Innocence Revisited – Rewind

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.  Galatians 3:24  NASB 1995

Our tutor – It seems that the world of human relationships often strives to regain the feeling of innocence lost long ago in the mistaken choices of growing up.  Since so few of us really have a clear understanding of the journey of becoming, we look back on those past days as though recapturing a time of purity of heart will somehow make up for the many wounds suffered in the pursuit of maturity.   Nowhere is this more evident than in our repeated attempts to find “true love;” a love that somehow keeps us centered in ourselves and at the same time releases us to the joy of life’s intimacy with others.  Oh, if we could only know the unbearable lightness of being this side of the grave!  And yet, with each passing heartache, with every broken promise, with all the spoken and unspoken disappointments, we find that “being” is often too heavy to bear.  Lost youth, lost innocence.  We long for that peace and joy of being completely at home with life.

So powerful is the myth of lost innocence that it is not only a progenitor of shattered expectations but also a conditioner of culture.  From the Greeks to the Sioux, mythical history is replete with stories of the transition from innocence to experience, and the associated “fall from grace” that accompanies such a transition.  In the words of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, we all want to “get back to the Garden.” However, this unrequited longing for a return to innocence is not what is required.  A little deeper reflection shows us that the attempted pilgrimage to innocence revisited may be incapable of restoring our missing serenity even if it were to occur.  The better choice for wholeness may actually be the one that we cannot avoid but desperately try to—the pathway of experience filled with suffering and sorrows.  A line from The International sums it up: “Sometimes a man meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”  We might just find that joy is meaningful only against the backdrop of tears shed in the agony of despair and defeat.

Experience is a cruel tutor.  But there is a cosmic purpose behind this cruelty.  Paul spoke of this paradox in his discussion of law and grace in the letter to the assembly in Rome.  He points out that in spite of the fact that the law was intended to produce godly living, it actually put a spotlight on our moral failures.  What was supposed to keep us secure inside the fence of obedience actually resulted in the disaster of exposing our cooperation in the rape of innocence.  We became our own victims.  Paul confirms that the law is good.  It demarcates the pathway of righteousness.  Whole-hearted adoption of the law guarantees peace of mind and fellowship with God and Man.  But intentions are easily dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks of desire.  So the law served to call attention to the gap between our longing for peace and our pursuit of pleasure.

Law alone did nothing more than push us toward a hopeless maturity where we are fully cognizant of our failures but powerless to restore purity.  In this arena, suffering is purposeful.  Why?  Because it pushes us toward reconciliation, not toward a return to some lost paradise.  The Garden is gone, and you and I aren’t ever going to get back there.  God may have created human beings innocent, but there was no intention that they stay that way.  Choice presupposes alternatives—real alternatives where things might go wrong.  Therefore, reconciliation (theologically – “atonement”) must be a real option and given the history of our species, it is now the only option.  As long as we wander about looking for a return to Paradise, we will remain abandoned souls.  There is no return.  That time is past.  Now is the time for innocence to give way to rigorous examination.  And to discover serendipity.

(Originally published six years ago, this investigation inspired more than a dozen comments.  Let’s see if things have changed.)

Topical Index:  tutor, innocence, reconciliation, Galatians 3:24