No Perfect System
No man-made system is powerful enough to overcome humanity’s issues of the heart, our sinful nature. Legal systems and governments create laws and penalties to protect and provide guard rails, or in extreme cases control, but cannot change our hearts. We comply out of obligation or duty but our desires may be contrary to the law. The law creates compliance not necessarily transformation of our hearts.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2 (ESV)
As one man-made system is torn down the resulting new system comes riddled with its own set of issues. Reconfirming an ongoing, historically observable, cycle of imperfect systems being broken down and replaced with other imperfect systems. There is no perfect system that can be constructed by man alone.
In those areas where social standards and expectation guide us, not the legal system, how we treat our neighbors is determined solely by the condition of our heart. If we let our hearts go unexamined with little self-reflection, accountability, or correction we will let our emotions and biases take over and our behavior swayed by the group we are with rather than living out the fruit of the Spirit.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)
Only when we understand that we are of God will we see that, through his death on the cross, Christ overcame these issues of the heart, our sin. When we let God work through the Holy Spirit within us we all can live transformed lives, on a journey to become more like Christ each day. The only “system” that is perfect and without flaw is giving our lives to Christ.