Cecil B. DeMille (you know, of The Ten Commandments fame) said, "It is impossible to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law."I was thinking about that quote today while I sat in the quiet moment just before Sunday School started, when everyone is settling down and breaking out their scriptures and just as the teacher is opening his mouth to welcome the group to class. I suddenly pictured a wide field with monoliths rising out of the ground. Each monolith, made of a substance absolutely unbreakable or unscathable (I think I made that word up), was a universal law, or truth. Each one was labeled according to the truth it represented. I saw, in my mind's eye, people running up and smashing themselves into the monoliths of truth before landing, broken, on the floor of the field. I giggled quietly to myself because those faceless little people kept getting up and trying again.
Despite my childish ruminations, what Mr. DeMille said is true. It is only our human hubris that tempts us to try and break the law, and by "law," I'm talking specifically about the universal truths that are true whether or not anyone accepts or rejects them. Gravity, for instance. The Law of the Harvest. The rules that govern joy and happiness. God.
While breaking the law of gravity has never worked for anyone (and most of us have learned to work with it rather than fight against it), we still attempt to break plenty of other laws. We do this because we don't actually know what they are, in most instances. In other instances, we know it, but we don't accept it. It doesn't fit into our wishes, our perception of how the world should be instead of what it truly is. Like toddlers having a fit, we try to smash the monolith of truth with our little fists, begging it to become flexible so we can have our own way. If the fist smashing doesn't teach us the lesson, we start full-body slamming it, hoping that somehow our puny desires can somehow conquer this immovable, unbreakable obstacle so we can step over its rubble to what we think we want and deserve.
And then we wonder why we hurt so much.
I often bash myself against these monoliths, flopping around in a hissy fit of self-pity and childish desires. Fortunately, the older I get, the quicker I learn to stop it. I am also starting to figure out exactly what some of those truths really are so I can quit running into them time and again. After all, you can't work with a law unless you understand it first. Perhaps that is what the purpose of this life really is: being able to calmly read the labels of those monolithic truths, accept them for what they are, and use them to further enhance our lives. This is what brings true joy and happiness. Is it inconceivable that even the physical properties of the universe can be understood by strict adherence to the ten commandments found in Exodus? (That's a real question I ask myself, by the way, not a rhetorical question I think I already have the answer to.)
Anyway, these thoughts didn't have anything to do with the Sunday School lesson, which was about the early church and the sacrifices the early saints made for the missionary effort. We have a great teacher, so my thoughts didn't stray very much, but I'll probably always have that image of monoliths and people stuck in my head. I hope I do, so the next time I realize I'm bashing myself black and blue I can have a quiet giggle at my silliness.
Testing the strength of a monolith in a field, three humans and a dog decide to forego bashing themselves to pieces against it.
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