The Unwritten Law
Introduction
Religion as weight.
On Mount Sinai the Lord God gave him Moses 10
commandments, with the warning “these and no others.” Then the Lord God wrote
the 10 commandments on two stone tablets, and gave them to Moses to give to the
people (Deut 5:22). Despite the warning
“these and no others,” rabbinical tradition wrote another 613 commandments or
laws for Israel, to say nothing of a whole constellation of minor laws beyond
count. Jesus is referring to this
immense accretion when he cries out against the religious leaders of his day
saying, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees! You place heavy burdens upon
people's backs, and you don't lift a finger to help them" (Mt 23:4). Jesus consoles the people saying, “Come to
me all you are weary and heavily burden, and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28-30).
We Catholics too have had our own rabbinical
accretion. Right up to the eve of
Vatican II in 1962, we had the Code of Canon Law. That was an immense body of church laws,
divided into five books. In that Code of Canon Law, rabbis of the New Testament
had written over 2000 rules and commandments, regulating every conceivable
aspect of our Catholic lives. Our religion too was weighing heavily upon us as
the church entered into Vatican II.
In an essay entitled The Yoke of Religion, Protestant Theologian Paul Tillich is referring to
“religion as weight” when he writes of "Christian people in Christian
Churches toiling and laboring away under innumerable laws which they
cannot fulfill, from which they flee, to which they return, or which they
replace by other laws.”
After Moses
with his 10 commandments and the rabbis with there 613, along came Buddha in
the 6th century BC (560 B.C.). He gave the people 8 commandments, or as they are called “The
Eight Paths of Buddhism.” [i] And after Buddha came Mohammed in the 6th
century AD (570-632 A.D.). He gave the
Muslims 5 commandments, or as they are called
“The Five Pillars of Islam.” [ii]
How many?
The history of religion raises a question: How many
laws or commandments are there: 5 according to
Mohammed? 8 according to Buddha? 10
according to Moses? 613 or 2000
according to the rabbis of the Old and New Testament? Or is there just one?
In the 14th
chapter of John’s gospel today, Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me,
you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14: 15).
“Commandments” is in the plural. But then in the very next
chapter, Jesus says, "This is my commandment:
love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15: 12). “Commandment” is in the singular. Are there many commandments or is there just
one?
It’s not just a question of numbers, by the way.
It’s also a question of prioritizing.
If for example there are 613 commandments or worse yet 2000 of them, the
question then arises which one comes first, which comes second, and which one
deserves hardly any attention at all? Confused by the maze created by his
religion, a good Pharisee came up to Jesus one day, sincerely asking him,
“Master, which of all the commandments is the first and most important one of
all” (Mk 12: 28-34)? He was confused. He wanted to
prioritize. He was seeking simplification.
The one Law of our creation
I have a simplification which I have worked out for myself and for others over many years of ministry. It goes like this: In our conception and birth into the human family, God the Creator writes but one sole solitary law or commandment upon the tablets of our creation: “Thou shalt be the human being you were created to be.” That is to say, “Thou shalt be merciful, generous, self-sacrificing, sensitive, unselfish, thoughtful, gentle.” In a word, “Thou shalt be a compassionate human being.”
Call it “The Law of our Creation.” Call it even “The Call of our Creation.” It comes before every other law or call. Our birth into the human family does not call us to be successful as doctors, lawyers, merchants, and chiefs. But it does call us to be successful as human beings. In a word, to be compassionate human beings.
The mother of
all parables
Jesus says it all for us in that great “Mother of All Parables:” The Good Samaritan. “Once upon a time a man was traveling on the highway that goes from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell in with robbers who waylaid him, and left him there dying. Along came a Jewish priest traveling down the same highway. He saw the poor man, and passed him by. He disobeyed the law of his creation to become the human being he was created to be. He turned out to be a monster. (I use the word almost in a biological sense, i.e., as one who comes forth from a human womb, but comes forth as non-human, sub-human or inhuman.) Again, traveling down the same highway came also a Levite. He too passed by. He too disobeyed the law of his creation to become the human being he was created to be. He too turned out to be a monster. Finally along came a Samaritan whom the Jews regarded as monsters and mongrels. He stopped and poured the oil of compassion upon the dying man’s wounds, and then hurried him off to the nearest inn. The so-called monster turned out to be a human being!” (Lk 10: 25-37).
