I had been running on battery power for too long and the warning light had changed from orange to an unwelcome blinking red. The reserves in my soul were finally running down to near empty; I was lost and hope of a miraculous turn of events was fast fading.

In April of that same year I had bought a Bible. Owning a Bible is one thing; opening and reading it is another. I did not have a mentor. I was not part of a Bible Study. Basically, I was a formerly proud member of a vast new class of biblically illiterate Americans. Up through my teenage years I had attended church; I had been baptized and confirmed as a child but what little faith I had, I freely abandoned for the far more popular religion of self reliance and self indulgence.

So I looked down at this brick of a book and asked myself why bother to read it? How can it provide relevance to my own sorry situation? If I were to decide to explore its pages, where do I begin? Where so many of my contemporaries had rejected the faith of their youth, why would I turn to the pages of the Bible for answers to my own self inflicted crisis? How could it help?

But I did open that Bible and I did begin the long journey of coming to know it and love it. Years later, the answer to my many question became apparent and it came to me from one of the Bible’s best know psalms. For even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death; I came to realize that I am not in fact alone. When, early on, I choose to walk through this life on solo power, I inevitably lost that power and found myself without the resources to get to a safe place. As with so many of my contemporaries, I end up as little more than spent fuel.

The stories and accounts in the Bible speak to another source of power: the Holy Spirit of God that wants to abide within the heart of each one of us to restore our soul to the vibrant life God intended for us from the beginning.

As I began to engage the pages of the New and Old Testaments, I slowly learned to listen to what the ancient words were telling me about my own condition here and now. And as I began to absorb what I was hearing, I started to experience the cracking of my own shallow assumptions about the world and my place in it. I began to move from believing I could live a good life without God to believing I could not survive even one short day without Him.

Few words provoke a greater negative stock response than the word “sin.” The secular world generally rejects sin in their progressive view of the world which, from the Enlightenment period up to the present moment, has been an optimistic view of man improving his lot without the fiction of a creator God. They reject the biblical narrative entirely and have replaced it with a therapeutic concept of life where professionals can medicate and consult all of humanity into well being through a secular version of salvation. But such a philosophy seems so incomplete and disregards the unruly reality of our existence. Much of the calamities of the 20th Century seem to contradict the happy view of the progressives.

The Bible tells the reader that “sin is lawlessness” but lawless against whom, and what is lawlessness anyway. If law is a mere construct of man and nothing more, then the law is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of socially based tyranny.

King David gives us the biblical view on the matter: “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…” (Psalm 51). By “you” he is directly addressing God and no one else. The secular modernist defines sin (they never use this word) as an affront against one’s neighbor, not against God since to them, God does not exist. But in such a world, only the mighty sinner prevails, for it is strength that defines the law. And the law under this regime can lead to some very dark places. David Berlinski in his excellent book The Devil’s Delusion addresses these questions from the perspective of Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s classic novel The Brothers Karamazov: In that novel, the question is asked: What happens if God does not exist? The answer: If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. Berlinski goes on to tell a story about an elderly Hasidic Jew who was commanded by an SS guard to dig his own grave. When he had finished digging, the Jewish man stood up straight and addressed his executioner: “’God is watching what you are doing,’ he said.” And then Berlinski wrote: “And then he was shot dead.” If God does not exist, everything is permitted.  Berlinski goes on to say this: “What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of these carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either.”(The Devil’s Delusion pp 26-27)

So when the world focuses on the second of Christ’s two great commandments, it is echoing to some extent the world’s view on the reality of the existence of God. In fact, this happens when the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-30) runs up to Jesus and asks what he (the young ruler) must do to gain eternal life. In all three versions of this encounter (whether it is Jesus replying or the young ruler); the answer is limited and ironic. For the rich young man answers with a version of “love your neighbor” which is nothing more than the last six of the Ten Commandments. King David has it right; the Rich Young Ruler has it partially, but tragically, wrong. For without the first four commandments, the last six will always lead to one or another form of tyranny, and not freedom. But Paul says, “you are called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature.”(Galatians 5:13) If societal tyranny is the name of the game rather than biblical freedom, then we now live in a diminished world indeed. Sin is lawlessness and man without God is destined to die in lawlessness and deprivation and in cynicism, skepticism and spiritual poverty. This is true for Cain who was destined to become a “restless wanderer of the earth” because he disregarded the plea of God which eventually led to the murder of his own brother. Disregard the first four commandments, and as B follows A, you will end up engaging in one or all of the last six. For if God does not exist, then everything is permitted. It is only the fear of the sword of the tyrant that will maintain forced order. And “love your neighbor” will be transposed in nothing less than “fear your neighbor” for your squalid life depends on it. In this version of things freedom becomes a slogan of the tyrant who is free to enforce the law in any lawless way he desires. Your neighbor now may be the instrument of your undoing and so you are no better off than any survivor cast up on a desert island; you have been exiled from genuine community.

Paul tells us that one thing is needed for authentic freedom and that is Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians). If sin is only neighbor to neighbor wrongdoing, then the cross is drained of all meaning and Jesus becomes only one of many teachers who we may or may not listen to. But Jesus as teacher only is just a strategy for many to avoid the more difficult implications of the crucifixion. By focusing on the last six commandments, we are ceding much too much to the way the world looks at the matter. For if the devil has succeeded in deluding us into thinking that God does not stand behind everything in creation, then we are reduced to mere human enforced order and that leads exactly where?