I attended a seminar this week designed to teach me more about responding to
people who have been traumatized. During the presentation a video was shown
that featured children under the age of one watching three bear puppets. The
puppets portrayed a story in which one puppet was trying to open the lid of
the box in order to retrieve a ball but was struggling. Another puppet then
comes over to help and together they start to lift the lid. Unexpectedly, a
third puppet who has been watching the affair jumps on top of the lid and
slams it shut, so startling the first bear that he falls backwards. Sometime
later the children are presented with an opportunity to receive either the
helpful puppet or the mean puppet and with startling frequency (over 85% of
the time) the children desired the helpful puppet. This was even true of two
month old babies who couldn’t point but instead intently stared at the kind
puppet and looked away from the mean puppet. In another scene the babies
watched the three puppets only this time two of the puppets behaved badly,
with one slamming the lid down and one opening the lid and stealing the
ball! When the babies were once again faced with the choice of which puppet
they wanted (the brat or the thief…..), the majority by far chose the
brat. The researchers commented that these babies had an innate sense of
degrees of right and wrong and therefore saw stealing as worse than just
plain mean behavior. The whole point of the research was to see if babies
knew right from wrong long before they had ever been taught it. The
researcher’s concluded, “We are born with a basic sense of justice.”
God’s word says:
” 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the
Law will be judged by the Law; 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of
the Law will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law,
these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their
thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, 16 on the day when, according to my
gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
Long before our puppet researchers arrived on the scene, God told us that we
have a law (that He wrote) on our hearts that teaches us right from wrong,
so much so that our conscience will bear witness regarding our behaviors. As
the researchers continued to make their comments, they headed down the path
of using the idea of evolution to explain how this “programming” of a basic
sense of justice came about and in so doing they displayed either their
ignorance of God’s word or their disbelief of it.
One day we will all have to give an account to God of the deeds done in the
body and none of us will be able to stand before God and profess ignorance
when it comes to what is right and wrong. God will be the perfect judge
because He alone knows what has been written on our hearts because He did
the writing.
May we be found to be those who lived lives as “helpful puppets”, having
done what was right because we longed to glorify Jesus.
For Him,
Rob
P.S.