Three people named Paździora are listed as prisoners in Auschwitz.

Antoni Paździora (prisoner number: 1247), Franciszek Paździora (prisoner number: E-6820), and Leopold Paździora (prisoner number: 39232).

Antoni is listed in the Memorial Book as murdered in Auschwitz on 22 March, 1942.

Leopold was liberated in 1945 and died in 1974.

There’s no record of what happened to Franciszek.

Leopold was one of the clerks who worked on the Stärkebuch:

“The Daily Count Book was written by the prisoners who were poets as well.… the writers recorded the total number of prisoners in this file. All the fugitives, or prisoners who were deceased, transferred, or released in a particular day were mentioned in it individually including basic information about each of them.”

Another prisoner who worked on the Stärkebuch remembered:

Schreibstube served to keep prisoners’ records and to prepare various reports for the superior authorities, which had been later sent to (RSHA). For instance at the beginning the number of prisoners (Lagerstärke) was written down 3 times a day, later, only once a day. (…)

My daily occupation was, among other things, to write down the figures on a board located in the Schreibstube. The figures concerned the amount of currently residing prisoners including their category (nationality, type of crime). The number of women was marked separately. (…)

Due to the fact that I was the author of the reports (Rapportschreiber) (from 1944) I had quite a lot of possibilities to move around the camp and its premises. The job was very stressful, we had to be vigilant all the time in order to avoid getting into somebody’s black books. The assembly arrangement required the most difficult. In a situation when one of the block clerks made a mistake when specifying the number of prisoners in his block, everyone had to bear the consequences – the assembly dragged on.

Erwin Olszówka (no. 1141)

There was also Fr. Augustine Paździora, parish priest of Końska–Trzyniec, who was arrested in a crackdown on Polish intelligentsia and died in 1940 in KL Gusen I concentration camp. If I’m reading it right, he earned a spot in the list of martyrs of the Catholic Church.

My family history on my Polish side is sketchy, so I don’t know for sure how we’re related, or even if we’re related, aside from having the same uncommon last name.

But there’s something in my heart that’s touched more deeply than I can say by the thought that I share at least a name

with a martyr priest who was killed as a threat to the Reich,

with a man who did the work of recording the names and stories of the people around him in prison,

a clerk who knew that the names were worth writing.

A prisoner who was also a poet.

Remember.

#NeverForget #NeverAgain

This note was first published 27 January 2017 on my Facebook page in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It was updated in 2020 with newly available information and photos of Antoni and Leopold. It is still incomplete.

If you have any information on Paździora family history, I’d love to hear from you. Contact me!

Page Image Source

I. Lines Found Scrawled on the Wall of an Abandoned Abecedarium

Abe, he see the effigy,
Age-eyed, shaky elemental peak—
You are rusty, you veer,
Double your ex-wife’s sea.

II. Trial Triol

I shot a man in Reno;
I shot the sheriff.
I fought the law
Just to watch him die!
But I did not shoot the deputy
And the law won.

III. From Tennyson’s Wastebasket

believed to be a fragment of an abandoned epic, “Idylls of the Holy Grail.”
(For K.N.)

But in return the peasant Dennis spake:
“Strange women that in ponds do lie and wait
With swords, distributing to passing men,
No basis is for system’d government,
But is a farcical aquatic rite.”
In wrath did Arthur grow, and loud proclaimed,
“Shut up! Shut up!” “Ah, now in sooth we see,
The violence inherent in the system!
Help, Help! For verily I am repressed!”

Pi

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and helped make the performance into a resounding success!

Special thanks to all my marvelous musicians:

Joann Martinson, soprano
Jessica Johnson, mezzo-soprano
Anna Baker, violin
Venus Wing Yi Mark, flute
Rae-Yao Lee, viola
Roman Placzek, cello
Emily Damrel, bass
Graham Dart, clarinet
Thomas Weaver, percussion
Dr. Mark Engebretson, conductor

And an extra-special shout out to Jane Yolen for her amazing poetry!

A few years back I published what has turned out to be one of my more popular articles: The True Meaning of Christmas Trees: The Spiritual Abuse Connection. It’s a series of reflections inspired by seeing some well-intended but irate Christians quoting Old Testament scriptures, most commonly Jeremiah 10, to argue that Christmas trees are evil pagan idols.

Here’s what Jeremiah 10:1-5 says:

Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. ² This is what the Lord says:
“Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though the nations are terrified by them.
³ For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest,
and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
⁴ They adorn it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails
so it will not totter.
⁵ Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field,
their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried
because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them;
they can do no harm
nor can they do any good.”

Does that sound like a Christmas tree to you? If so, does that prove that our Christmas trees today are pagan idols? In my earlier article I took for granted that it didn’t, going straight for the application (and you maybe should read that first, or at least right after this one). After all, in this translation, it’s talking about being “shaped with his chisel,” which doesn’t happen to Christmas trees.

But that led to some pushback in the comments when a person with the handle “NoRocketScience” was not convinced of my interpretation. The result was a lively dialogue that got us to look more closely at the scriptural text itself. What we found was quite interesting. Here’s a lightly edited version of our discussion — the reader’s comments in offset quotes, my responses in the main text.

Look Jeremiah 10 is really simple. Let’s start with verse 2: it says to be not dismayed by the “signs in the heavens” which refers to the winter solstice. Then it describes the cutting down of a tree. Look at it:

“For one cutteth a tree out of the forest, THE WORK OF THE HANDS OF THE WORKMAN WITH THE AXE.”
To me this is describing the man who chopped down the tree with an axe and not some chiseling into the tree. Where did chisel come from? Modern translations added that word to the text. If you look at older translations of the Bible they unanimously translate it as “axe.” There is no chisel in older translations of the Bible. Modern translations try to hide the real meaning of this verse. They are deceiving you.

“They deck it with silver and with gold”
This is another way of saying,”They decorate the tree”

“They fasten it with nails and with hammers that it move not”
Why would an idol need to be fastened as it could be made to be steadied on its own?

I could be wrong, though. if I am, then be critical of where I am wrong. Thanks for your time.

Hi NoRocketScience,

Thanks for your comment. There is more about Jeremiah 10 to consider, however. I think “winter solstice” is a poor reading for “signs in the heavens,” but even if we interpreted it that way, notice that the message is “Do not be dismayed” about it. The winter solstice is just the way God created the earth to move, nothing to be alarmed about or to think of as inherently pagan or evil. Also, the original Hebrew in verse 2 doesn’t mention an axe or a chisel; the word literally translated would be “a cutting.” (By extension, presumably, any tool that you use for cutting.)

Jeremiah was describing the idol-worship of “the nations” (v. 2) around him at the time (think Ancient Near East c. 600 BC). If you look at pictures of idols from the time Jeremiah was writing — Here are some on Google — you’ll see that they were obviously made in several steps. First a tree was cut down, then a sculptor carved the wood into the shape of the idol, then a goldsmith plated it with gold, and so on. That’s the process Jeremiah was describing, not using trees as seasonal decorations.

Notice that some of the other descriptions Jeremiah gives don’t fit Christmas trees at all — for instance, “They must be carried, Because they cannot walk!” (v. 5). Idols were carried around in processions to be worshiped; Jeremiah points out that this shows they weren’t powerful enough to walk on their own. This makes no sense as a point against Christmas trees; who tries to make them walk?

Even if it was the case that Jeremiah was describing something like Christmas trees, though, look specifically at the conclusion that he draws about it: “Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” (v. 5) He’s not saying “Avoid anything that could possibly fit this description, because it’s evil,” but “Don’t be afraid of them. They’re not harmful; they’re neutral objects.” That’s the point I make in my article on Christmas trees. Just because pagans may have wrongly worshiped something God made doesn’t turn it evil; as God told Peter in Acts 10:15, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

I hope that explains a bit more why I’m critical! Thanks for taking the time to write.

