The Christian and law

"I have come to fulfill the law, not abolish it." "The truth will set you free." "Doing what the Law commands does not make anyone virtuous; a person only gets that way by belief in Jesus as the Prince."

These statements, as they stand, seem to contradict each other. How can we be free of law if the purpose of Jesus was to fulfill rather than abolish the law? The answer, once again, is that Christianity is a matter of attitude rather than activity. Paul, who in Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, says many times that the Law won't save you and that we become virtuous by faith (as I take it, by grace or God's gift), not by what we do, still is quite clear, even in those same letters, that the Christian does not do what is contrary to the Law, insofar as he is Christian; and disobedience to the Law is a sign that a person is not Christian.

The Law (the moral law, which can be found in the Ten Commandments), and any law, can be summed up in this: Do not deliberately do harm to yourself, or to anyone else. And this is fulfilled by any person who has an attitude of love for himself and everyone else--especially by one who has God's attitude of infinite respect for everyone and everything, including himself. Obviously, such a person would not be interested in harming himself, whether there were any law against it or not; and he would be equally unwilling to harm anyone else. The fact that if he chooses to harm anyone, he suffers eternally is not really relevant to him insofar as he has this attitude, because he is not interested in doing these acts in any case.

Now if the threat of punishment is what makes the law a law (because a desired act becomes a law, an obligation imposed on the members of a society, when it has this "or else" to motivate systematic behavior), then it follows that a person who wants a priori to do what the law commands is simultaneously a person who is free of the law as a law (because what makes it a law does not affect him), and obeys the law (because he does what the law commands). That is, he "obeys" the law only in a loose sense, because, though he does what the law commands, he does it because he wants to, not because he is commanded to.

Furthermore, the law--any law, again--affects a person only to the extent that the person is looking to his own advantage. The threat of punishment, which makes the law a law, means, "if you don't do what I say, you will suffer"; but if the person commanded does not care whether he suffers or not, how can the law motivate his behavior? This is one of the problems in dealing with Muslim terrorists who are willing to be tortured and to die in the name of their jihad, convinced that they will go straight to heaven if this happens. Nothing you can threaten them with has any effect on what they do. They are free of all human law, because they think they are obeying a direct command from God.

Can true Christians be compared to such people? Certainly there are many who call themselves Christians who act this way: we call them "fanatics," and I think, correctly. They share with those who have the Christian attitude the fact that laws and their sanctions have no motivating force for them; but they are very different from what I consider true Christians, because of their willingness to disobey human laws (and even the moral law as it applies to "ordinary" mortals in such minor details as killing people with the bombs you plant) on the grounds that God's will contradicts the human law.

But "I came to fulfill the law, not abolish it." And "You are to have the same attitude that was in Prince Jesus, who, when he possessed God's form did not think being equal to God was something he had to keep hold of; he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, and turned himself into what was just the same as a human being; and once he found himself in human form, he lowered himself so far as to submit obediently to death, and death on a cross."

The Christian attitude is to submit obediently; it is a willingness to obey human laws, not a desire to disobey them in the name of some Divine call. Those who disobey laws in God's name consider the laws evil and obedience sinful; they see the laws as bad, and the actions of disobedience and terrorism as "righting wrongs"; and this supposed "divine call" is the opposite of God's point of view. God is not interested in righting wrongs, or there is no God--because if that were the case, the wrongs would not be there in the first place. And, one might say, the last thing God would be interested in would be in "righting" the wrongs by doing something inhuman--even if not as inhuman as the wrongs themselves. No, once again, the fanatic who hears a divine call to disobey is generally the person who projects upon God his own point of view, and is not interested in seeing things from God's point of view.

I hasten to add that there are times when Christians will disobey laws. If a law were to be passed commanding a doctor to perform abortions, the doctor would have to disobey the law; because you can't deliberately choose to kill people. The generals and officials in Germany, if they knew what they were doing, would have had to disobey the orders to kill the Jews. I would have to disobey orders to teach people to use contraceptives, should such orders ever be given. And so on. The moral law never loses its force; and since it forms the basis on which any human law expects to be obeyed, really, then human laws cannot contradict it and must be disobeyed if they do--and those who know that the laws are immoral or unjust must try to change them; and in exteme cases, where the tyranny is widespread, this can sometimes mean defending the people against their own government by revolution.

