Picard the Theologian: on Absolute Justice

Perhaps the most substantial apologetic defense of God-of-judgment has to do with the existence and necessity of transcendent moral standards. By God-of-judgment evangelism I mean the pitch outlined by Ray Comfort's Way of the Master (WotM). You lead with the law (i.e., all humans have broken God's law at some point), emphasize judgment (Hell), and then swoop in with the deus ex machina of Jesus (who gets humans out of Hell). I've criticized this style of evangelism for its portrayal of God as a kind of divine extortionist: God (in the WotM narrative) offers the free gift of being saved...from God.

Thus: God saves you from God. You need saving because God (in his righteousness) is furious at your violations of God's law. You get saved because God (in his love) sent Jesus to die in your place.

I've presented several counter-arguments/defenses I think that an evangelist who uses such a judgment-heavy technique might present. I've been spending the last few days rebutting these counter-arguments. The last counter argument: God's standards--whether we like them personally or not, whether we think they're fair or not--form the moral framework of the human universe. The unfailing enforcement of any truly uncompromised and uncompromising standard will strike individual humans as unfair in some way. Nevertheless, without such perfect standards, humans' own moral universe turns into a black hole of relativism. The truths we take to be self-evident, the transcendent ideals of justice and fairness that we use as a measure for any set of temporal laws--these are God's standards. We need a God who embodies and enforces them absolutely, or they vanish.

My response? First, let me say that I'm going to side-step tackling the issue of whether or not trans-historical, trans-cultural Truths (moral or otherwise) exist. That's an important issue, but engaging it in a general way would require more time than this one posting. This objection is rather about the justice of transcendent justice. Are moral standards at their best, their most good and right, when they operate as absolutes?

I answer, initially, by way of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In their first (and often most embarrassing) season, the crew of the next-gen Enterprise visited a world that seemed like a paradise: no crime, all pleasure, attractive and openly affectionate natives (like hippies, only with buff beach bodies and clean-cut hairstyles). While playing with some teen-aged versions of these natives, young Wesley Crusher (that scamp) accidentally crashes into a low fence and into a flower garden. The natives are scandalized; he didn't mean to do it, but he broke one of their rules. The police (more buff-bodied adonises) show up, shake their heads sadly, and pull out a syringe. It seems the punishment for any infraction, however slight, is instant execution.

The Enterprise crew of course intervene, only to find out that this planet's oddly strict moral code is enforced by a being the natives call "God. This being, who looks like some sort of whirling machine, appears right beside the orbiting Enterprise. Through some standard Star Trek camara-shaking/actors-stumbling action, we learn that "God" is quite powerful enough to crack the ship wide open if Wesley doesn't submit to his lethal injection.

Captain Picard eventually calls for a trial in which he essentially questions this planet's entire all-or-nothing law system (a clear violation of the Prime Directive, but--well--first season...). The sum of his argument: "There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute." The argument apparently made sense to "God," who let Wesley go and let the Enterprise speed away from hippie-adonis world for good.

It's silly, of course--allegory painted with a mile-wide brush. But even as a youngster myself, watching that episode for the first time, the lesson soaked in: absolute laws absolutely enforced do not yield justice. Indeed, Star Trek's suggestion (in not just this but many episodes, particularly in the original series) is that only machines operate with no regard for specifics of person or situation. Such machines are invariably the antagonists in the episode.

Is our imagination so limited that we can only imagine God as a holy and perfect judge by turning God into a kind of divine Justice Machine? Let's up the ante: does Jesus--God in the flesh--operate that way? Certainly the Gospels record Jesus passing judgment on lots of people. Certainly Jesus said that he is here to fulfill the law. Certainly he councils the rich young ruler to follow the ten commandments.

But Jesus's actions just as often involve his breaking the rules, bending them, or ignoring them altogether. He touches lepers, speaks to Samaritan women, drinks with tax collectors, heals on the Sabbath--the list goes on and on. Indeed, many of the judgments he passes are not of people failing to obey the holy law but of people who make the law their entire standard. Love, as Jesus practices it, does not lay out clear sets of rules about exactly what to do in every situation. Love acts more as an ethic--a set of concerns or questions than as a list of rules to be fulfilled exactly. Think of the Golden Rule (itself a well-known Jewish guide): not an absolute law but a situational ethic. How would I want to be treated in this situation? It forces you to question rather than outlining exactly what to do and not do.

Here, I know, the WotM people would say, "Of course Jesus shows us the way of grace rather than the way of the law. We've never said differently! People need the grace of Jesus, the mercy of God, because they can't live wholly by the law." But here's our difference: the WotM narrative frames the idea of absolute law/absolute judgment as the ideal--things would be best if humans actually did follow God's standards as laid out in Scripture exactly. Jesus's act of mercy and grace is, then, a divine Plan B, a safety net. It'll do, but it'd be better if it didn't have to be at all.

I see the Christ event as asserting something altogether different about holy law. Jesus doesn't criticize the Pharisees for (or only for) failing to fulfill the law. Indeed, the Pharisees were in Jesus's day the best and most law-abiding citizens (we won't even get into the anti-orthodox-Jewish tensions that inform the gospel writers). Jesus doesn't merely suggest that the law is impossible to follow; he argues through his words and actions that the law is incomplete even and especially when followed to the letter. It is in need of the fulfillment that is Christ and Christ's kingdom love--the solidarity and intimate contact with the other that God makes manifest. Jesus is righteous because he observes the law; he is Christ because he transcends it when the situation demands.

In the WotM narrative, God's machine-like, inhuman Justice necessitates God's act of mercy. In Jesus's own life as presented in the gospels, God's justice equals God's mercy.

Hm.

That's it for now. I'm headed off to New York City for the next week for a conference, so I may not be able to post as often. I'll be back soon, though!

JF