Look around you now, wherever you are. Take notice of the straight, vertical lines all around you. Have you ever noticed them before – the legs on the table, the straight line of the corners in your room, the lines in the tile, the sides of a picture frame? They’re everywhere! Take a drive down the road and see them there too. The street lights, traffic signs and buildings, all standing straight and tall, like an army at attention. Why are there so many perpendicular lines?
And it’s not just the man-made objects, notice the trees, as well. Even on hillsides, they strain upward, very nearly vertical, despite their tilted foundation. Why is this? A dendrologist (one who studies trees) would tell you that it is gravitropism that causes the trees to grow this way, an ability in the tree’s cells to sense the center of gravity. But this only explains how they grow that way, not why. Why are the trees straight, and why do we prefer our structures at right angles to the earth? The very idea of “straight” or “plumb” and its counterpart, “level” are quite amazing, when one considers that we live on a giant, round ball.
You may answer that the particular center of gravity we enjoy on this sphere of ours dictates our linear preferences. And surely there are physical benefits to why things are the way they are – a tree is strongest when it stands upright, for leaning shifts its center, and the slouching trunk is pulled inexorably downward. In the same way, a structure built square and plumb will be inherently more sound than the one that slants. But I think we take too much for granted with this response. Even such functional reasons as these rely on the concept of “goodness”, and that is certainly not part and parcel of a random existence. No, these lines are saying something. They are saying something about our God – He is “upright.”
The concept of moral uprightness, as in moral rectitude, has been around for ages. It flows from the same instinct we have regarding our structures. Just as there is an invisible center of gravity that defines our understanding of straight in the physical realm, so there is an invisible God who defines what it means to be upright in the moral realm. Made in His likeness we feel the pull of that center even as we violate its inward sway. We understand there is a “plumb” and “level” in relation to morality, and the basic laws of society all around the world are like these straight lines we see around us. They testify to our God.
When we say of someone, “you’re right”, we’re not saying they’re the opposite of left, we’re saying we think their position, answer or action is true, it corresponds to the idea of plumb, a perfect right-angle to what is level, only in a moral sense. This is where the idea of “righteousness” comes from, that quality or character of being defined by “rightness.” We can see it in the negative as well. We say of a morally deficient person, he or she is “crooked”, “bent”, or “not right.”
Though we bear a likeness to our Creator in this regard, we also feel the bentness of our fallen father, Adam. Just as it is amazing that we should have the concept of straight and level, living on a sphere, so it is equally amazing that we should understand what righteousness is, having this bentness in our nature. But there it is, as a war within us, a constant conflict. We’re a walking contradiction and feel the weight of condemnation.
But there was One, a child born of a woman, yet born without the seed of man so that He might truly be called our brother, without the crookedness of our father. He would “increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52) In Him, the lines of divine righteousness would be seen with unblemished accuracy. He alone would one day say, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” (John 14:7) The invisible God of eternal uprightness could now be seen with human eyes.
Perhaps at the time of His birth, in the some Judaean forest, a sapling broke through the earth and reached up along an unseen line. Year after year it climbed upward, yielding to that invisible plumb line. It grew in stature, straight and tall, until its girth and height prepared it for its lethal destiny. Hewn down, and planed to accent its straightness, it was dragged along the rocky streets of Jerusalem, and dropped into a hole atop a skull shaped hill. A wooden pole at a right angle to the earth, another line testifying to our upright God.
And there on that hill the uprightness of the God who “had passed over the sins that were previously committed”, was justified, as the weight of His infinite wrath was laid upon that Man, whose uprightness was so complete, that even as His body hung limp, His soul was as straight as an arrow. The one whose word had formed the straightness of that tree, now hung upon it, straighter still. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent upon a pole, so the Son of Man was “lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15)
Look around you now, wherever you are. Let the preponderance of all those perpendicular lines
