Jury Duty & Other Thoughts...

I was called this week to jury duty at the local county court. I got the summons from the Courthouse to appear the week before as a lovely New Year's Eve gift from the postman. I had known since last year that I was in the active potential jury pool for trials for the county for the coming months. I have been in potential jury pools before off and on, but thankfully never been called to appear since I was about 20 or 21. I remember I was in college and got summoned, but basically told the judge I was a college student and couldn't miss like 2 weeks of classes, so I at excused that time. 

Luckily,the escapade ended up that the trial got cancelled because of a last minute plea bargain or something. So, basically, I spent the morning drinking coffee and waiting around only to be dismissed. During that time and the week prior that I had to ponder this event, it brought back a few memories. I was in Law School for a year right after college, and, frankly, hated every minute of it. I found the Law interesting but the law students and the College of Law I attended were shockingly corrupt on numerous levels. I won't go into details, as it was over 25 years ago now, but I show truly disgusting professional behavior. People were buying their way on to the Law Review. Teachers were sleeping with students. Students were hiding books in the law school library so other people couldn't do research. (This was before the internet was really useful for research or really much of anything other than sending e-mails and buying junk off eBay.) 

Needless to say, I left law school after one year, only to transfer to another similar but unrelated field: theology. I remember reading one time years ago about some study that said that the highest percentage of libraries that had books stolen or never returned to their school libraries were in law schools and seminaries. I chuckled about that at the time because the mindset of so many lawyers and pastor/theologians is shockingly similar in a lot of ways. Namely, such people are very good at justifying and defending any sort of behavior, both personal and external.

The roots of the reasoning they get to such self justifications is, of course, somewhat different. Lawyers are looking at the secular or canon Law, Constitutions, and, where applicable, Common Law precedent. Pastors/Theologians can also self-justify looking at the Divine Law and moral theology. What both reasonings have in common is loopholes. The law is vague, so we will use X precedent and Y moral justification is justify our behavior. 

Lawyers appeal the civil law while looking for moral or ethical reasoning to skirt the law if it is not in their favor. Pastors/Theologians often do the same, but with the Bible. The Bible is silent or ambiguous about how to approach this moral decision, so we fill the gaps with moral theology. Often, both theology and civil lawyers are perfectly fine with rejecting the clear wording of the Law with all sorts of casuistry and mental gymnastics, i.e. loopholes. 

The one thing I learned in law school was the important equation about all legal reasoning that is basically the way to get to the heart of any legal opinion or court ruling: Is X a Y for the purpose of Z? Virtually all legal court opinions or legal briefs attempt to answer that question. It seems simplistic, but, really, that's the whole of the law. For example, there is clearly a law saying it is against to the law to use a weapon in the commission of a felony crime. Usually this is referred to as something like a felony gun charge. Seems simple enough. We think of weapons used in crimes and generally would agree that a gun or a knife when used in a murder is a weapon. But what about a metal Thermos travel mug for coffee? Is that a weapon? If someone uses it to bash someone over the head and kill them, the argument can be made that the Travel Coffee mug (X) is a Weapon (Y) for the purpose of committing a Felony Weapons offense (Z). In other words: Is X a Y for the purpose of Z? This is legal reasoning 101. 

Interestingly, students of theology basically self justify using the same equation. The Bible clearly says in the 10 Commandments: Thou Shalt Not Kill. I'll even go so far as to concede the point that it should probably be translated as Thou Shalt Not Murder. Seems simple enough. What about self defense? Is self defense (X) a type of killing (Y) that would precipitate a guilty finding by God of committing murder (Z)? It is the same legal reasoning, and likewise, the argument in defense would be, no, killing in self defense is not murder because it's not pre-meditated, it's not intentional (usually). One could even argue it is not even murder. It is a killing by happenstance but it is not murder. This is moral reasoning 101. 

Certainly, committed Pacifists would argue that any killing (even in self defense or the defense of other innocents) is a violation of the Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill. This tied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran Pastor who was ultimately hanged by the Nazis in WWII, up in knots until the day he died. He was a committed Pacifist for most of his adult ministry. And he really felt like he had given up his seat in heaven by getting involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.    

As accusing someone of being a Nazi has seen by many as the de facto trump card to play in any argument (as if that somehow wins a logical argument which it does not), this may not be the best example. Any time the "You're a Nazi/Hitler/Fascist" card gets played in any debate, it basically poisons the well and shuts down the conversation because at that point, the debate has just become ad hominem name calling, at which point what the ancients referred to as "The Passions" have co-opted the discussion, and no further meaningful rational debate can be had. It becomes the adult version of two kids in the school yard scuffle over some trifling thing who have started calling each other "Poopy head." It can only lead to either more profane names and/or fisticuffs at that point. 

I think this is I have my days where I think the only difference between Theologians/Pastors and Lawyers is that there is a huge market for second hand lawyer jokes. I can't say as I have heard too many Theologian banger jokes lately, but I still hear lawyer jokes. This is why I think that study about libraries was correct. I know in law school, or at least the dysfunctional one I attended, that people hid books in the Law library because it was a manifestation of the adversarial system that is ingrained from day one in Western legal training. We have to win, and win at all costs, because justice. Even in hypothetical mock trial scenarios you banter about in law school classes, the adversarial system will lead people with corrupted ethics to justify to their own minds the hiding of law books in the library. Winning trumps any other consideration. 

The same is true for Pastors and Theologians. While I never witnessed someone intentionally hiding books from the theology library, I know it happened. I have no doubt the moral justification was something like, "it's better to ask forgiven later than permission beforehand" and "God will forgive me...this book is speaking the Truth and I need to keep it." It's not really stealing if it is for the greater good of the Church and the Kingdom of God, of course. "I'm just borrowing it."

In other words: Is X a Y for the purpose of Z?