Divine Plagiarism

Ethicists talk a lot about the principle of ‘dirty hands.’ The principle of double effect and all that. It is a problem unique to a fallen world. The cords of death are wrapped around all things on this Earth. The life-giving oxygen we breathe ends up killing us, rusting our cells bit by bit over the course of a century. The taxes we pay go to as many ignoble causes as noble ones. Our labor is rarely pure, either. The farmer finances the landlord’s vices and predations with his rents. Farmers are not the only ones who have to pay the landlord. (Pilgrim’s Regress reference unintentional.)

The soldier picks up his weapon and heads off to war. He pays the landlord with his service. The professor picks up the approved textbook and teaches the core curriculum. Her words are her rent, the landlord gets his due. After all, it is hardly unexpected. The landlord owns the classroom, owns the weapons, and pays both the soldier and the professor. If they are going to work his land, he will certainly ask something in return. And here is the problem. It is his right to ask for recompense, but the recompense he asks for can be wrong.

We must ask ourselves: which is more deadly? The soldier who aims and fires his weapon in the course of duty, taking the life of his adversary, or the professor who teaches Nietzsche in the course of his philosophy survey class, introducing his students to the deadliest of drugs? To have your life snatched from you, or to have your soul stolen, either way you are dead. The soldier is directly and intentionally in a causal chain that leads to the death of another. Is he a murderer? The professor is just as directly and intentionally in a causal chain that leads to deception. Is he something worse? Our instincts tell us no. Let’s explore this.

Both the soldier and the professor serve in a fallen world. There is no place for weapons nor for Frederich Nietzsche’s philosophies in the New Jerusalem. This begs a pretty important question: is there a place for the soldier or the professor in the Heavenly City? Is there a perfected form of these professions? The answer in the latter case is the simpler one, clearly there will be learning and teaching in Heaven. In the former case, we must ask ourselves what it is that the soldier truly provides. The soldier’s purpose is no more to create war than the doctor’s purpose is to create incisions. Just as the doctor exists to create health, the soldier exists to create security. It just so happens that in a fallen world, that involves war, just as medicine has involved surgery ever since the curse. When the soldier sets aside the sword in the abolition of war, he will be no less a soldier than a doctor who has set aside the scalpel in the abolition of disease. For this reason, when the Scriptures say ‘the Lord is a warrior,’ it is said superficially. There is no verse that says ‘The Lord is a warrior (on this side of the fall, and only for a brief period of salvation history, and then He will stop being a warrior.)’ Long after the cross itself has turned to dust, the Lamb of God wears the scars from Calvary.

We are not yet granted license to practice our professions in perfection. We are still on this side of the fall, and there is still war and disease and false philosophy. Being in this world, there is no way to escape the taint of these things. But we still must manage to be not of this world. Stealing a page from Thomas Aquinas, let’s look to intentionality. Consider prostitution. There is no conception of a prostitute that does not involve intentional and willful sin. The very essence of the act is a betrayal of the laws of God. For this reason, Jesus and Luke both look upon women engaged in that horrific profession with compassion, but they instruct quite directly to go and change their line of work.

Now consider the scholar. Tremendous evil has been perpetrated in the name of academia and under the guise of scholarship in the course of human history. In the name of Peter Singer’s so-called ethics, much blood has been shed, and much blood will be doubtless continue to be shed. Or consider Comrade Gonzalo in Peru. It would be exceedingly difficult to keep you tenure at Professor Guzman’s university in Peru if you were teaching anything other than his virulent Sendero Luminoso philosophy. Peru reaped the bitter fruits of those ideas for the better part of two decades. We can hardly neglect to mention that it was the teachers of the Law and the scribes that orchestrated the crucifixion of Christ. So clearly, the scholar’s profession can be used for corrupt, terrible ends. This does not invalidate his profession. There is no condemnation of his profession by Christ, only condemnation of its abuses. The scholar’s pure intention is to provide knowledge of Truth. When his profession is used for less than that intended end, the results are catastrophic.

Our soldier’s pure intention is not death. He brings about death in the process of providing security, just as the doctor brings about wounds in the process of providing health. So his case is quite different from the scholar: in the process of the soldier doing his work, he must allow the consequences of systemic sin to manifest themselves. The philosophy professor may have to teach Nietzsche, but the physics professor does not. The soldier pursues death to bring about security when he goes to war. But the capacity for abuse is quite similar. Tremendous cruelty has been unleashed upon humanity under the reign of military dictatorships. Without the Panzers of the Wehrmacht, there would have been no Holocaust. Without the red-robed centurions of the Roman Legions, there would have been no crucifixion. When abused, the military has a tremendous capacity for destruction. Yet, neither John the Baptist, Christ, nor Paul, when asked directly about military service, provide any sort of prohibition. John tells soldiers to be content with their pay, and to use their power responsibly. He does not tell them to desert. He exhorts them to honorable conduct in the performance of their duties. So, clearly, there must be some conception of military service that is honorable in the eyes of Scripture. The abuses of the military profession invalidate it no more than academia’s abuses invalidate the profession of the scholar.

