I am out of practice, so expect a somewhat stream-of-consciousness post today.
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Today I listened to a relatively short homily in which one point went like this (paraphrased from memory):
We cannot expect the city council to solve our problem, because our problem is sin, and Jesus is the only solution for that. We cannot put all our hopes in them or set them above God. Our problem will only be solved by conversion of hearts, and so that is where we have to look first.
None of this is false, and yet I went away troubled and unsatisfied by the homily. Part of the truth is, I think, missing from it.
Surely one reason I am unsatisfied is the lone reference to the “city council.” It is true that the city council cannot solve the problem of sin, but it’s also true that the words “city council” call to mind for those of us living now in the Twin Cities something quite specific. The Minneapolis City Council is in the process of dismantling the status quo ante of the police department, and everyone, whether they live in Minneapolis or not, seems to have an opinion about it. So I am left with a strong impression that the homilist meant that whatever we hope the city council might do, we ought to mostly focus our efforts not on influencing it, but on conversion of our own hearts regarding such things.
But maybe what was really meant was not to point just to city government, but to government in general. That would be a more expansive view, and so less incomplete. It isn’t just the city council who can’t solve the problem of sin. Traffic and parking can’t; the state legislature can’t. Federal judges cannot solve the problem of sin; getting the right president in office will not solve the problem of sin. Only conversion of heart will solve the problem of sin. Now, it is true that I do not remember ever being warned on the Sunday preceding the first Tuesday after November 1 that I should be careful not to trust in federal judges to solve our big problems. But I am as subject to cognitive bias as anyone else, and my memory might be faulty.
Anyway, all that is not wrong. We cannot set any level, any branch of government up as a substitute salvation that will solve the big problem. There is certainly a risk that we might. As the legend goes, progressive atheists want to set government up as a new idol, substitute central planning for morality. I am not sure there were very many of those listening to the homily. But the point is taken. Government is not the solution to the Big Problem.
And yet, even if we don’t fall for the idea that government can solve The Big Problem (sin, or if you like, selfish human nature), still we think government can be useful to solve, if not THE problem, then just A problem, here and there, from time to time. How do we work to get our government to solve A problem without accidentally making an idol of it? Without neglecting conversion of hearts?
If I look to the city council for help keeping, say, police officers, from, say, murdering unarmed Black residents, is that so wrong? Surely what we really need is for a bunch of hearts to be converted so that no one tries to murder anyone at all, but do we have to see many more people die while we try to convert them? And are we working on the correct set of hearts?
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I often think about the two great commandments, Love God and Love Your Neighbor. Probably I should think about their content, but I often think about their number. Why are there two? Jesus says that in those two are contained all the rest of the law. But at least superficially, one might think that they are also contained in each other. “Love God” should imply loving His creation, including the neighbors, no? And “Love your Neighbor” should imply the existence of a law of Love higher than ourselves, which must come from God, no? So why do we get both instead of one or the other?
Let’s suppose we only had been given one, and see if it gets us somewhere different.
1.
If the only greatest commandment were “Love God,” then we would at least know to love God more than neighbor. And that seems to go with other bits of scripture, like today’s, where Jesus says we ought not love parent, son, or daughter more than we love Him. But without “Love your neighbor,” how could we really be sure that our neighbors even exist as real people? What if they are illusions? What if I, and the voices in my head, are all that is? The voices in my head, or the desires in my heart, might themselves be God. I might try to love God only by obeying those voices, or only by obeying my desires.
But because “Love your neighbor” is also a great commandment, I have a way to test the voices in my head and the desires of my heart. If they tell me to hate, to harm, or to use my neighbor as a means to an end—anything impossible to square with loving the neighbor—then I know it isn’t God I am serving if I do what they tell me. I know the god to be a false one.
2.
And what if the only greatest commandment were “Love your neighbor as yourself?” Then I know I am always to will my neighbor’s good, yes, in the same way that I will my own good. But what is my good? What is my relationship with Good? Who am I? What am I? If I cannot understand myself and how I relate to Good, how do I will and enact good to others?
This is why I also need the commandment “Love God.” I am a creature, but not a thing. I need God and am to love God. And since I am to love my neighbors as myself, they are also creatures who are not things. I owe my love, because I owe myself, to God. And so I can also test my love of neighbor: if I attempt to will and enact the good of my neighbor in a way that violates my own right relationship as a child of God, with my own dignity and my own duties, I have chosen the wrong way.
Conclusion:
The two commandments interpret each other, test each other, and together they test all the others.
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The two together are, I think, the test of most moral questions, questions of right relationship— such as whether we have inadvertently set some useful tool up as an idol. Any tool, even a quite useful one, can be an idol if we attempt to obtain and wield it at all costs—in particular, if we are willing to violate the two great commandments.
Yes, even if we wish to use the tool (once we have it) to love God or to love (some) neighbors.
If you try to obtain the tool, or the power to use it, by denying or wounding or neglecting God—or by harming your neighbor, or using the neighbor as a means to get the tool—or by lying or deceit or cheating
—yes, even if you hope to use the tool to help someone later, or a great number of someones—
your tool is an idol. Even if it’s the city council; even if it’s a federal judge.
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But... if you haven’t set it up as an idol....
....your tool can be simply a tool.
There is nothing wrong with writing to my city council representative, or showing up to a public meeting, and telling her my opinion about how a future public safety department ought to be organized. There is nothing wrong with me writing that I will vote for her if she does one thing and against her if she does something else. There is nothing wrong with my voting. Nothing about any of that is inconsistent with loving God or my neighbor, as long as I form my opinion with an honest attempt to serve the common good, and to spend my vote and my words and my work to get the best outcome for that common good that I can get. And it doesn’t prevent me from hoping for conversion of hearts, or even working for conversion of hearts, in some other way.
Trying to make civil society better, fairer, safer, more just is not a risk of making it a substitute for God, unless you choose means that violate your relationship with God or your relationship with your neighbor. And there are usually means available to you that do not violate them.
There are also probably means available to you that would so violate them. And those means might well seem as if they will get the job done faster, better, or with more certainty. Congratulations: this is what is known as a “temptation.” They are common, and the point is to avoid them if you can, and if you can’t, then not to give in.
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And so it comes back, as it so often does, to means and ends. We may use any thing—a tool, a structure, a process, an organization—to love our neighbors, giving them what is justly theirs, and to love God, giving God what’s due.
We may not use, or harm, a neighbor in order to get hold of the tool; and we may not deny or neglect God either.
If we aren’t breaking those commandments, I submit that we ought to be confident that accusations of setting up false idols are baseless. And so we shouldn’t be scared away from using those means to try to protect the powerless, provide for the poor, and make whole the injured.
Or, for that matter, to reach and speak to all those unconverted hearts, even ours; the ones that work together, maybe without knowing it, to embed the Big Problem—selfish human nature—deeply in all the systems we participate in, including the ones we want to use and change to lift the very burdens that oppress us all.
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