A few days ago as I drove down a Chicago side street that had cars parked on each side of the street, I saw a car with a yellow, Denver boot fastened to one of its wheels. A Denver boot is not footwear; it is a device for making it impossible to drive one’s car. The boot is attached to the car of a person who is a scofflaw, that is, someone who scoffs at parking laws.
I’ve seen a person walk up to his car, see a ticket, remove and read it, and then toss it on the ground and drive away. My research found that, in Chicago, the Denver boot is attached to the car of someone who has
- 3 or more unpaid parking, red-light camera, and/or automated speed-enforcement tickets that are in final determination status; or
- 2 unpaid tickets of those types that are more than one year old and in final determination status.
Eligible vehicles are subject to booting after an official notice and opportunity to pay or contest. So the boot is intended to force scofflaws—lawless parkers—to start honoring the law, to park legally, and to pay what they by law owe.
Of course, no one likes parking tickets, except the city treasurer and mayor, but it is the law. I am not on a crusade to champion parking laws, but this illustrates something important. This shows how the spirit of lawlessness comes home for each of us. When we do not want to follow a law, when a law is inconvenient or costly to follow, what do we do? Heed the law or ignore it? When we choose not to obey a law, for whatever reason, we walk in the spirit of lawlessness.
How we rationalize disobedience
What is a lawless person certain to do? Rationalize it. Again, using parking as an example we all can relate to, if a lawless person ignores parking laws, he tells himself, I’ll only be here for 15 minutes. But this attitude can express itself in relation to all God’s commands related to things such as sexual behavior, handling money and possessions, the content and tone of our words, the willingness to forgive those who hurt us, how we treat the poor, and so on.
How Eve rationalized disobeying God
The first human to rationalize breaking the law was Eve in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3). God had commanded, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” God had laid down the law.
But Eve had other ideas. Satan said to her:
“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1–5)
Now notice how Eve, feeling tempted, rationalized breaking God’s commandment in three ways:
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3:6)
Why God takes every sin seriously
How serious did God treat this seemingly minor infraction? With ultimate seriousness. For Adam and Eve had done far more than eat a piece of fruit; they had intentionally broken the command of the Holy One. The had chosen to ignore God. They had behaved lawlessly. That is what explains the cataclysm that followed for them and all humanity.
Although the three rationalizations of Eve had a measure of truth to them, it was wrong to make them an excuse not to do the most important thing, which was to obey God.
God rightfully takes his commands with infinite seriousness. That is why Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross, and why he alone is able to save us from the guilt of our lawlessness through faith in him. He is the only human ever to obey God’s law perfectly, and so his perfect righteousness made him the one person who could atone for our sins and save us from the guilt of lawless living.
None of us will obey God perfectly in this life, but we do not have to be lawless.
This article and theme probably sound foreign to your ears. That is not surprising, because we live in a culture characterized by the spirit of lawlessness, by a rejection and marginalizing of God’s commandments, by a denial that God has the authority to tell mankind how to live. Because we swim in a cultural ocean of lawlessness, it is especially important that we recognize it and understand it, lest we on the Last Day have a Denver boot placed not on our car but on our soul.
So, keep reading in the weeks ahead. Remember the words of the apostle Peter to his contemporaries that certainly apply to Western culture: “Save yourselves from this crooked generation” (Acts 2:40).