“But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the LORD; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Number 32:23).
That truth is stranger than fiction is something Robert Louis Stevenson would have heartily agreed with. In fact, his famous book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was actually based on the strange life of William Brodie, the son of a Scottish cabinetmaker. Brodie was elected to public office in 1781. He was known as a deacon of Edinburgh—about the equivalent of a member of the city council in most cities today. By day, Brodie was an upright and well-respected citizen—the Dr. Jekyll of Stevenson’s book. By night, however, he became a thief, gambler, and rascal of the first order—the Mr. Hyde, or the alter ego of Stevenson’s book.
Eventually his derelictions caught up with him, and what people found hard to believe was proven to be true. The image projected in public was the opposite of what it was under the darkness of night. So, eventually, Deacon Brodie was hanged on the very scaffold he had designed for the city of Edinburgh, and only a few meters from Deacon Brodie’s Pub at 421 Market, catty-cornered across the street from St. Gile’s. Deacon Brodie’s past caught up with him. He paid for his nightly escapades, giving Robert Louis Stevenson a ready-made plot to develop.
Long ago Moses wrote, “You may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). It may take a while, perhaps even a long while. Eventually though, the past catches up with you. A note, a handkerchief, a smudge on a glass, a fingerprint, a DNA printout, an automobile accident; suddenly the airtight alibi collapses.
Now, lest you be too hard on Deacon Brodie, who left his name to the eating establishment in Edinburgh, you probably need to reflect for a few moments on the image you project to others and the one which you know to reside deep within your heart. The two seldom square. True, you can’t be hanged as was Deacon Brodie for what you think, thank God, but there are times when the most righteous of men and women are really appalled at the thoughts which march out of the dark caves of their inner hearts.
Even Paul admitted to the problem: the one that eventually brought down Deacon Brodie. When he wrote to the Romans, he admitted, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
“For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18-19). Paul saw this as a battle between his old sinful nature and the renewed nature indwelt by the Spirit of God.
So, in frustration, Paul cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24 KJV). The good news—the kind that relieves your mind from thinking that God might treat you as did the citizens of Edinburgh treat Brodie when they found out what he had done—is that God’s indwelling Holy Spirit controls your thoughts and puts curbs to your actions.
Paul told the Corinthians: they could and should bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and when you do that, you find help in your thought life that Deacon Brodie never had.
A closing thought: While the world remembers its own for their finest achievements, it remembers God’s own for their greatest failures. Should there be something of Deacon Brodie’s spiritual schizophrenia in your life, better square it away with God and let Him know you want and need His help. It’s time to live the same kind of a life by day and by night. So then, you can meet God with a clear conscience, never having to look back over your shoulder.
Resource reading: Romans 7:1-8:1
