fact.( or still not seeing it). When the time, we are tired of playing this toy; that is the time to see THE peace.(not the peace under balance)