One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World by Tullian Tchividjian Read Free Book Online

just as daunting and severe as the commands we find in the Bible. The only difference between big-L Law and little-l law is that one comes from the immutable mouth of God and the other arises out of the shifting sand of human enterprise. The masculine ideal that my sons are growing up with is different from the one I grew up with, but it is no less demanding. If the big-L Law is good and holy, then little-l law is almost always arbitrary and cruel.
    I have tried my best to be consistent in usage throughout the book, with big-L Law referring to God’s Law and little-l law the innumerable oughts of life. But the innumerable oughts of life often include big-L Law, so it is not always as cut-and-dried as it might seem. Not only do we, like the Pharisees in the Bible, tend to conflate the two in all sorts of subtle ways, we also tend to experience both forms in the same way—namely, as accusation and judgment. So while the content of one may be good and holy, and the content of the other may be fickle and demeaning—one may even be an inversion of the other—it seldom makes much of a difference to the one not measuring up. In other words, the point is not how we fall short of this standard or that standard, but that we invariably fall short.
    One doesn’t have to look far to find an ought; they are as ubiquitous as they are oppressive. For example, infomercials that promise a better life if you work at getting a better body, a neighbor’s new car, the success of your coworker—all these things have the potential to communicate “you’re not enough.” Maybe you feel that you have to be on top of everything if you’re going to make it; you have to infallibly protect your kids if they’re going to turn out okay; you have to control what others think about you if you’re going to feel important; you have to be the best if your life is going to count; you have to be successful if you’re ever going to satisfy the deep desire for parental approval, and so on and so forth, world without end, amen.
    People themselves can represent the law to us (and us to them!). For example, a particularly beautiful or successful person next to whom we can’t help but feel inadequate. Or maybe a boss whose very presence makes us feel like we are not working hard enough, no matter how many hours we put in. They are not the law, but that is how we perceive them.
    Not long ago, I was driving down the road near my house, and I passed a sign in front of a store that read, “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” Meant to inspire drivers-by to work hard, live well, and avoid mistakes, it served as a booming voice of law to everyone that read it. “Don’t mess up. There are no second chances. You had better get it right the first time.”
    The sad truth is, the world is full to the brim with laws. From the craziest communes of Portland, Oregon, to the sunniest streets of South Florida, from the straight-laced small towns of the Midwest to the untamed jungles of Paraguay, the law is a universal human reality. Conditionality is written into the fabric of every society and relationship because it is written into the fabric of every heart and mind (Rom. 2:15).
    YOU KNOW YOU’RE A LAWYER WHEN …
    If you want to know where you’re encountering the law, do a quick inventory of your fears. What are you afraid of? I mean, really afraid of? In their book Stranger Than Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us , Drs. Marc and Jacqueline Feldman reference a survey of the general public that asked people the same thing. Death came in at number six. Number one, by a significant margin, was public speaking. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that the fear of public speaking has more than a little to do with a deeper fear, the fear of judgment, of being the vulnerable focus of a roomful of people, all of whom are evaluating what you are saying and how you look. They may like you, or they may reject you.
    The fear of judgment, arguably the