Second, humanity was not yet ready for an emphasis on the positive commands. The Ten Commandments represent a kindergarten phase of morality, setting forth the basic laws necessary for a community. When Jesus came to earth, he summarized the entire law in two positive commands: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). It is one thing not to covet my neighbor’s property and not to steal from him, and quite another to love him so that I care for his family as much as I care for mine. Morality took a quantum leap from prohibition to love.
More, Jesus insisted that laws are given not for God’s sake but for ours. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” he said (Mark 2:27). Elsewhere, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32, emphasis added). Jesus came to cleanse the violence, greed, lust, and hurtful competition from within us for our sakes. He desires us to become more like God.
The Ten Commandments represent the fetal development of bone, the first ossification from cartilage. The law of love emerges as the fully developed, liberating skeleton. Hinged and jointed in the right places, it allows for smooth movement within the larger Body.
I have known people who feel compelled to cast off every possible limitation. They remind me of spoiled children, dashing from one toy to another, searching for yet another thrill, unaware that their search is actually a flight. Where do they stop cheating on their income tax? At what point do they allow the truth about an extramarital affair to leak out? At what lie will their friends or children cease to believe anything they say? Their lives become an entangling web of deception and fear. Does such a person have freedom?
We do not regard a skeleton as beautiful; rather, it contributes strength and functionality. I do not inspect my tibia and wish it to be longer or shorter or more jointed. I gratefully use it for walking, thinking about where I want to go rather than worrying about whether my legs will bear my weight. I should respond that way to the laws governing human nature. They establish the mere framework for relationships, which work best when founded on a few dependable principles of trust.
Of course, we can break the laws: adultery, thievery, lying, idolatry, and oppression of the poor have plagued every society in history. The resulting fracture brings to a halt the smooth functioning of the whole Body. Bones, intended to liberate us, enslave us when broken.
Chapter Eleven
HOW BONES GROW
WHEN I LIVED IN RURAL INDIA, we relied on walking as an essential mode of transportation. While tourists rode in automobiles and buses, missionaries and health workers who wanted to reach the village people traveled to roadless places. So they walked, and I viewed it as one of my most important jobs to get missionaries back on their feet after an accident.
One such missionary, Mrs. S., arrived at the hospital in Vellore and told me of an accident some months before in which she had broken her thigh bone, the femur. A local doctor in the mountains had set the bone, but his subsequent x-rays showed incomplete healing. Concerned, he sent her to our medical college.
After x-raying Mrs. S.’s fracture site, I expected to see the familiar sight of healing bone. The body’s skeleton is a living, growing organ. When I cut bone, it bleeds. Most amazing of all, when bone breaks, it heals itself. Perhaps an engineer will someday develop a substance as strong and light and efficient as bone, but what engineer could devise a substance that can grow and also lubricate and repair itself?
A bone fracture sets an elaborate process into motion. Within two weeks a cartilage-like sheath surrounds the region, and mortar-laying cells then enter the jellied mass. These are the osteoblasts, the pothole-fillers of bone, which gradually replace the protective sheath with fresh bone. In two or three months a node of new bone marks the site, bulging over both sides of the broken ends like a spliced garden hose. Later, scouring cells will scavenge the surplus material so that the final result nearly matches the original bone.
To my surprise, I saw no evidence of this healing cycle in Mrs. S.’s x-rays. A clean line, an ominous gap, appeared between the two broken ends of bones, with no mending material fusing them together. I opened her leg for a firsthand look and could find no vestige of healing. Resorting to the inferior, nonliving tools of medicine, I fixed the area of the spiral break with a steel bone plate screwed into both pieces of the bone, above and below. Then I transplanted a grafted section of her tibia, to promote new bone formation, and sutured the wound.
After months of casts and wheelchairs and crutches, Mrs. S. again underwent x-rays. A milky cloud of growing bone showed the graft was taking, and yet a clean division between the sections of bone still yawned open. I knew we had something very unusual. After quizzing Mrs. S. and researching her history, I learned that twenty years earlier a doctor had irradiated her mid-thigh to treat a small, soft-tissue tumor. Besides the tumor, the radiation had apparently killed all her living bone cells at that site, and thus the two ends would never grow together.
The inactivity was driving Mrs. S. crazy. “God sent me to a place where I need legs!” she said. “We simply must find a solution.”
So I performed another operation. I checked the steel plate. The two screws farthest from the fracture site were loose and easy to remove: her body had begun rejecting them. But the four screws nearest the fracture were as solid as if drilled into mahogany. I had to strain to turn them because the bone there was dead.
Obtaining two more bone grafts, one from Mrs. S.’s other tibia and one from her pelvis, I surrounded the fracture site with living bone, as if packing it in ice. Then I closed the wound and waited.
