Slaves to the Law

One of the lectionary texts for this last week was Romans 6, one of the instances where Paul talks about being a slave to the law and a slave to sin. He contrasts this slavery with an enslavement to God. What I find unfortunate is that we as a society continue to operate as slaves to the law. This can be seen I think in our obsession with lawyers and everything legal. As a society we fall back time and time again to what it says in the rules, rather than seeking the spirit of the law, or to follow a sense of what is right.

Now I can undersatnd there are some challenges in simply asking people to follow what is right, since unless it is defined, say in the laws, what is right remains highly relative and so largely unenforcable. Buti think what I really object to i the fact that we as a society need enforcement. What we lack is trust. Paul encourages people to be slaves to obedience, which he says leads to righteousness. I think he wants us to trust each other and to trust God. What we do not need is additional rules and bylaws to govern how we operate, what we need is a willingness to trust in one another in order to get things done.

Here is I think a good ancedote of what I am talking about. Unfortunately my facts for it are a little bit blurry because some of the information is second hand and I have not been able to independently varify it. From what I understand, a pastor was recently fired from a church for inappropriate use of the Internet but was reinstated after he sued citing the fact that there was no formal policy at the church governing Internet conduct. Now I can understand the desire on the part of a pastor, or anyone really to want to be clear about the expectations they are being held accountable to. But I think there also needs to be some respect for the fact that if a church, or really any employer wants to let a person go, that is their right. The pastor in this instances needs to trust the church, that if what has been done is so terrible to them, policy or no policy, it is time for a separation.

I am not pushing for everyone to vote Bob Barr and get the Libretarians into office, or anything extreme like that. I recognize the need for laws to help in governing a society. However I think Paul reminds us that laws simply lead to penalities and punishment. There are few if any laws on the books designed to reward people for good behavior; laws are meant to restrict bad behavior. On the contrary, trust does reward good behavior and there is much that can be achieved outside the law to reward those who help society.

In the end I just wish people took the Rule of Christ to heart and worked to resolve things individually or in a small group, stopping problems and resolving issues long before they seek legal recourse for their actions. I feel that if we could trust each other, and the government more, than our society would be a lot better off than if we enacted thousands of more laws and hired thousands more police officers to enforce them.