Life UNDER God is not fun!
Skye opens this chapter with the story of his cousin's wedding in Mumbai, India. During the festivities a band of traveling, cross-dressing eunuchs burst into his cousin's apartment with song, dance, prayers, and burning fruit. Upon departure they exacted payment from his uncle.
This scene served as a backdrop to reveal the main motive and heart behind life UNDER God. Many believe that their "primary calling is to live under divine rules in order to avoid calamity".
"...religion became the way people participated in maintaining the universe and their own survival."
—Page 25; Paragraph 3
"Offering prayers and sacrifices is a means of incurring the gods' favor."
—Page 26; Paragraph 2
Some people take this way of relating to God and craft a "Christian" version of it, seeking to win favor with and control God through rituals (prayer, Bible reading) and morality. If we live according to God's "righteous expectations" then He will bless us and answer our prayers.
While we don't practice a pagan faith, many of us subtly mingle this heart and stance toward God with our Biblical Christianity.
Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson demonstrates this in an infamous tweet after he dropped a pass in an overtime game that ultimately caused the Bills to lose the game:
"I praise you 24/7!!! And this is how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How??? I'll never forget this!! Ever!!"
—Page 27; Paragraph 2
Johnson expects God's favor on the field for his devoted worship. This is a vivid example of the Life UNDER God posture.
When the Life UNDER God posture takes hold in communities, then groups of people view their role as cultural crusaders or moral majorities to enforce dogmatism and strict moral obedience.
The Bible does have moral commands and expectations on us as human beings and as Christians. But faith is reduced to dogmatism—"adherence to strict moral codes and the enforcement of boundaries and rules".
The clergy function as "divine police officers" and "cultural crusaders" in this community UNDER God.
In the end the exertion of fear and control to try and remove fear and control doesn't solve anything. It only makes things worse. Our bondage is deeper and we become worse than we ever thought we could be:
"At every opportunity Jesus dismantled the LIFE UNDER GOD posture of his culture. Disobedience did not automatically mean calamity would befall you. And obeying the rules did not guarantee material blessing and avoiding hardship. But Jesus saved his harshest criticism for the religious leaders who promoted and benefited from the corrupt system."
—Page 36, Paragraph 4 - Page 37, Paragraph 1
Here is an excerpt from Tim Keller's The Reason for God that illustrates this point powerfully:
Two Forms of Self-Centeredness
In Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll comes to realize that he is “an incongruous compound of good and evil.” His bad nature is holding his good nature back, he believes. He can aspire to do things, but he cannot follow through on them. Therefore he comes up with a potion that can separate out his two natures. His hope is that his good self, which will come out during the day, will be free from the influence of evil and will be able to realize its goals. However, when he takes the potion one night and his bad side comes out, he is far more evil than he expected. He describes his evil self using classic Christian categories:
“I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine…(Edward Hyde’s) every act centered on self.”
Edward Hyde is so named not just because he is hideous but because he is hidden. He thinks solely of his own desires; he doesn’t care in the slightest who he hurts in order to gratify himself. He kills if someone gets in his way. Stevenson is saying that even the best of people hide from themselves what is within–an enormous capacity for egotism, self-absorption, and regard for your own interests over those of all others. Self-aggrandizement is at the foundation of so much of the misery of the world. It is the reason that the powerful and the rich are indifferent to the plight of the poor. It is the reason for most of the violence, crime, and warfare in the world. It is at the heart of most cases of family disintegration. We hide from ourselves our self-centered capacity for acts of evil, but situations arise that act as a “potion” and out they come.
Once Jekyll realizes that he has this capacity for evil acts, he decides to clamp down heavily on this terrible self-centeredness and pride at the core of his being. In a sense, he “gets religion.” He solemnly resolves not to take the potion anymore. He devotes himself to charity and good works, partially as atonement for what Edward Hyde has done, and partially as an effort to simply smother his selfish nature with acts of unselfishness.
However, one day Dr. Jekyll is sitting on a bench in Regents Park, thinking about all the good he has been doing, and how much better a man he was, despite Edward Hyde, than the great majority of people.
“I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful and of some good. You know how earnestly, in the last months of the last year, I labored to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others…(But as) I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect…at the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde.”
This is a deadly turn of events. For the first time Jekyll becomes Hyde involuntarily, without the potion, and this is the beginning of the end. Unable to control his transformations any longer, Jekyll kills himself. Stevenson’s insight here is, I think, profound. Why would Jekyll become Hyde without the potion? Like so many people, Jekyll knows he is a sinner, so he tries desperately to cover his sin with great piles of good works. Yet his efforts do not actually shrivel his pride and self-centeredness, they only aggravate it. They lead him to superiority, self-righteousness, pride and suddenly — look! Jekyll becomes Hyde, not in spite of his goodness, but because of his goodness.
Sin and evil are self-centeredness and pride that lead to oppression against others, but there are two forms of this. One form is being very bad and breaking all the rules, and the other form is being very good and keeping all the rules and becoming self-righteous. There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. The first is by saying, “I am going to live my life the way I want.” The second is described by Flannery O’Connor, who wrote about one of her characters, Hazel Motes, that “he knew that the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.” If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and you and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus.
That, ironically, is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus. It is a Christianized form of religion.
—Source: http://katdish.net/2008/11/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-2/
Tim Keller has a sermon on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for further consideration:
http://sermons2.redeemer.com/category/sermon-tags/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde
