What I Learned From Chaos
[Note: This is my entry for our current What I Learned From... group writing project. This month's topic is "the Law". If you'd like to participate, just go here and read all about it!]
Last week I mentioned our trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil. For two weeks we traveled all over that incredible city, but I gotta say, if I had to pick one thing that absolutely amazed me the most – it was the traffic!
Try to picture the scene with me…
Everyday Chaos
We’re at a downtown intersection in the heart of Sao Paulo. (For simplicity, let’s imagine one road goes north-south; the other goes east-west.) The streets are wide – 6 lanes (3 in each direction) – so there’s lots of room. Next to that on either side are broad sidewalks, crowded with a teeming mass of humanity.
Now, in the north-south direction, the traffic light turns red. On one side, three cars pull up to the white line, each in their own lane, while the same happens on the opposite side. East-west traffic and pedestrians flow back and forth in front of them. So far, so good.
Then, a car squeezes in between two of the three cars on our side and lines up too. Now there’re four abreast. Ditto on the opposite side of the intersection. Yet another one pulls up, making it five abreast – but this time, he’s on the sidewalk! (Pedestrians seem to take this in stride.) A few heartbeats later, one or two more pull up to the left of the original three, lined up - believe it or not – in the oncoming traffic lanes!
This process kept building until, just before the light changed, there were two unbroken line of cars in a dramatic face-off on either side of the intersection. It was a surreal, urban gun carslingers, wild-west kind of scene. As the drivers waited for the signal, lead feet poised over their gas pedals, I could almost hear the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly playing in the background.
The moment the light turned green, it was like the flag at the Indianapolis 500; every single driver did their level best to squeeze back into the original three lanes! I’ll never know how they avoided leaving a mangled mess of cars and total gridlock at every single intersection in town.
And the traffic chaos wasn’t limited to just intersections, either. As we went from place to place (we had interpreters with us who were often our drivers as well), it wasn’t unusual for other cars, if they had room, to squeeze between lanes of traffic.
Needless to say, it was disconcerting at best to be that close to other vehicles while zinging through traffic – especially with the buses! (I lost count of the times I could have easily written my name in the dust on the side of a bus next to us – we were that close!)
It got to the point when I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I just had to say something to our driver. My mind raced through several possible comments, rejecting them all because they might be, well, insulting. Finally, I tried this one: “Nobody seems to stay in their lanes,” I observed as diplomatically as I could.
He glanced over at me for a moment and chuckled. “That’s true,” he acknowledged ruefully. “A few years ago, the city government painted all these pretty dashed lines in the road to mark out traffic lanes. Unfortunately, they never told anyone what they meant!”
Laws, Laws Everywhere
[Note from the Proprietor: Please bear with me as I pontificate a bit; I'm taking advantage of my own guidelines to be as eloquent as I like. I promise there's a point in here somewhere. Now, where did I put that pesky thing...?]
Y’know; everywhere you look there are laws, laws, and more laws. Some are fundamental, like the Law of Gravity (that’s the one that states that everything that starts up, eventually falls – like my chest. *sigh*) or the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it just takes the day off every now and then to lie on the couch with a beer and the remote).
But let’s talk a bit about man-made laws; laws that help us coexist together at some level below, well, chaos. These laws, generally speaking, were put into place (at least, nominally) to help us to live together in harmony. Don’t do this; do that – the list goes on and on.
The aforementioned traffic intersection is a great example of what happens when there are no specific laws that cover a particular situation. Eventually, all you’ll end up with is chaos – and believe me, it ain’t pretty!
But can laws by themselves really make people better? Can making it illegal, for instance, to drive on the sidewalk, or drink and drive, or stealing from their next door neighbor, actually prevent people from doing it anyway?
Interesting question, don’t you think? The answer, of course, is a resounding no (sound of resounding NO). Nope; what keeps people from doing these is the threat of punishment. (And before you jump up and shout, “But what about doing it, not because we have to, but because it’s right?” – well, we’ll get to that in a minute.)
See, the law, in and of itself, is not capable of changing us. All it can do is teach us how to be better (I use better in the figurative sense. I’ll be the first to acknowledge there may be – no, are – some stupid laws. But that’s a critter of a different persuasion.)
“Well, Doctor Bob,” you may be asking yourself about now, “then what’s the point of the law?”
To which I say in all seriousness, “Bubba, you just asked the right question!”
The Law as a Schoolteacher
Now, before we go any further, consider this quote from the Apostle Paul…
The Law controlled us and kept us under its power until the time came when we would have faith. In fact, the Law was our teacher. It was supposed to teach us until we had faith and were acceptable to God. But once a person has learned to have faith, there is no more need to have the Law as a teacher. (Galatians, 3:23-26)
So what’s he talking about? Well, as a matter of fact, he’s talking about the Law of Moses, the set of rules, life instructions, and commentary that had guided every living Jew for thousands of years. The Law, as Paul pointed out, acted like a teacher. The Law taught people how to live.