Thanks Eric but I’m only partly convinced. I still have questions.
(1) Is there any possibility that “workman” could ever be translated as “lumberjack” or “woodcutter?”
(2) Doesn’t the phrase “the work of the hands of the workman” merely refer to the swinging of the axe?

A quick glance at the dictionary shows that the Hebrew word there is “charash,” which is defined as “a craftsman, carpenter, smith, or engraver.” That is, someone who takes raw material and shapes it into an object. In context, this would be the person who carves the wood, not the one who cuts down the tree. Thus “work of the hands of the workman” in this case is carving the wood into an idol. Christmas trees aren’t carved. Also, nobody worships them.

And again, notice in v.5 that even if this was referring to Christmas trees (which is not supported by the context), the conclusion Jeremiah gives is not “Anything matching any part of this description is evil!” but “Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.”

Thanks Eric, I really do appreciate your input. I honestly want to believe you and be beyond certain that Jeremiah is not talking about Christmas trees. I finally got the part of the workman being a craftsman. I see your point about verse 5 but from the start of Jeremiah, God did say,”Learn not the way of the heathen.” Does this mean we can’t decorate trees as pagans do? What exactly is the way of the heathen? Is it using things that pagans may have used? Or is there something more to it? By the way are Christmas Trees, Asherah poles? Thanks for your time.

You’re welcome!

The answer is that we need to look at the context. “Learn not the way of the heathen…” correlates in this passage with two other negative commandments: “…and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them” (v.2) and “be not afraid of them [idols], for they cannot do evil.” (v.5) The “way of the heathen,” then, is to be dismayed and fearful about things God made, thinking that inanimate objects are evil. Heathenism is a very fear-centered mentality, the dismaying belief that if you don’t acknowledge all the false gods and evil spirits they might get you. There’s some huge irony here: The anti-Christmas-tree doctrine requires us to see trees and seasons as intrinsically evil pagan spiritual objects that we should be afraid of and dismayed about, but that view of them is itself the heathen way of looking at the world, not the Christian one. The way of the heathen is to see the tree as a god; the way of the Christian is to see that God made the tree.

Asherah poles were idols made specifically to be worshiped as a fertility goddess. Nobody worships Christmas trees.

Um Eric, sorry to bother you again, there is a website that says that “to connect the “THEY” from verse 5 to the “IT” in verse 4 would violate the grammatical context.” I met one particular site that says to connect verse 5 to verses 3 and 4, is incorrect. Is there any merit to this? Is there any evidence that Jeremiah is changing the topic after verse 4? Why do almost all older translations say “IT” with respect to 3 and 4 whereas verse 5 says “THEY?” Does that mean that verse 3 and 4 are talking about one thing and verse 5 another? What is your take on this. Thanks again.

No bother! Admittedly I’m not much of an authority on Hebrew, but my understanding is that their pronouns function quite differently from English ones. So my guess is that that site’s reading is, best-case scenario, superimposing English grammar on the original text. (If any actual Hebraists are reading this, feel free to chime in….)

In any event, to say “Jeremiah is changing the topic” seems like a big stretch to me. What else could he be talking about in context but the futility of idols? Notice that the opening of verse 5, “They are upright as the palm tree” (or “like a scarecrow in a cucumber patch”) is a direct callback to verse 3, “He cuts a tree from the forest.” I’d take that as a good indication that Jeremiah is still on the same subject. If “they” refers to anything else, then in context it would have to be the idolaters (cf. “they deck it with silver,” v. 4). I suppose someone could make that case, but that would make some extremely odd points out of the rest of the verse, such as “they must be carried” and “neither is it in them to do evil.” If we’re talking about idols that makes a lot of sense; if we’re talking about idol-worshipers, not so much.

Either way, though, the subject wouldn’t change — the topic, namely, that idols are powerless neutral objects, nothing for those who trust God to be afraid of.

