Jesus is accosted in Sunday’s Gospel by the ruling class. They are upset with his and disciples’ lack of appreciation for law and order. Law and order is frequently extolled, even made godly – by the ruler class. But it is not as beneficial as supposed. Law and order is another name for military justice. Dominating rulers use law and order to subjugate people. Jesus’ dealings with rulers shows how law and order have nothing to do with being godly and need not be obeyed. Jesus says to the rulers, “You disregard God’s way but cling to man-made traditions.” Rulers and all dominant groups develop law and order to maintain their own unequal value system over those they subjugate. They then divinize it. Whether the dominant group is Biblical rulers or current rulers, the harm from law and order persists.
Rulers’ arranged inequality maintained through law and order does not produce a safe or happy society. Jesus understood that truth 2,000 years ago when he gave witness to law and order’s replacements – conscience and the common good. Nurturing them creates a safe and happy society. Conscience is moral power – being aware of, educated about and acting for the common good. The common good is a social life of persons and groups accessing their human fulfillment. Dominators who train subjugated people to obey, hinder conscientious people from making moral decisions for the common good. Parents can say, “Because I said so” but, until they not only endure but encourage children to ask and internalize “why”, children will experience moral power as external to themselves. Children will consequentially experience the creation of a truly safe and happy life as external to their power as well. That is exactly the experience designed by the dominant class. It is the reason why people who feel co-opted and coerced into public compliance sometimes opt out via the pursuit of pleasure, such as consumerism and its latest toys. Others opt in but via reactionary violence which changes nothing. When people act from conscience and the common good though they change the ruler system, like Jesus did. Make no mistake, the ruler system will backlash. No matter the gentility of the people’s expressions of conscience and the common good, in other words, moral power, the dominant class and its systems will charge the moral agent with threatening safety and happiness. But safety and happiness are not the people’s experience because dominant groups, in the name of law and order, consistently diminish conscience and the common good that enable people to access human fulfillment and thus safety and happiness. Human fulfillment is denied through such dominant practices as voting restrictions, police brutality, austerity cuts, GMO food, poverty wages, and giving more rights to guns than to people. Law and order coerces public compliance and diminishes people and their power.
Conscience and the common good are our means and they are our ends. From a young age people need to be nurtured in both. Nurturing conscience diminishes rule and rulers while enhancing personal and social decision making. Nurturing the common good diminishes law and order and enhances personal and social exercise of moral power able to create a safe and happy society for all.
Prayer: Spirit of Power and Life, we commit to moral power for our world.
Question: What is a recent or significant experience of my moral power?
August 30, 2015 Gospel Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Twenty-Second Sunday In Ordinary Time