But then he goes on to say something very interesting. Once a person developed faith (in this case, he’s talking about faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, but the principle applies to our discussion here), then the Law was no longer needed. Why? Because faith made it unnecessary.
It’s a Matter of Faith
Now, you may be wondering, “Just how on this little green Earth could faith make the law unnecessary?” Hey, I so glad you asked! (And by the way, here’s that point I said was comin’.) See, the fundamental difference between living by the law and living by faith is the matter of where it resides: Figuratively speaking, the law lives in the mind, but faith – ah, faith lives in the heart.
Stop and think about it for a minute (sound of millions of grinding gears). Can the mind control the heart? (It’s OK, you don’t have to answer out loud.) Well, I’d have to go with “no” on that one. Ah, but can the heart control the mind? Most definitely!
The result? Well, instead of obeying laws because we’re afraid of punishment (or other negative consequences, such as 50-car pileups in intersections), we obey them because we believe it’s the right thing to do. We believe they’ll make things better – for everyone, including us! (And on a side note: our attitude towards the law reveals an awful lot about ourselves don’cha think?)
See? It’s a matter of the heart, not the mind.
So when it comes to the law, I’d say the most important thing I’ve ever learned from it is that adherence to the law isn’t some mindless act. No, it’s an expression of my heart’s decision to do the right thing.
And when you get right down to it, that’s a matter of faith.
(last image: Hearts and Minds, by Mad Paul)
24 responses so far
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My father always said, “Play cards with someone and in one night you will know their character and how they think.” Card games reflect, essentially, a set of “laws” and the play demonstrates a person’s willingness to comply and accept the consequences of those laws/rules. So, yes, one’s attitude toward laws reveals much – for example, speed laws that are mostly ignored (no fear of punishment?), except by those folks who cannot afford to get one more ticket (great fear of punishment?). Since a key function of Congress is to write laws, what does it tell us about “our” attitude toward law when the writers of laws are held in such low esteem?
Interesting your choice of traffic in Sao Paulo as an example of chaos. They do it everyday, every hour. It may appear chaotic, but in fact they follow a set of rules that results in few accidents and the traffic moves. My choice would have been the generations of illiterate people in Sao Paulo living under bridges and inside the cloverleafs, but on reflection, that too seems to go on and on operating under some form of organization and “laws” – just not the formal ones in Brazil, nor are they rules that you and I might recognize. I do wonder, since they have no separate courts, do those illiterate people live more by heart than by mind?
Howdy, Dick; welcome to the Zone, my friend!
Hey, sounds like your father was a pretty sharp cookie. Interesting, don’t you think, how many good metaphors for life we can find all around us? Kinda like it’s, you know, important?
That’s a really thought-provoking question there about our esteem of our lawmakers. Ouch!
The situation in Sao Paulo is an interesting one in that (at least back then) in lieu of laws, they used cultural norms to provide their frame of reference. Hence, to them, there was nothing wrong with what they did – it was acceptable behavior. And what’s more – it worked! Not a wreck in sight, whereas if that happened in the States, if would be news for weeks.
I think those poor you mentioned might fit the same category. We visited some of them during our stay (at the time there was an entire village living on the city dump), and I’ll tell you, the ones we met were the nicest folks imaginable.
This is good: “do these illiterate people live more by heart than by mind?” Maybe you have something there.
Any further thoughts?
I believe the difference in traffic equals the difference in the people form country to country. I remember picking up some Turkish emloyees and delivering them to their hotel in Holland. It was great to see their faces when i stopped for a red trafficlight when their was nobody else around. They just couldn’t believe that anyone would stop when there was no need to do so.
The funny part is that they where actually right but those rules are so pounded in to me that i just can’t ignore the red light. The point is that it doesn’t matter if there is chaos or rules, they both work and in both cases accidents do happen.
Howdy, Matthijs – Welcome to the Middle Zone!
Hmmm… conditioning. Yes, that’s what “law-abiding” sometimes feels like, doesn’t it? But that happens due to training via cultural norms. When it comes time for something to change, well, it’s very hard to buck those norms we grew up with.
That’s why it can’t be just a matter of the Law, but of our hearts, to do what is right.
(By the way, I used to live in Den Haag! One of these days, I’d like to get back and visit… *sigh*)
Bob,
Very well written and good point about head and heart. It’s funny about how much social conditioning plays a role in the relationship between the two. You often have to scrape away a lot of old ‘learnings’ to get to the heart of things.
Mike
Thanks, Mike. That’s a good choice of words, too – “scrape away”. It can be like that when it comes to making a change in “the way it’s always been done”.
