Divine Plagiarism

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell." - Jesus (as told by Matthew)

We think we can tame sin. We think that we can ascribe to it boundaries. ‘This far, and no farther,’ we tell our pet vices. And this line separates the good people from the bad. Trespass across that line, and the wrath of the society descends upon you. Not because you have gone in a different direction than anyone else, but because you have followed everyone else’s direction closer to its logical conclusion. Thus, we govern with the gallows. And we have done so since the fall. But the problem is not trespassing across the lines, but the lines themselves. We want to keep our dragons on a leash. But they never become tame. They are patient. And they grow. Some day, they will outgrow their chains. This is why nations fall.

A long time ago, we didn’t need to worry much about governing ourselves. ‘If men were angels…’ Well, once they were. In a manner of speaking. It didn’t last. So we find ourselves on this side of the fall. We are no longer angels. Soon we found that we could not have societies without laws. That the consequences of each man doing as he saw fit was disastrous. So there had to be a line, a critical point of sin. Sin could not be allowed to run its course, but we could not eliminate it. So we made the line of ‘manageable sin.’ Past this line, the society would fall. Whatever sin was inside of the line was considered allowable. Here we see the beginnings of law. And in this, we begin to make a mistake. Instead of seeing the line as a necessary evil, we being to see the line as the delineation between the good and the bad. Walk all the way up to the line, tiptoe to the ragged edge, you were good. Step beyond it, you became bad. We began to believe that we could be good. That the evil within us could be exterminated, not just managed. But we were neither willing nor able to part with sin. With our lines, we could have our cake and eat it too. We could call ourselves good, yet could still enjoy our private vices. In fact, we began to call our vices rights. We could walk the path of sin, but we would always stop short of the good/bad line. Well, usually. And when we took that one last step, (and couldn’t hide it) we found that the price of the maintenance of this line was the total destruction of those who stepped across the line. When you became ‘bad,’ you were entirely to blame for the consequences of the entire path of sin.

The problem is that these lines became somewhat arbitrary. When law was given by a Higher Power, it was inviolable. Outside the reach of human redistricting and jerrymandering. There was an anchor to keep the lines just. Over time, though, people forgot that the line was about controlling evil, and began to believe those who stayed within the lines were 'good.' And as 'good' people, they began to believe they could set the law where they saw fit. They felt comfortable doing what was right in their own eyes. So salients began to emerge, places where the 'good' people would rename license as rights to appropriate that which was not their own. Legal contructs became antrhopcentric and flexible. Depending on the society, certain sins were considered manageable and certain ones were not. But these lines were not static. Over time, the lines tended to push farther and farther, until at some point the society was not able to sustain itself. Grey fades to black. Generally, those with power drew the lines, and did so in their favor. Here began another problem: there are neither infinite resources nor infinite rights. And past a certain point, our license begins to steal the rights of others. And here we get both oppression and war. When one group started to push their lines into the territory of a much weaker group (the unborn, or West Africans, etc.,) the oppressing group generally renamed their license a right. This generally remained the case until the oppressed group found the means to resist. When a group began to move their lines into the territory of another group with the means to resist, they often found themselves at war. The more powerful group would generally define the lines in the aftermath. Until, of course, the tables turned and the losing group became more powerful (Holstein wars,) when the conflict would be revisited. Remember that mankind desires power above all else. Power wrote the lines, and a balance of terror maintained them. And power is arbitrary. Therefore, so were the lines.

Here is the problem expressed. We create a society where it is considered a right to murder the unborn for being inconvenient. So we tell someone born in an inner city that he can kill his own child for convenience’s sake, but he cannot kill a stranger driving through his neighborhood for the convenience of stealing his car. So the inner city resident must ask himself, if the value of the life of someone I am close to (my child) is less than the value of my convenience, how can it be that the value of a total stranger’s life is less than the greater convenience of having his car? And he would be right to ask this. All that man has done is draw a straight line where the lines of the law were crooked. He has smoothed the salient. It is not that he has done something different, only that he has taken the course of action we started with abortion to its logical conclusion in murder. The terribloe consequences of our vices are expressed through those who carry them out to their logical conclusions. These are generally the weakest, most vulnerable to the vices, or those farthest from the imposed constraints, those who live where rule of law has failed. Unfortunately, we cannot maintain our nominal good/bad split and still acknowledge the link between our vices and their consequences. Therefore, when he steps across the line from abortion to murder, the wrath of the entire society descends upon him, as much to maintain the fiction of the line as to punish him for his crime. We do not care so much about stopping murder. We care more about convincing ourselves that our murder is different, and somehow justifiable. We make him the scapegoat for our own sin. We act as if he has done something totally unthinkable and contrary to society, when in reality, he has just tiptoed one step too far on a line all of us were already traveling. We need to see ourselves as good, so those who cross the line become bad, become different. And here is the myth. The difference between him and us is nominal. He has just followed his sin closer to its logical conclusion. I am not questioning the construct of law, or advocating leniency on crime. Far from it. I am questioning the construct of the line. I am not saying that bad people are not really bad. I am saying all of us are bad people.

