Lines on my face

“Will they not go astray who devise evil?” Proverbs 14:22

Devise – The Hebrews were a people of the land. Their imagery and metaphors come from this deep connection to the earth. Their language is mixed with dirt, fields, trees, rocks, planting and harvests. We, on the other hand, are a culture of the mind. Our Greek roots push us toward imagery that is cerebral. That’s why our contemporary theology is filled with “concept” words, not concrete images like Hebrew.

This word, harash, is a great example. We think of “devise” as a mental exercise. We connect it with thinking, planning and scheming. But the reader of Hebrew would see a different image. Harash finds its root in plowing the fields and engraving the stones. It is a word about scars; scars on the land, scars on the stones and, finally, scars on my soul. Sin is the action of scarring God’s creation whether it is the physical world or my inner spiritual world. Sin takes a plow to my heart and a sharp tool to my soul and cuts a path across God’s righteousness. This is not a mental fabrication. It is a permanent etching. When sin is finished with me, I have lines on my face and they won’t come off unless God washes them away with blood.

We need some powerful imagery about sin. It’s just too easy to think of sin as some sort of mental disorder, easily cured through right living and moral behavior. The church preaches a gospel of good news but forgets to mention why the news is good. The news is rescue from death, scarring so deep that it cuts the life out of me. These days we all want forgiveness but we want it without having to deal with rebellion against God. We want a head trip to heaven, not a funeral of self.

Hebrew will not allow such mental mistakes. Hebrew gets us down in the dirt of life. Hebrew reveals the truth. Sin cuts. The plow slices through our souls, digging up the ground, revealing what is hidden below the surface. If you mess with sin, you will come away scarred. Only scarred people need good news. The ones with plastic faces don’t want to look at the scars beneath the mask. But I do. I need to see the turned-up dirt in my life to recognize why I need a savior. I have plenty of scars. My face is full of lines. That’s why Jesus matters to me. He didn’t come to fix my theology. He came to heal my wounds.