Devotional by Carter Wheelock
In our days we are much concerned with moral questions, and all of us, as individuals, feel the general guilt of our imperfect society. In all of his dealings with ethical questions, Jesus expressed an overriding principle - love. Too often, in looking for workable solutions, we take that principle, and that word, and turn them into a law as mechanical and rigid as the Pharisee Sabbath. In every ethical problem that arises, someone will yell for love, as if it had only one definition that covered every circumstance. That wouldn't be so bad, if we just wouldn't be so quick to say that somebody deserves love and somebody else doesn't because that is exactly what the Pharisees did.
For example, it is said again and again - always with truth - that there are more black men than white on death row. For this, people draw the conclusion not that black men commit more murders but that white murderers have more money for lawyers. If you want to solve this problem with law, you can do one of several things: (a) require all lawyers to charge the same and to be equally proficient - that is, make F. Lee Bailey take vows of poverty and voluntary incompetence; (b) give every black or poor criminal enough money to hire an F. Lee Bailey; (c) abolish the death penalty, so we can only say that the poor and the black get longer jail terms than rich whites. The whole thing means simply that money is power, and that social factors such as class and race help to determine who has it. Where does love come in? You don't make a poor man rich by forcing the rich to love him, and to attempt that is Phariseeism.
I wonder what Jesus would do with a doctor who performs abortions, or a religious fanatic who shoots him, or a young woman who terminates a pregnancy because she's a heroin addict or a victim of rape or incest - or on the other hand, a woman who refuses to terminate a pregnancy and launches a human being into a lifelong hell? Is it right to love collective society more than the individual? Can you rightly love your flesh-and-blood neighbor more than your abstract country? Is one person more important than 300 million, or vice versa? Is it always loving to tell the truth, or always wrong to shoot somebody? I can love and forgive an enemy, but is it right for a jury, out of a soft heart, to absolve an incorrigible killer?
Is it right or wrong to resort to violence, or to pay "protection" money to the Mafia, or to squeal on your drug-dealing father, or to sue McDonald's for having its coffee too hot, or to skimp on your tithe, or use your food stamps to buy toys for the kids? Anybody with common sense can only answer, "Well, it depends on the exact circumstances - it's not only a question of what you're dealing with, but who." But isn't that what they used to call "situational ethics" or "existential morality," which Christians in general condemned? Isn't it also the reason we have juries? One thing is certain: being ethical involves using your head. As someone put it, to be Christian is to accept the obligation to be a free, critical intelligence in the midst of society. And this often means defending common sense against those who would solve all the world's problems by throwing money and so-called love at them, and who would say to those who disagree with them, "You are not loving, so you cannot be loved."
The principle of love that Jesus demonstrated cannot be summed up in that world. A body of religious law that attempted to apply that principle in every conceivable circumstance would be as big as the world and would be constantly changing. So what are we talking about? Love is not a sentiment but a disposition of mind, and among its receivable products are justice and charity. If the poor black man on death row needs love, let him find it in his heart. It is just as easy for him to love his judges as it is for his victims to love him. This is the point at which Jesus enters our troubled lives. He does not give us reason to be loved, but reason to love, and that reason is the assurance that God accepts us all, and accepts us on equal terms - the poor, the black, the rich, the white, the offended, and the offender. If every person in the world received love, it would not make the world perfect; if every person in the world possessed love as a disposition of mind and heart, it wouldn't be the world - it would be heaven.