MOST OF US in the West understand law as no more than a method of keeping order in society. Nobody can deny the glee inherent to finding a way to do something wrong while staying on the right side of the law. The lip-service that Isaiah decried is quoted by Christ as he called his followers to go beyond the letter and to find the purpose of the law.
Adhering to the law can make a good citizen of a person but a good citizen can be a very twisted citizen as well. Regulations from without cannot establish regulation within a person if the passions that can destroy us are not regulated from within. If greed, envy, addiction and anger have a hold on us there is little left to commend us, although we might still walk on the right side of the law. Sadly, it is true that every human being succumbs to these passions at some stage of life or other. Sometimes for a short period and sometimes more prolonged. The great heresy of our age is that we have ceased to believe in redemption. When the failures of a person in the past deny them a voice in the present we have reached a very low point in our evolution. Believing that people cannot learn and change is the most damning view of humanity that is possible. It would appear from the constant bickering debates about social and political policies that most of us think like that.
But maybe that’s not fair! If I believe that stimulus is right and you believe in austerity, but you also know that I stole £50 from my employer in 1992, then you can use my 20-year-old crime as a way to silence my opinion. That does not mean that you believe that I am a thief. It is more likely that you have found an Achilles heel that you might use to censor my voice. Correctly employed, the loophole can become the focus of the discussion and the debate is lost beneath a surge of distractions.
And Jesus wept!
Honest self-appraisal is difficult in a culture of politically correct affirmation and a bonus culture. Our ancestors ate of the tree of knowledge and learned to do wrong; Cain shirked responsibility, Lamech justified his crimes so Moses gave the law to curb the excesses of human wrongdoing. These early laws were framed as prohibitions as these were the easiest to define and enforce. As human knowledge and understanding grew we began to look beyond the law to find its true purpose. By the time of Christ, humanity was ready to hear and understand the possibility of law as a choice to live a good life transcending the simple formulas of the rulers, but a lack of mercy and forgiveness hampered that growth. Christ endlessly preached mercy and forgiveness to raise people above the very things that prevented their growth, although they perceived them as wisdom.
Merciless and unforgiving ears have closed themselves to change – some deny that the climate is changing even though they pluck rosehips in April and apples in November – as it is at every other level, it is not denial; it is refusal to hear something that does not suit. This is the censorship typical of the age of Cain and Lamech. It is the censorship proper to a primitive society that we should have transcended 2,000 years ago but resist that growth for short-term gains. Those of us who class ourselves as followers of Christ and bear his name should certainly have transcended the mark of Cain by now. – FERGAL MacEOINÍN