Thanks Eric, one more thing: Would God ever do something that violates His principles? Anti-Christmas Christians will use that fact that since God decorates His trees during the winter with ice crystals and snowflakes, it is not not sinful when He does it but it is a sin when humans do it. In other words, the anti-Christmas Christians may say that it is okay for God to decorate His trees but sinful for humans to to so, therefore, Christians should not place objects on trees. Then the anti-Christmas Christian will claim absolute victory over me 🙁

Has anybody actually used that argument?! That’s a terrible argument.

In Scripture, “the law” is summed up in two commandments: love God and love your neighbor (see Romans 13:10, Galatians 5:14, etc.). Obviously it would be very unloving of me to kill my neighbor, for instance, since (unlike God) I’m not the one with authority over my neighbor’s life and death. And lying would betray my neighbor’s trust, and so on and so on.

Maybe in a certain context I’d need to avoid exercising my freedom (cf. Romans 14) to be more loving to my neighbor — if, say, my neighbors happened to be tree-worshiping Pagans who had never heard of Christmas trees, it wouldn’t be good to give them the wrong idea. But, as I said in my article, and as Jeremiah says too, to say that makes it always and completely evil is simply nonsense.

What is unloving toward God or my neighbor about making something beautiful in appreciation of God’s creation? Far from such a thing being condemned as sinful, the Bible says “God… richly gives us all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Nowhere does Scripture say that making decorations is inherently a sin. Quite the contrary — read Exodus 35 thru 37 for an account of ministers who were specifically commanded and anointed by God to make decorations out of wood and gold for His tabernacle. Likewise, in our culture, seeing a decorated pine tree will certainly remind many people of the fact that Christ was born for us. That’s why we call it a Christmas tree, after all, not “Piney the Pine God.”

The anti-Christmas crusader I spoke with, used that argument. I wonder if placing birdhouses, flower baskets and bird feeders are also a sin but such would be seen as decorating a tree. Exactly what constitutes tree decorating is the placement of foreign objects on a tree and since birdhouses are “foreign objects” that are “placed on a tree, they must be sinful too. By the same logic, we cannot hang swings on trees because it would be a case of placing a foreign object on trees, isn’t that so? Eric thanks for the help, will talk to you later 🙂

For further reading:

The True Meaning of Christmas Trees: The Spiritual Abuse Connection

Is Christmas Pagan? Putting the “Bug” Back in “Humbug”

Edited by my brother John, who has a freshly-minted PhD in literature from St Andrews, and his colleague Defne Çizakça, the book is a collection of literary criticism and literary specimens on the subject of original fairy tales, the kinds of stories you find in the writings of Hans Christian Andersen, George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and Tifli.  Not a bad list of names to be on.

My contribution is a lyrical story that plays with several fairy-tale themes and motifs that I’ll leave for you (or some of the many scholars who also contributed chapters) to work out. It has a princess or two, a king and a queen, a mysterious stranger, and a couple of poems. I’m extremely pleased with it.

To order the book from Amazon, visit http://tinyurl.com/NewFairyTales. Here’s a flyer with a picture of the cover:

(See? There’s my pen name right there, “and others”!)

If you like fairy tales and fantasy and other writing-related things, you should also check out my brother’s blog, and his literary ‘zine Unsettling Wonder, where you might also hear about a new book of poems from the incomparable Jane Yolen.

And if you want to read my other published piece of fiction, also a fairy tale, it’s here: The White Bird.

For those who may have found this while looking my story up on Google, welcome, and check out some of my music. You might like my Grimm percussion solo The Juniper Tree.

If you get why this is, you’re officially a music nerd.

It might seem unlikely for a composer-slash-armchair-theologian to say his favorite writer was a movie critic. I can’t help it; he was just that good. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, the first movie critic to do so, and achieved fame sparring with Gene Siskel on PBS. But his writing style kept right on improving after he lost his voice to thyroid cancer. His posts on his blog and twitter were little masterpieces. Ebert’s best writing combines a novelist’s revelry in the joy of language with a journalist’s economy and precision. You could feel his enthusiasm and interest whatever the subject — good movies, bad movies, politics, childhood memories, travel, his beloved wife Chaz.