But this, while legitimate, is the human side of the Christian attitude, not the divine one. It occurs when there is clear knowledge that the law is immoral and unjust and destructive of the society; in cases of doubt, the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the people in authority, who presumably have more information than you do, and who are to be presumed not to be evil schemers.

On the divine side of the Christian attitude, the interest is in doing what is expected, irrespective of one's own benefit. The Christian simply is not interested in his own benefit, and thus is immediately predisposed to be a good member of the society--because he already wants to do what is expected of him, for the sake of the other members, and does not really need the motivation of the threat of punishment. The "other-worldliness" of the Christian makes him a better citizen of this world, because the "other world" is the source of his attitude, not its locus. It is not that he cares about the other world and can't be bothered about this one; it is that he has the "other world's" infinite love and respect for this one, and what he doesn't care about is "how quickly he will make it to heaven" or in any sense how he will be better off if he obeys rather than disobeys.

The tendency of the Christian, then, when confronted with laws or commands or orders is (a) to see the orders as reasonable, irrespective of what benefit they are to him personally, and (b) to be ready to obey them out of respect for the authority and for the other members of the society. He does not repudiate reason and simply blindly obey; but he is willing to recognize that, though rulers can issue irrational orders, they generally speaking are trying to be reasonable, and usually act on consultation, and so have reasons for what they are doing; and since they have access to more information than I have, then if the order does not seem wise to me, this is more likely due to my ignorance than to theirs.

His general attitude is not to sit in judgment upon the orders he is given. He is not running the society, and is willing to do what the society expects of him; and so in this sense, the orders are not looked on by him as good or bad, wise or foolish; they just are, and they are expected, and so he does what he is told. He examines them when only when there is evidence that there is a contradiction between what he is commanded and what he knows he must do; that is, he does not go looking for such evidence, but when it is there, then, knowing that laws were not handed down by God through the "instrumental mouth" of the authority, he will not cooperate with immorality just because he is ordered to do so.

In this case, since he is not predisposed to find out whether what he is told to do is right or wrong, he might actually wind up doing something that is morally wrong. True. So what? He has no intention of deliberately doing wrong; there was no wrong that he could see in doing what he was told (however unwise the order might seem from certain points of view), and so he did it, without examining it carefully.

How terrible! you say. Not at all. All the moral obligation asks is that we be morally certain that the act we choose to do is not wrong, and all moral certainty means is that you have no evidence now that there is anything wrong with it, not that, if you dug and dug, you might not find some evidence. You don't have to be able to prove that the act you are contemplating is all right in order to be moral in choosing it; you just need a lack of any real reason to believe that there is anything wrong with it. And acting this way, we sometimes do what is wrong. So what?

God is not interested in our avoiding wrong acts; he is, so to speak, interested in our not making immoral choices. He is "interested" in this to the extent that a person who makes an immoral choice deliberately frustrates himself, and this frustration, if not erased in this life, carries over to eternal frustration. If a person wants to frustrate himself eternally, this is fine with God; but if he doesn't want to, then God will help him avoid the choice. But you can make a moral choice to do a morally wrong act if you have no reason to believe that the act is wrong. Many women, thinking that fetuses are no more human than cysts are, have abortions and are perfectly moral as they pull their babies apart limb from limb; and God is perfectly happy with this.

For those who are shocked at what I just said (though how you can be, if you have read this far, is interesting), I can only say that you are still looking at things in terms of good and bad, which is not the way God looks at them.

And to return to the point, the Christian, who has God's point of view, is not going to examine laws and orders to assure himself beforehand that there is nothing wrong to be found in them before he is willing to obey; his spontaneous tendency is to obey, and to want to obey; and if he has evidence that there is something wrong in obeying the law, his first tendency will be to doubt his own evidence and if there is any reasonable doubt, to give the benefit of the doubt to the authority, and to obey; and only if it is morally certain that obedience would involve doing wrong, only then will he disobey.

This is a very different attitude from the one we find in the world today. The tendency today is to question everything that the authority says, and to be predisposed toward disobedience on the slightest grounds that there might possibly be anything wrong or even unwise in the orders issued.