Mrs. S. recovered and rejoined her mission station in the mountains. She spent an active life trudging the dusty trails, and her improvised leg bone worked well enough. Seven years later, when she came in for a checkup, x-rays revealed that the original fracture site had never healed—in one sliver between the grafted bones I could see light. However, a living bone shell, like a knot on a tree, had joined the two pieces together and formed a misshapen bulge of bone. She walked almost normally thanks to the grafts—her original bone above, grafted bone in the middle, and her original bone below.
Bone Is Alive
Mrs. S. offered a rare example of dead and living bone tissue existing side by side. When I opened her leg, the two looked the same. They had one crucial difference: living bone interacted organically with her body while the dead bone did not. The dead bone had failed her, for only living bone can adapt to the needs of a living body.
The analogy from physical bone to a spiritual skeleton has already been drawn for us in a dramatic passage in Ezekiel 37. In a vision, the prophet tours a surrealistic valley piled high with dry bones. God directly addresses those bones: “I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.”
The bones in Ezekiel symbolized a nation, Israel, that had calcified into a dead skeletal form. Once vibrant, Israel’s faith endured as a dry, lifeless memory. Yet in a vision of resurrection Ezekiel watched bones rattle together to form the framework for a new Body. A new nation would come to life with a preexisting heritage and a new understanding of God. The real value of a skeleton only comes to light when it supports a growing organism.
Bone is alive. The newborn baby has 350 bones that will gradually fuse together into the 206 carried by most adult humans. Many of the baby’s bones are soft and pliable, lacking the quality of hardness, for the birth event would be impossible were they not so flexible. The same stages of growth that I saw in Mrs. S.’s graft site occur daily within the skeletons of children.
Observing the process of bone ossifying, I am reminded of my own skeleton of faith. As a newborn Christian my faith was soft and pliable, consisting of vaguely understood beliefs about God. Over time God has used the Bible and spiritual mentors to help ossify the fra
mework of my faith. In the same way that osteoblasts lay down firm new minerals in a bone, the substance of my faith has become harder and more dependable. The Lord has become my Lord; doctrines that once seemed cold and formal have become an integral part of me.
Some believers act as if all answers can be codified in a comprehensive statement of faith. They treat others who doubt the basic doctrines as alien cells in the Body. Those of us tempted toward that kind of rigidity must come back to the analogy of living bone. New believers need time for the bones of faith to strengthen.
I have known many periods of doubt that tested my faith. In India I was challenged by exposure to other religions devoutly practiced by millions of people. In medical school I encountered professors who took for granted that the universe is based on randomness, with no place for an intelligent Designer. As I have grappled with these and other issues, I have learned the value of accepting as a rule of life something about which I have intellectual uncertainties. In other words, I have learned to trust the basic skeleton and rely on it even when I cannot figure out how various bones fit together and why some are shaped the way they are.
In medical school I studied under some of the pioneers of evolutionary theory, such as J. B. S. Haldane and H. H. Woolard. Some churches encouraged a kind of intellectual dishonesty on this subject. In the university their students took exams and recited the theories of evolution; when they joined the church, they declared their faith in a way that contradicted their exam answers. Ultimately this dichotomy led to a type of intellectual schizophrenia.
Only after much research and long periods of reflection was I able to put together what I had learned at church and what I had learned at school. In the meantime, I determined that my faith was based on realities that could stand on their own and did not need to be subordinated to an explanation from science. I operated with that assumption for years during which I was unable to resolve some of the mystery of how creation and evolution fit together. Indeed, in recent years, a new understanding of big bang cosmology and of the nature of DNA coding has greatly strengthened my faith in a guiding supernatural intelligence.
I have stood before a bridge in South America constructed of interlocking vines that support a precariously swinging platform hundreds of feet above a river. I know that hundreds of people have trusted that bridge over the years, and as I stand at the edge of the chasm, I can see people confidently crossing it. The engineer in me wants to weigh all the factors—measure the stress tolerances of the vines, test any wood for termites, survey all the bridges in the area for one that might be stronger. I could spend a lifetime determining whether this bridge is fully trustworthy. Eventually, though, if I really want to cross, I must take a step. When I put my weight on that bridge and walk across, even though my heart is pounding and my knees are shaking, I am declaring my position.
In my Christian walk I sometimes must proceed like this, making choices that involve uncertainty. If I wait for all the possible evidence, I’ll never move.
An Exoskeleton’s Strange Appeal
In the bayous of Louisiana where I live, twice a year a strange fever rolls through like a fog. Hand-painted signs appear outside dilapidated country restaurants: Fresh Crawfish Now! Schoolboys, barefoot and sweaty, scramble up the gullies dragging tin pails crawling with dozens of the prehistoric-looking creatures.
You can find crayfish (or crawfish) in almost any river, pond, or ditch in Louisiana. Menacing claws, half its body length, give the crayfish a militaristic appearance, like a gunboat with a couple of oversized howitzers protruding over its bow. Two gleaming black eyes jut out between the claws, eyes that protrude on the ends of stalks—movable stalks. If the crayfish wants to see you from a better angle, he does not move his head but instead points his eyestalks in your direction. The rest of the crayfish duplicates in miniature its cousin the lobster: plates of overlapping armor ending in a broad, fan-shaped tail.