On that note, I haven’t seen anyone else share my favorite story yet, so here it is: A reader once wrote in to chide him for commenting that Indian actress Aishwarya Rai was the most beautiful woman in the world, saying that surely Roger should have been savvy enough to give that honorific to Mrs. Ebert. Roger replied, “The question was about women, not goddesses.”

Of course the internet is overflowing with tributes already; more notable people than me have given their approbation, right up to and including his fellow Chicagoan the President of the United States. (My brother wrote a blog post, too, I should mention.) Even so, I feel like somehow I ought to give a personal note. Ebert’s writings meant more to me than just the pleasure of good prose.

I can’t tell a story about meeting him; that never happened, partly due to my idiotic and everlastingly regrettable decision that I was too busy to go hear him give a lecture that one time. (On making low-budget movies with a Mac. At the Chicago Apple Store, a mile from my dorm. Kick me.) I only really interacted with him once: He wrote a blog about traveling, and I commented with a relevant quote from Chesterton — “They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.” He replied with a relevant quote from Shakespeare — “Ay, there’s the rub.” Made my day.

Still, like so many others, I felt a truly personal connection through his words. I first found Ebert’s writing when I was a student at an Evangelical college in Chicago. Chicago, of course, was the home of Ebert’s beloved Sun-Times, where he worked from the newspaper industry’s heyday to its sunset days. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, was perhaps not the best venue for someone to develop an appreciation for film, or many of the other arts for that matter.

You know the kind of thing I mean: “Christian” movie reviews often judge a film’s merit by the number of swear words it doesn’t have, or by obsessively identifying whether it has a “Christian worldview,” which you tell by spotting all the catchphrases you remember from church. In the other corner, the watchword was, “Christians need to engage the culture!” What that means, I gathered, is you form a mental picture of yourself showing up with a pamphlet in front of this amorphous mass labeled “The Culture,” to which you have no connection whatsoever, and saying, “Excuse me, have you heard the good news about Flannery O’Connor?”

That’s beside the point, of course, but the point is that it is beside the point. From my immersion in this banal culture-wars posturing, Ebert’s reviews weren’t just a breath of fresh air, they were almost a revelation. Here was somebody who loved good movies because they were good movies, and hated bad movies because they were bad movies, enjoyed the very acts of loving and hating them. His dictum was, “It’s not what a movie is about; it’s how it is about it.” I picked this up mostly through osmosis, though this quote puts it quite well:

If you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may be.

Of course, he famously gave bad films no quarter, gleefully awarding a merciless “thumbs down” to any offenders. He was often at his most quotable when he was at his most critical, and published enjoyable books just of his one-star reviews. Sometimes the best part of watching an unimpressive new movie was realizing that it was just the sort of thing Ebert would have hated, and scrambling to the computer afterwards to find his review on his website. He rarely disappointed. I’ve seen lots of posthumous lists popping up of “Ebert’s 20 best movie putdowns” and such — oh, heck, I can’t resist including my own favorite:

This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

But it’s a mistake to think of him as the kind of critic who delighted only in criticizing. He also delighted in delighting. Here again was something to shake my complacency: I could complain at any length about music I disliked or ideas I disagreed with, but to see something positive described in a way that made me want to like it too, that made me realize my deficiency. Not content to tie his film writing to the schedule of latest studio releases, Ebert began a series of columns (and later books) appreciating the “Great Movies.” In the introduction to the first volume, he wrote:

Movies have been made for 100 years, in color and black and white, in sound and silence, in wide-screen and the classic frame, in English and every other language. To limit yourself to popular hits and recent years is like being Ferris Bueller but staying home all day.

I believe we are born with our minds open to wonderful experiences, and only slowly learn to limit ourselves to narrow tastes. We are taught to lose our curiosity by the bludgeon-blows of mass marketing, which brainwash us to see “hits,” and discourage exploration.

