One of my favorite quotes deals with pigsties and rotten apples, and the idea that you cannot legislate morality. So many times we want to force people to change.
Certainly we might be able to clean things up a bit… clean up some violence on the streets, enact new laws that force people to behave, tell people that what they are doing is wrong. But the problem is that if you don’t change the heart, the violence will return, the people will only “behave” when they think someone is watching, and they will never agree that what they are doing is wrong. Here’s the great quote –
“Clean up a pigsty and if the creatures in it still have pig-minds and pig-desires, soon it will be the same old pigsty again. Preach the gospel…preach to the hearts of men. That‘s your business. Then the fruits, including the reforms in other areas, will follow as fruits. But it’s no good tying apples onto a tree. Soon they’ll be rotting apples.”
How very true. Tying apples onto a pine tree doesn’t change the nature of the tree. It might vaguely “look like” an apple tree for a moment, but we’d know it was just a facade. Next year it’ll produce pine pollen, pine cones, and pine needle, but never apples. So the idea is that instead of worrying so much about new laws and legislation and cleaning up the pigsty, we should focus on helping our family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers to be changed from the inside. Instead of trying to force change externally which is a momentary fix, our efforts should be to help people change internally, which cleans up a person for a lifetime.
The idea is explored a bit more fully in the conversation below which ends with a powerful statement:
“You know, David, we’re out to win people, not war with them.” Miss Alice’s view was that we had an infinitely larger task than trying to end moonshine stills and stilling. We were to create an atmosphere in which men’s hearts could be changed so that they would want a better way of life than “stillin’” represented.
Like so many of us, David did not agree with this…”what’s wrong with preaching the gospel and cleaning up the pigsty at the same time? Why should I put on blinders to walk by the pigsty? Besides, I don’t agree that if I preach and do nothing else, men’s hearts are automatically going to be changed and then they’re automatically going to want to do the right thing….Not by a long shot!”
“The question at issue, David, is how to get rid of the evil in men. Attacking corruption in the environment won’t do it. That’s like cutting weeds in a field. In a few days the weeds will be grown again. And attacking the men themselves won’t work either. Whatever separates men from love can’t be of God.”
“Then,” David said, “if that’s the technique, why aren’t people changed more drastically by today’s preaching?”
“Could be because we don’t often have the courage to give the good news to people straight. Most of us are still talking religious theory that we haven‘t begun living; and talking in wornout clichés at that. A watered-down message is as futile as applying rose water to a cancer. When your heart is ablaze with the love of God, when you love other people–especially the rip-snorting sinners–so much that you dare to tell them about Jesus with no apologies, then never fear, there will be results. One of two things will happen. Either there’ll be persecutions, or the fire will leap from your heart to catch and blaze in the depths of other men’s beings. I‘ve watched the process over and over. And then when the blaze starts; the reforms will follow as surely as the flower follows the bud, or the fruit comes after the blossom on the tree.”
“It’s too slow a way.”
“No, David, it isn’t too slow a way. The other is no way at all.”
I agree. The other is no way at all!
(Quotes from the book “Christy” by Catherine Marshall)