The question does not end here, though. If these professions have such a catastrophic capacity for abuse, then the Godly practitioners of these professions must have a way to safeguard themselves from the perversions of their callings. They must have a line. It is one thing to teach a core philosophy curriculum which requires teachers to explain the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre. It is quite a different thing when the core curriculum mandates that all faculty denounce any Christian philosophies. This would not be unheard of. Just ask any professor at MGU (Moscow State University) with more that 15 years of tenure. It is one thing for an OB-GYN to explain all the options to a mother with an unplanned pregnancy. It is quite a different thing when her hospital demands that she procure an abortion for her patient if she already has one child. Neither would this be unheard of. It is one thing to order a solider to strike high-value target in close proximity to civilians. It is quite a different thing to ask that soldier to attack those civilians. If we are to work the landlord’s fields, we must decide how much rent is too much.

There is a story about some Armenian soldiers in the Legions of Rome. I will not attempt to retell the story of the Thundering Legion, for my retelling would hardly do them justice. They had a line, though. Serving honorably under Marcus Aurelius, they carried out their duties with distinction. Note that those duties were basically invading and subduing free German lands. Nonetheless, they gained a reputation for bravery and honor. But a law was passed mandating that all soldiers worship the Emperor. This was their line. So, to a man, the Thundering Legion was martyred on the frozen surface of a lake.

We are never exempted from the consequences of our actions. There is little nobility in the college student raging against the machine with his placard while skipping class. It costs him very little to do so. Who knows, he might even end up with a few phone numbers of socially conscious girls. Not a bad exchange for missing a few hours of lectures. Rarely are the consequences of defying the landlord wrapped in so much vainglory. It may cost us our reputation, our jobs or our lives. Christians defied Roman law by not worshipping the Emperors, but they experienced the consequences in martyrdoms. They gave to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and in doing so, they overcame Caesar. The church lives on. Rome does not. They were vindicated by God.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Paul tells us that we should give what is due to the governing authorities, because they are placed there by God. Honor, taxes, or respect, as long as it does not contradict the laws of God. Taxes to the Caesars funded oppression and crucifixions. My taxes fund abortions. Yet I am not exempted from paying them, even though I believe with all my heart that abortions are directly against the will of God. After all, as a Jewish carpenter under the domination of Rome, Jesus paid taxes into the temple coffers and the Roman treasury that were later used to unjustly crucify Him. He who knew all things certainly knew what He came to do and how it would be financed, and He did not exempt Himself. If He did not, then we certainly have no right to claim that license.

This is not at all to say that we should not work to restructure institutions. But we would do well to retain a measure of humility as we do so. The Old Testament provided models for governance, and the intent is certainly still valid, but we need to understand that it was addressed to God’s Chosen People living in one nation set apart. It tells them how to live and manage their own affairs. It doesn’t tell them how to change Persia. Yet, when those Chosen People lived in Persia, they influenced it like salt and light, by their examples and their integrity. Joseph did not lecture Pharaoh on good governance. He just lived good governance where he was placed, and in doing so reshaped the governance of the country. Certainly there is a time and place for Hadassah, and she was used mightily by God. But we must remember that she risked her life for her hearing. How many of our complaints involve that degree of commitment? So where are we? We are not the nation of Israel. Neither are we the kingdom of Persia. We are the Church. We are somewhere between nation builders and exiles.

Systems interact. The actions of the soldier, Godly or not, will affect the doctor and the scholar. The scholar will affect the other two, as will the doctor. All of our actions are woven in threads of causality around each other. Given the brokenness of this world, many professions will find their interests opposed to each other. The actions the soldier performs in the execution of his duty will likely be found distasteful by many a scholar, just as the philosophies advocated by scholars will be distasteful to many a soldier. The factory worker and the factory owner will find themselves at odds, simply by virtue of what they do. There are legitimately broken issues that come about in a broken world that set us against each other. Philemon and Onesimus surely understood this, as did Paul. The glory of Christ was not in the elimination of those differences, for that will not be done on this side of the fall. Rather, the glory of His reconciliation was in fellowship in spite of those differences.

We are a church. Bricklayers and City Administrators have legitimate differences, they have real and significant issues between them. Yet Paul addresses his epistles to both of them, living together in unity. Through the power of Christ, these men were brothers. Onesimus and his master Philemon, divided by social injustice, were united in Christ. What allowed these men to love each other despite their differences? Humility. Humility is the parent of all love. Pride teaches us to pursue the good by fixing everyone else. Humility teaches us to look first to the plank in our own eye. If the scholar, the soldier and the doctor want to fight the sin inherent in this fallen world, the place they all should start is with themselves. The sin inside us is the sin we are most capable of affecting, it is the sin we are most responsible for. Once our own sin is undone, then let us speak to our brother about his sin. Knowing something about myself, I’m guessing it will take me quite some time before I’m in a position to lecture anyone else.

Humility will guide us both to righteousness and unity. Really, they are both the same. The more we are remade into the righteous image of Christ, the more we are at peace with each other. Pride always leads to disunity. As we lecture others about their problems, we blind ourselves to our own. We all live and work in a world of structural sin. Certainly there is more than enough brokenness to go around. But just as certainly, there is enough brokenness in ourselves to consume our time. The glory of the Church is unity. Scholars and bricklayers called each other brothers. I do not imagine that scholars were denouncing bricklayers nor telling them how to lay brick. Neither do I imagine that bricklayers were denouncing scholars and telling them how to do mathematics. They both had enough grace to let each other serve where they were placed, provided they weren’t doing anything that flew in the face of Scripture. Perhaps we should go and do likewise. Let us be salt and light where we are placed, and worry a little less about where others are placed.