This is how I think about art now, not just the movies but music and literature and painting and all the rest. Of course there’s a difference between good movies and bad, but the difference has little to do with anyone’s pious attempts at moral judgments. The difference is whether it somehow becomes one of those “wonderful experiences.” We’ll only find that out by trying it, by keeping our childlike curiosity and enthusiasm.

But sometimes, when our sense of wonder is dulled and jaded by market-deadened consumerism or self-righteous platitudes, we need someone to show us what appreciation really looks like. Roger Ebert did that for me. He wasn’t the only one, of course, but there won’t be another one like him.

The last line of his final public statement was, “I’ll see you at the movies.” Thumbs up.

——

Links:

My brother’s tribute on The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond

Ebert’s own collection of his favorite zingers: In the Meadow We Can Pan a Snowman

The full list of Great Movies.

A lyrical blog post on loneliness.

Tweetable writing advice:

The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her. Start alone.

— Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) March 25, 2011

And finally, a famously negative review of a film Ebert hated, hated, hated…

Legalism. It’s one of those nasty words that everybody points to as an example of religion gone wrong. Everybody knows that you shouldn’t be a legalist. Everybody knows that legalism is unbiblical. Everybody would be affronted if you called them a legalist.

Unfortunately, “everybody” by definition includes all the legalists. All the most legalistic people I’ve ever known assure me that they’re not legalists, and that legalism is wrong, and that they know they’re not saved by works, and that you must misunderstand them if you think they’re legalists.

So who are the legalists, then? The bogeymen? Anyone whose view of religion is more than 5% stricter than the person talking? Those are lousy definitions. We need something better. If legalism is so bad, and most of the people who practice it are not even aware of it, how can we avoid it? How can we diagnose ourselves to see whether we’re legalists? How can we be free if we are?

I’ve got an idea. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Roman Road. It’s a list of verses, popular in Bible-believing™ circles, that succinctly describes the Gospel message as found in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. If you can get past the kitschy name and the fact that it’s a bunch of verses taken out of context, and if you are willing to read the whole epistle to find Paul’s more in-depth explorations of the themes, it’s actually a pretty handy summary. It saves you having to read the whole epistle aloud, for one thing.

What the epistle to the Romans is to salvation by grace, the epistle to the Galatians is to freedom from legalism. I still remember the first time I read it and got the full impact of what Paul was saying. Galatians taught me three things: Legalism is not what God wants, I can be totally free from legalism, and oh yeah, up until now I was a legalist myself and didn’t even know it. This changed everything.

Writing about everything I saw that day and afterward in Galatians—the devastating logic, the exposition of Scripture, the grace and the peace, even a bad pun or two—would fill a book. But perhaps I can show you some of the paving stones along the Galatian Road. I hear Gaul is lovely this time of year.

Background

Before we start, I should probably clarify terms. My attempt at defining “legalism,” based on what I used to think and what Galatians describes, is a simple formula: “To follow God, you have to do X, because that’s in God’s Law. Otherwise, you won’t be righteous.”

It doesn’t make much difference what X is. It could be something healthy like abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, or meat. It could be something bizarre like self-flagellation, snake-handling, or picketing funerals. It could even be something pious like prayer, fasting, and daily quiet times with the Bible. Whatever value X takes—and it’s been given hundreds throughout religious history—it centers your relationship with God on a law that you need to keep. (Hence the name legalism, obviously enough.) It’s not just for salvation but for the rest of your spiritual life.

For some teachers in the first-century church, “X” in the legalism formula was circumcision. A certain group of Jewish self-styled prophets taught that if you wanted to follow Jesus, you had to receive the sign of the Hebrew covenant—to wit, snippity-doo-dah—since it was in the Law.

It is in the Law of Moses, sure enough. But when Paul—himself a converted Jewish rabbi—heard that the teachers were teaching that to the church he’d planted in Galatia, he was verklempt and, to kvetch, he wrote the letter we have today.

Here are ten of my favorite lines. In order, they show the symptoms of legalism, its death, and the way out of it.