But of course, the nature of a command is such that it will always seem unwise from the point of view of the one who is to obey it; and the reason for this is simple: the command or law commands one of those acts which is not for the benefit of the one commanded--one of those cooperative acts which is for the benefit of the others in the society rather than the one commanded--which, of course, is why the threat of punishment is attached to the law, to motivate behavior precisely because it will not seem reasonable otherwise for the member to do what he is told. The action commanded, therefore, is an act that will precisely seem unreasonable from the point of view of the member; and hence if he sits in judgment upon the laws before he "gives his consent," then he is acting contrary to what being a member means. He will "obey" when the authority does what he (the member) thinks best; but authority exists precisely to command what will not seem best to the member; and so the member wants the authority to obey him, and this kind of "obedience" is the very opposite of obedience.

But the Christian, who is free from the command as a command, is also free from the attitude of sitting in judgment on the wisdom or foolishness of the command; and so his attitude makes him act more consistently with being a member of society than the person who is concerned about whether he should obey commands or not. The spirit of obedience is best maintained by those who, oddly enough, never "obey" in the strict sense at all; who never do what they are told because if they don't, they will suffer for it.

Once again the Christian paradox fits the Christian better into this world than the atheist, who, of course, is looking to his own interest if he is reasonable. And it is usually the case that the authority, having more information, is in fact commanding things which are to the long-term interests of the members; and so the Christian is more capable of acting for his own interest than the person who is so concerned for his interest that he questions every order he is given.

Let me mention here that Jesus seems to have been very careful to obey human laws and orders, even when unjust and even when they resulted in harm to himself. His behavior at the various stages of his trial is instructive. In the garden, he prayed for the cup to be taken from him, but that God's will be done; it was therefore apparently not inevitable that he be crucified, but depended on human choices, and God's will was that the human choices prevail; and they would in fact be to crucify him. When he was taken before Annas, he (rightly) said that evidence should be brought against him by others, and that this person had no authority to make him say anything--which won him a slap, at which he replied, "If I have said anything illegal, bring a charge against me for it; but if what I said was legal, why did you slap me?"

At the trial before the Sanhedrin, he kept silent (as was his right) until the High Priest commanded him in virtue of his authority to say whether he was or was not the Prince; and then (and only then) he answered unequivocally, that he was the Prince and "the Son of God" in the sense that he was God--which was the truth, but which he knew would make any devout Jew think he was blaspheming and deserved to die.

When Pilate questioned him, he answered his questions truthfully, and when Pilate seemed to be interested in pursuing his kingship, he gave him a chance to see that he was no threat to Rome and was in fact a king who should be obeyed; something that Pilate refused to accept. After that, Jesus refused to defend himself, though he could perhaps have answered the charges against him to Pilate's satisfaction.

He submitted, in other words, to the legal processes, in spite of the fact that human misinterpretation of him--and legitimate human misinterpretation ("They do not know what they are doing" was spoken by a Divine mouth, remember)--was bound to occur and to lead to his horrible death. In obeying God, he obeyed human institutions. He did not sit in judgment on the validity of the trial at night, question the right of the High Priest or Pilate to interrogate him, complain that he had been condemned by statements uttered at his trial by himself, and all the rest of the irregularities that a legal mind could have found with his condemnation; he submitted to a human institution which was operating in a human manner, and which in all likelihood was doing what the people involved considered the only reasonable and right thing ("Isn't it better for one man to die rather than to have the whole nation destroyed?"). What they did was a horrible crime; they killed their God; but they could not believe it was their God. They thought they were killing a man who claimed to be their God--a blasphemer; and God himself commanded them to kill blasphemers. And he submitted to the error, and was killed--and used the death to redeem us all.

And, since he told us to take up our own crosses and follow him, part of this, if my analysis above is correct, is that we too are to submit to authority, even when it tells us to do things that are not good for us, are not wise, and possibly even when it violates our rights. "It is a good thing not to stand up for your rights (which is what it is to be meek, in practice)," he said right at the beginning of his ministry.

So I take it that the spirit of Christianity is the spirit of obedience; and not obedience to the "holy spirit" in spite of "human law," but obedience to all authority ("Slaves, be obedient to your earthly masters, as if they were the Prince Himself")--saving only that we cannot repudiate the human attitude of never obeying when it is clearly evident that to do so would be morally wrong.