Consider someone who engages in sexual crimes. We live in a society that tolerates pornography and strip clubs. These things teach us that it is okay for us to make other people into objects for our pleasure. That our pleasure is more important than their dignity. What is the difference between this and a sexual crime? The act alone. The intention is the same. Or murder. To hate someone is to find their existence offensive, to wish that they had never been born. The only difference between this and actually ending the person’s existence is the act. The intent is identical. And in the difference between act and intent we convince ourselves of our own righteousness. But this is entirely false. We believe that our own inability to carry out our desires is counted as righteousness. We are wrong. We are simply ineffective in our evil desires. The fact that we are constrained by our own limitations is God’s mercy. Do not confuse this with any possible ’goodness’ on our part. We are simply not terribly good at being bad. And this is why societies can exist.

What is the difference between act and intent? Our legal system makes much of it. And this is a necessary distinction in a post-fall legal system. Intent cannot be punished on this side of eternity, because then there would be none who were innocent. But it is limitations and constraints, not some magical goodness that keeps intent from becoming act. First, there are practical limitations. Consider hate and murder. There is a good amount of logistics involved in actualizing that intent. Not to be macabre, but you would have to acquire a means, and protect yourself from your intended target’s means of defense. Perhaps this would convince us that it would not be worth the time, effort or danger. Death is the ultimate 'physics' check. If we could live forever, then even the most evil dreams could be brought to pass with enough patience. Second, there is the soft check of social conventions, the significance of the opinions of others. If we act in certain ways, others will disapprove of us, and perhaps will exclude us. Due to our desire to be accepted, we may constrain ourselves if we decide the benefits of our actions do not outweigh the costs to our social networks. Finally, there is the hard check of the law, of imposed penalties. In this check, physics and social checks are combined. Social conventions are armed with the power of death and pain, to be applied to transgressors. Fear of the gallows may arrest our evil desires, if nothing else will. Notice that each of these three layers have different (and progressively more restrictive) lines associated with them. (I.e. you may receive disdain for spreading rumors out of hate, but you will not merit the wrath of the law.) But the principle remains the same. These constraints hold us back. They are not built in, we have to create them. So there is nothing in us that is good. Only things that hold us back from being bad.

We are complex beings. We are a mix of potentiality and actuality. The important part of Aquinas to this discussion is the fact that we as complex beings can have both act and intent, and have them be different. God is a simple being. He simply is. There is no mix of act and intent in Him. Everything He desires He does to the highest degree logically possible. There are no constraints on Him. For Him to intend to do is for Him to do. There is no differentiation between act and intent for an infinite being, for there is nothing to constrain the desires of the Omnipotent. This spells death to the idea that we are good. If there were nothing to check us, no constraints on us, then our intent would be act. Every hateful thought would be murder, if there were nothing to stop us. If you could do it with a thought, if nobody would think less of you, if there were no consequences, then hate is exactly the same as murder. Then every sin would be followed to its logical conclusion. And this is why we are terrified of the prospect of omnipotence. Because if we could do whatever we wanted, we would make hell. Remember the book Sphere. We cannot handle omnipotence. We cannot leave behind our checks and constraints. Because somewhere deep down, we know what would happen. If we were to ascend to the throne of the Most High, we would create hell. There is nothing in us that is good. (To follow a rabbit trail, Terminator also touches a deep historical fear of ours… that the creation would rebel against its creator. This story scares us because we know it so well.)

Let’s return to the lines. The lines exist as a check on our evil. This is not to say that the lines are bad. The only post-fall governance that works is one of the gallows. We must remember that the law does not make us good, it only stops us from acting out our evil desires. If we continue to move the lines, to blur them, we will eventually move them past a critical level of sin. At that point, the society will no longer be able to maintain itself. In this is the rise and fall of societies. The dragons grow with time. They convince us they have been tamed. But thyey never forget who they are. The death that is a check on the individual then becomes the check ont he society, through its own choices. We invite our own destruction as we move the boundary stones. As we push these lines, as we blur them, we will surely reap the consequences. We construct the scales we are weighed on. We pronounce judgment upon ourselves, and we are our own executioner. Violence in the womb leads to violence in the streets. The dragon grows, and its bite becomes more dangerous. Its tantrums become more destructive. This is true for any sin we tolerate. It will not be tamed. So the lines must be made clearly, and they must not move.

Laws must have an origin beyond mere human sentiment, human interest, or even human necessity if they are to remain fixed. Only by remembering the Law-giver can the law stay true to its intent. Without Him, the law drifts into vice, and the dragons are let out of their cages and put on leashes. Only by keeping our eyes fixed on Him will we keep the lines of the law fixed. His law is merciful. It safeguards us from ourselves. The law is only half of the solution. The lines can only keep the dragon in check. A small and malnourished dragon is less of a threat, btu the law cannot kill it. Even if we legislate every sin away, sin will resurface somewhere else, and pride will destroy a civilization as surely as any other sin. The best that a perfect law can give us is a stalemate. When that perfect law was given, we could not keep it. We are the problem. Our evil hearts are the natural habitat for the dragons. We need to given new hearts. This is not an naswer we can find inside ourselves. Someone greater brought the law of death. It will take Someone greater to bring the law of life. (To be continued in Death and Rebirth...)