1. For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10).

Legalism goes hand in hand with Spiritual Abuse. So does authoritarianism. Spiritually abusive leaders try to get you to earn their favor. If you do the things they like, you win their approval. If you don’t, they manipulate or punish you until you do. (This is often because they believe God is the same way. He isn’t.)

But, as Jesus said, no one can serve two masters. Either you follow Christ, or you follow something else. If your primary concern in life is to make religious leaders happy, then your primary concern in life isn’t to make Jesus happy. Only one can come first. Man’s approval or God’s, but not both.

Paul couldn’t care less what the authoritarian religious leaders thought about him. To him, serving Christ meant one thing—preaching the message of salvation by God’s grace. Not a god who makes you earn His approval; a God who offers a way to be saved and to live apart from our works.

That message has never been particularly popular with religious leaders. But maybe their favor shouldn’t concern you. Maybe there’s a better way to find freedom and approval. Maybe somebody wants to love you unconditionally.

2. …By the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. (Galatians 2:16b)

As the saying goes, rules were made to be broken. The Law is fantastic for showing that we can’t keep the Law. Paul described this experience vividly in Romans 7—“I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’” Put a name to it, and you see you’re doing it. See a “Keep off the grass” sign, and you want to walk on the lawn.

Then what? Does the Law make us able to live better? Does our willpower make us able to keep the Law? Does the Law make us able to love, to forgive, to know God? Does the Law help us do justly, love mercy, walk humbly? In a word, can the Law justify us?

Nope. The Law is just a list of rules. Even a list of rules from God can’t do any more than show you whether you’ve kept them. And you haven’t. For us to live the way God wants, we need something else—Someone else.

3. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20)

This paradoxical—even mystical—statement expresses the mystery not just of salvation, but of life in Christ.

Jesus, the Son of God, loves me. He gave up His life for me. He was crucified for my sins.

I live by faith in Christ. That means that I completely identify with Him.

That means I gave up my life.

That means I don’t have to worry about living a holy life anymore. I’m not the one who’s doing the living.

Think on that one for a bit.

4. This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Galatians 3:2–3)

Even the strictest of legalists, at least ones familiar with Evangelical faith lingo, are quite clear on this point: Of course we’re not “saved by works”! We’re saved by faith! Paul knows this better than anyone, and here he treats it as a rhetorical question. Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the Law? Obviously not; the Holy Spirit is a gift of God to those who ask in faith (Luke 11:13, if you want it).

Does this suggest anything else? (Paul’s getting a bit testy by this point in the letter.) There’s a logical inference that legalism can keep you from seeing, but it’s really clear:

You were saved by faith, not by works. It was totally a work of God by the Spirit. It was not a work of your flesh, your strength, or your ability to keep the Law. All you did was give those up and trust in God. (This would be a great time to quote Ephesians 2:8–9.)

Since the beginning of your salvation depended totally on God, and had nothing whatever to do with works, what makes you think any other part of it has anything whatever to do with works?

Since you begin by trusting totally in God the Spirit, how can you think it makes sense to finish by trusting partly in You the Human?

Since you know you’re not saved by works, why do you think you have to live by works?

5. Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Galatians 3:6)

This begins a series of quotes from the Hebrew Bible that’s worth checking out in full. Paul makes a dazzling case that the Law itself says that the Law does not make you righteous. The nomos is antinomian. Legalism is illegal.

This particular quote comes from the Torah—Genesis 15:6—and it shows that, to God, Abraham was considered righteous simply because of faith. God made a promise to Abraham; Abraham believed God. As far as God was concerned, that made Abraham a righteous man. For Abraham, righteousness was a matter of faith, not works.

As Paul points out, Abraham came 430 years before Moses. Moses’ deliverance was part of God’s promise to Abraham, not the other way around. The Law of Moses was added to the mix because Abraham’s descendents didn’t see their need to have faith. If you could get righteousness and life through the Law, there would be no need for God to have promised righteousness and life through faith.

At least, that’s what the Law of Moses says.

6. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. (Galatians 3:24–25)

So is the Law useless? Of course not. As mentioned, the Law shows us that we break it. Therefore we’re not good enough to be righteous on our own. Therefore we need Someone else to make us righteous.

The Law takes us to the point where, as C. S. Lewis described it, we “throw up the sponge.” We realize by experience that, however hard and diligently and passionately we try, there’s no way in the world we can do what the Law requires us to do. We can’t do it. We’re not good enough. We may as well give up.

Since we can’t do it by the Law, we have to trust in God’s grace. That doesn’t mean the Law is insufficient; that’s the lesson the Law was meant to teach us in the first place. Once we learn that lesson, we’ve gotten everything the Law has to teach us. Once you get your education, you don’t need a tutor.

The word “justified” (which has come up before) could be described as the inverse of forgiveness. Forgiveness says, “Your sins are taken away.” Justification says “You are righteous.” It’s not just a pardon but a change of nature. Just as with Abraham, God sees that you trust in Him, and He considers you not just forgiven but righteous.

7. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians4:7)

Living under the Law is like slavery. By offering us salvation through faith, Jesus sets us free.

God doesn’t just take us out of slavery. He adopts us as sons and daughters. We don’t just have a Savior; we have a Father.

That means we are unconditionally and eternally loved. It means we have an inheritance of life. It means God loves us as much as He loves Jesus. Our life is no longer about avoiding sin; our life is about living in the fatherhood of God.

8. It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Why did Jesus set us free?

Easy: so that we would be free!

Well then, it would be a bit pointless for you to go back and live like a slave. A slave to legalism. A slave to authoritarian leaders. A slave to guilt. A slave to addiction. A slave to fear, to shame, to rules, to self-righteousness, to judgmentalism, to self-pity, to pride, to self-loathing, to body image, to self-abasement, to asceticism, to approval….

So many things want to put you in a yoke.

Legalism is just another slave-driver.

That’s not for you. You’re free.

Stand firm. Be free.

9. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16)

Legalists make a big deal about sin and the flesh. All the rules are in place so we can (theoretically) keep from sinning and succumbing to our sinful tendencies. Legalists often go so far as to teach against grace; they say things like “Some people say you can do anything you want to,” or “If you let them, people will walk all over God’s grace,” or other veiled threats of falling into sin if you abandon the slavery to rules.

Nobody’s saying grace means we should go off and live in sin, though you can find a full refutation in Romans 6 if you like. As we’ve seen, the rules of legalism can’t keep us from sinning anyway. In fact, legalism itself is just as much slavery to the flesh as licentiousness is. Legalism says you can depend on your flesh—your own willpower and effort—to keep from sinning in your flesh. Good luck with that.

This is the irony of grace. The rules against sin can’t keep us from sinning. By abandoning the rules against sin, we learn to trust in the Spirit of God—who can keep us from sinning. Once you stop trying to do it yourself, you can trust in the One who can do it for you. Once you stop trying to do what God wants, you become able to do what God wants.

That’s why it’s called “the fruit of the Spirit,” not “the result of being good.”

10. But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)

Here’s the summary of everything. Legalism—authoritarianism—spiritual abuse—keeping the Law—all of them are about pride. There’s a reason Paul correlates “not by works” with “so that no one can boast” in Ephesians 2. All of these are things that you think you can do to control yourself, or that people think they can do to control you. All of them are things you do to try to make you feel superior about yourself, or that other people do to try to make themselves feel superior about you.

Pride is a sin, so legalism is self-defeating.

The Cross is the symbol of humility, self-sacrifice, and love. It is the sign of death to sin, death to selfishness, and death to pride. It is the sign of death to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Jesus died because the Law wasn’t sufficient for us to be saved by or for us to live by. The Cross did what the Law couldn’t: it killed the sin of the world, and it killed the sin of me. We’re not just saved by the Cross; we live by the Cross.

I can’t be glad that I can keep the Law, because I can’t. But I can be glad that Jesus loved me and died for me so that I wouldn’t have to.

What’s the road out of legalism? It’s the One who said, “I am the Way.”