When Breaking the Law Seems Reasonable

After railing on about the Listicle of Doom, I spent the rest of the day thinking about The Law–God’s law, of course, but also the laws that we make for ourselves. And, I admitted to myself that I would rather die than get in trouble with anyone. I am careful to be on time, and I’m careful in my car, I am careful in my homeschool, I try really hard to meet all cultural expectations, in so far as I can know them, because I hate being in trouble, or feeling myself in trouble.

So I am always surprised when people don’t feel too anxious about breaking the law. There are lots of ways to break the law these days. You can do it by actually doing something really bad, like committing murder, but you can also do if by having cracks in the sidewalk in front of your house, or not shoveling promptly whenever it snows. There is a whole range of possible law breaking, some of it morally determined, some of it springing forth from the mind of people in government with no moral weight about it at all.

I look at all of it with anxiety. I don’t want to be in trouble, period, so knowing that there are laws out there that I don’t know about that I might potentially break out of ignorance, stresses me out. Well, it stresses me in a nebulous, niggling way. I’m not going to go look any of them up. I prefer to quietly complain, or ask other people.

So I was very interested and alarmed to read about whatever it is that is going on in Eastern Oregon over the weekend. Particulars of the incident aside, I was very curious about this group deciding that breaking the law is a worthy activity. They think it will do something, obviously, that couldn’t be achieved by not taking over these buildings. We’ve all become used to the I’ll Just Go In And Shoot The Place Up way of making a point. It’s a little out of the way to barricade yourself in to someone else’s building and promise to wait it out, for years even I read somewhere. Did they feel like they had no other choice? What are the decisions that lead a person to that point?

I was feeling really terrible about it, and wishing they would stop before anyone gets killed, when I read about the new Executive Order on gun control that our president will be signing, or has signed. He said, in effect, “I had no choice”. Because Congress wouldn’t give me the law that I wanted, I had no choice but to do it myself. I understand that lots of people are super happy about this, but as always, juxtaposed against all the other news of the day, I was a tiny bit shocked. The guys out in Oregon, barricaded wherever they are, feel pushed to the edge, and so they have broken the law. And apparently our president also, is so pushed to the edge that there’s nothing else he can do. He has to just do it himself.

If one can do it, the other will avail himself of the opportunity to do it also. The law, sitting there, entire of itself, is something particular individuals can violate or not violate, as they see fit. Some will pay, but others will be congratulated. And because the law isn’t particularly grounded in any morality, the individual’s calculation rises to the fore. Do I feel like this is a good and fair law? No? Well, then, I will do what I like.

I don’t think, and what I’m about to say isn’t novel or interesting, that it can be allowable under the law to murder whole segments of the population, and not have the very concept of Law radically and terribly undermined. Actions have consequences. If a system of laws fundamentally violates God’s perfect law, the whole thing is just teetering around waiting to fall. God says, do not murder. America says, it doesn’t count as murder under these circumstances. Ordinary people look on and draw their own conclusions. It’s easy for our own President to violate a law he feels is wrong, because the whole law is undermined already. Of course, he thinks he is being moral in his law breaking. But so do the guys in Oregon. Everyone lines up on either side to say which they think is better. Both have calculated that something important is to be gained, that it’s better to break the law than not to break it.

The solution to human lawlessness is the Son of Righteousness, who rises up, to quote one of my favorite songs, or is it the bible, with healing in his wings, in whom perfect justice and perfect mercy meet and all our bad calculations can be forgiven and redeemed.