Bob, if some of us didn’t bring a little control with our mind when our heart gets carried away, we’d be in big trouble. I can see each trying to find balance in my life. If either takes over, I can get into trouble. As I see it, faith needs to be very much in our minds as well as our hearts…
Y’know, Robyn, now that you say that, I’m glad you brought that up. I completely agree about the need for a balance in this, as in pretty much all of life. Obviously wasn’t too clear on that point.
Keep on keepin’ me straight! :-0
Hi, guess you are right about the conditioning part. BTW at a lot off taffic lights here they’ve got those camera’s giving you a ticket when running a red light.
Den Haag is nice, a couple off times a year i visit my GF’s family in Wassenaar nearby and go to the beach.
I live at the other end of the Netherlands in Enschede (which is just a 2 hours drive).
Matthijs, we have those in Houston, too. It’s particularly noticable at night, when the bright flash goes off every time someone gets “close enough” to trigger it.
I’d love to get back to Holland one day. The good news is my job may bring me there next year. Maybe we can get together for a cup of coffee or some genuine Gouda (but not both at the same time!)
See you in Holland!
I don’t know that thinking that the heart is some sort of a guide makes any sense any more.
The ancients may have thought that the heart was the seat of reason, that the brain was about as useful as eyebrows, but we know better.
Why go on and speak of the heart as anything more than a pump? Isn’t that like turning our backs on reason?
Mister Thorne – What an interesting outlook on life you appear to have! Unless I misunderstood?
“Why go on and speak of the heart as anything more than a pump? Isn’t that like turning our backs on reason?”
Now, obviously the “heart” I was talking about is that spiritual part of who we are. As far as I can tell, I wasn’t advocating the abandonment of reason. Faith is most definitely not the absence of reason!
But my question back to you is, why not acknowledge the spiritual part of us as the “heart” of who we are? And I don’t see why doing that eliminates reason. No, I think in reality it enhances reason.
Wow, Robert!
What a wonderful exposition on faith and the Law–and a hard WILF act to follow, to be sure! You are so right about faith: Once we’ve placed our faith in Christ, we “do by nature the things contained in the Law.” It’s definitely a “heart thing.” Another important point is that “the Law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient…” If everyone were righteous, we wouldn’t need laws.
Thanks for sharing those wonderful truths!
Jeanne
Thanks, Jeanne, and you’re right of course – the righteous don’t need laws to do what’s right. But it’s a tough thing to live up to just the same. *sigh*
Robert,
This is true!
Jeanne
[...] …Chaos, by Robert Hruzek at Middle Zone Musings [...]
“Figuratively speaking, the law lives in the mind, but faith – ah, faith lives in the heart.”
Faith — religious faith — is like belief; it’s like fear, hope, despair, and desire. The seat of these things isn’t the heart or the liver or the pancreas; it’s the nervous system.
Religious faith is an intellectual activity. Why make believe it’s not?
(I understand your name now, and the story is quite touching. And may I also say you’re quite a wonderful storyteller.)
Thorne, there’s no make believe to it. To me, religious faith is much more than just an intellectual activity because human beings are so much more than simply physical envelopes. There are, depending on how you look at it, at least two other aspects as well – emotional and spiritual. Why pretend the physical is all there is?
I was raised and educated as a mathematician, so I would never “pretend the physical is all there is.”
I don’t see how religious faith is anything more than an “intellectual activity.” It’s quite like mathematics in that regard.
It’s just something we think about. Absent thought, faith does not exist. It certainly has not much to do with our cardiovascular systems.
Methinks the imagery that we use to discuss spiritual matters (e.g., following our hearts, rather than our minds) betrays our doubts about them.
Thorne, I’m seeing a lot of contradictions here… but never mind that for now. What I’d really like to know is, if faith is only an “intellectual activity”, then what do you think love is? Do you consider it, too, just a matter of the intellect? If so, then I don’t mind telling you, I think you missed the boat.
Interesting statement about faith – I’ve never heard that one before. And it’s odd that you keep going back to the physical heart when it’s clearly the spiritual heart I’m talking about.
But what I find most fascinating is your last statement! Would you elaborate a little more on that and explain what you mean?
________________________________________
One last thing, Thorne; just out of curiosity, what, specifically, caused you to comment on this post? Not that I mind – far from it! I’m just wondering.
Robert:
Don’t confuse love with religious faith.
What good is that?
:Thorne
Well, Mister Thorne, I thought you were interested in having a conversation, but I’m afraid it’s not lookin’ that way to me. It’s been interesting, but it’s time to move on.
HOWEVER, if I’m misreading you (and I hope I am because I prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt!), I’m more than happy to continue – but only via email, since the Middle Zone isn’t really the venue for this type of thing. Drop me a line at rhruzek@sbcglobal.net and I’ll be happy to dialog with you further.
[...] …Chaos, by Robert Hruzek,l himself [...]