The world’s great religions, (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist) should be calling all of us to obey the one Law of our Creation. They should be calling us not to be great Christians or great Jews or great Muslims or great Buddhists, but rather to be great compassionate human beings as we travel the highway of life. The great religions should not be dividing us into Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, but should be forming us all into one family of brothers and sisters, who are trying, each in our own distinctive way, to become the human beings we were created to be.
Needs no other law
That one Law of our Creation which the Creator writes upon our tablets is spelled with a capital “L.” Because it is written not upon paper or stone but upon the human spirit, it is therefore a spiritual Law. That Law is so self-sufficient that it needs absolutely no other laws (spelled with a small “l”). That one spiritual Law inspires us to do absolutely everything and even more than what the 5 pillars, the 8 paths, the 10 commandments, the 613 or 2000 rabbinical laws prescribe.
The law of
proportion
There is a Law of
Proportion at work here: To the extent that the Law of our Creation
(the Law of Compassion) is alive and
well in us, to that extent we need no other laws. To the extent that Law is
dead within us, to that extent there is no end to the number of laws (small
“l”) we need. We need a law against
garbage-ing up the neighborhood and against graffiti-ing the walls. And we need another law against shattering
the night silence with our boom boxes blasting away till two in the morning on
warm summer nights. And we need another
law against defacing our Mother Earth. We need another law against hate crimes.
And we need another law against mistreating animals.
And another law against
abusing our children and neglecting the elderly.
And now after September
11th we need countless other laws and mountainous heaps of
money (billions and billions of
dollars for homeland security) to put
security in place for airlines, atomic plants, water supplies, you name it,
just in order to preempt terrorists --
those monster who failed to become the human beings they were created to be.
And at the end of the day, after so many laws, so
little “Order!” At the end of the day, what we have is nothing much more than
this: people acting as though they were human, and people acting as though they were not
monsters. That of course is better than
being a monster, and not making any effort at all to act as though you weren’t one. There is a
disconcerting “in your face” attitude alive and well in our culture today.
Our
cultural crisis: in-compassion
Those two young men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (called by Time magazine, “The Monster Next Door”) who perpetrated the school massacres at Columbine High in Middleton, Colorado, were monsters, and acted just like monsters. The two skinheads who beheaded a black man from Jasper, Texas, by dragging him behind their truck were monsters, and acted just like monsters. The other skinheads who beat to a pulp Matt Shepherd (a gay young man), then tied him to a fence like a scarecrow out in the country somewhere, leaving him to die bathed in his tears and blood, were monsters, and acted just like monsters. The woman who hit a homeless man on the road with her car, then drove home with the poor guy lodged in her windshield, parked the car in the garage, and left him there to die after a few days, was a monster, and acted just like a monster.
Such extreme inhumanity and monstrosity bespeaks a cultural crisis that plagues us all. Fr. Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan theologian, characterizes that cultural crisis as “a terrifying lack of compassion and care that has settled in upon us all.” A cultural crisis is a crisis which is the bitter fruit of our culture.
Upon the tablets of our being, the Creator writes the one spiritual Law of our Creation -- to be the human being we were created to be. Our culture, which tells our kids that violence is not only OK but is also fun, scribbles all over the Creator’s Law of Compassion, cancels it out, and makes us monsters. Our culture, which eliminate human beings through its technology, has us staring into computer monitors for hours upon hours instead of into human faces, and it has us listening not to real live human beings but to electronic gadgets that offer us menus that we can’t eat, -- such culture scribbles all over the Law of our Creation to be the human being we were created to be, cancels it out, and makes us monsters, for to be a human being you need other human beings. Our culture, which has us giving our kids things and more things because we feel guilty for not having the time for them ourselves, and which has us raising kids who can only receive instead of give, -- such culture scribbles all over the Law of our Creation to be compassionate human being capable of chanting “You, you, you” instead of “Me, me, me.”
Conclusion
“Say
it over and over again…”
Despite the 613 major
laws and a whole constellation of minor laws, the Old Testament, it must be
said, did have a sense of priority. After giving Moses and the people the one
great Law “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your strength,” God commanded them to, “Take these words and tie
them to your wrists and your foreheads, and nail them to your doorposts and
your gates, and tell them over and over again to your children” (Dt
6:4-9). Our present crisis, i.e. “the
terrifying lack of compassion and care that has settled upon us” commands us
now to take the one Law of our Creation to be the human beings we were created
to be, and tie it to our wrists and foreheads, and nail it to our doorposts and
our gates, and tell it over and over again to our kids.