Crack open a crayfish and you’ll find soft, white meat begging to be dipped in butter. No bones grow there to annoy a diner—the shell is its skeleton. In Louisiana, local restaurants will bring you platters of twenty or thirty of the creatures, their shells tinted bright red by the boiling process. After an hour of popping and scraping and digging, you leave a plateful of skeletons—thin, crayfish-shaped exteriors that, if propped up in a realistic pose, would pass for living crayfish.
A crayfish has an exoskeleton. Its muscles work against the carapace surrounding it, and that protective shell helps the crayfish survive in a ruthless world. Nevertheless, an exoskeleton presents certain disadvantages as well. A dog or cat or human being feels soft, warm, responsive. If you shake hands with a crayfish, you’ll feel inflexibility, coldness, and probably pain. A good-sized lobster can break your finger with a quick pinch of its claw.
As I review the history of the Christian church, at times I see a basic misunderstanding of the place of the skeleton in the Body. Some believers wear their skeletons on the outside, and their dogma stands out as obtrusively as does a crayfish’s shell.
Examples leap to mind, such as the monks known as “athletes for God.” In the fifth century, Simon Stylites perched on a pillar east of Antioch for thirty-six years and is said to have touched his feet with his forehead more than 1,244 times in succession. Other monks subsisted by eating only grass. Theodore of Sykeon, a seventh-century saint, spent most of his life suspended from a rock in a narrow cage, exposed to the storms of winter, starving himself while soulfully singing psalms.
Some of these practitioners sought an extreme way to demonstrate their commitment to God. Others, however, made a public display of their zeal in order to impress onlookers—exactly the error that Jesus denounced in the Pharisees (see Matthew 23 and Luke 11).
More subtle forms of exoskeletons persist in Christian circles. Ask a non-Christian for her impressions of truly committed Christians, and she may well identify Christians by a list of things they avoid: smoking, drinking, swearing, gambling, tattoos, attending movies, dancing. As I hope I’ve made clear, it’s for our own good to avoid certain harmful activities, but if that alone defines us, we have missed the positive, life-giving message of the gospel.
I am tempted to view legalism as a petty diversion. Does it matter if one denomination chooses to ban a harmless activity? Isn’t it merely humorous that churches in some countries, whose members readily drink and smoke, recoil at the idea of Christians wearing blue jeans or chewing gum? Then I come across strong warnings in the New Testament. No other issue—not sexual sins, violence, or the behaviors which most rankle Christians today—inspired more fiery outbursts from Jesus than legalism.
Surprisingly, the people who most irritated Jesus were the Bible-belt fundamentalists of his day. This group, the Pharisees, gave away exact tithes, obeyed each minute law in the Old Testament, and sent out missionaries to gain new converts. Despite their upright behavior and the rarity of sexual sin or violent crime among the Pharisees, Jesus roundly censured these model citizens. Why?
To answer that question, I go back to the humble crayfish. In comparing its exoskeleton with my more advanced, internal skeleton, several differences shed light on Jesus’ strong statements about the dangers of legalism.
First, the crayfish relies almost exclusively on its outside armor for protection. Humans, in contrast, have soft, vulnerable exteriors. Yet we form groups of the like-minded, and as the rules that define the group multiply and then calcify, we tend to hunker down inside them for protection. In effect, we develop an exoskeleton. In his Letters to an American Lady, C. S. Lewis wrote, “Nothing gives a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of real charity and faith.”
Legalists fool us. Like the Pharisees and the “athletes for God,” they impress onlookers with their fervor. Surely, you think, they have a high view of God. Growing up in a legalistic environment, though, I learned that legalism actually errs by lowering sights. It spells out exactly what a person must do in orde
r to arrive at a state of moral superiority. In the process, legalists miss the whole point that grace is a gift freely given by God to people who don’t deserve it.
Jesus told a story about two men praying in the temple. One, a righteous man, took pride in his superior moral character: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (Luke 18:11-12).
The other man, a known sinner, could barely find the words to pray: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Pharisee was comparing himself to people around him, whereas the tax collector compared himself only to God. The Pharisee rejoiced at being “holier than thou”; the tax collector recoiled at being “less holy than Thou.” Jesus left no doubt as to which of the two God accepted.
In a further danger, legalism limits growth by forming a hard, crusty shell around the accepted group.
For an adult crayfish, growth can only occur once a year. In an arduous procedure known as molting, growth exposes the creature to peril as it sheds the confining exoskeleton. After several spasms of agitation, the crayfish pushes with all its might and its top plate of armor pops free. Gingerly, it removes its head, taking special care with the eyes and antennae. Finally, with a sudden spring forward, the crayfish unsheathes its abdomen and lies there, naked and exhausted.
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