Laws Of The Land, Laws Of The Heart: Let Them Assist You

Society needs rules to operate properly. Without rules society would be a lawless mass and an oxymoron. The icon for Justice is a scale which signifies balancing different points of view and weighing one idea against another. The basic concept of balancing scales demonstrates the ambiguity and imperfection of laws and rules. If everything were without question then Lady Justice would be holding digital scales or price computing scales. Life is not so clear and the laws we live by often have their intentions subverted.

Laws are made to serve those living under them. That is the idea anyway. A red traffic light indicates stop and lives are protected and saved. Often rules become counter productive or become something else entirely. A red light at 2:00 a.m. on an empty street still demands a driver to stop and wait, even if there are no other cars for miles around; it’s the law. There are places where you can get a parking ticket during certain hours on street cleaning days; which is fair enough. You can also get a ticket during those hours even if the street cleaners have a holiday. Like every part of life, rules require balance, they are supposed to serve us, not us to serve them.

There is a tale of two Zen monks hiking down a path. They were both from a monastery advocating celibacy. The teachings were strict and demanded that the monks avoid all contact with women. The two monks came to a river and found a lovely woman in a fine silk dress at the waters edge. The overpass had been whisked away by the river. The woman was desperate to get to the other side, but couldn’t find away across the river without ruining her fine clothes. Without a second thought one of the monks lifted her on his shoulders and carried her across the river. She thanked him for his assistance and said he averted great pain and humiliation her family would have had if she failed to show up, or the disgrace of ruining the sacred robes she was wearing. The woman went on her way and so did the two monks. After walking in silence for several miles the younger monk had to speak up. “How could you pick that woman up and carry her across the river? Touching a woman is a violation of our devotional obligations?” The older monk turned and smiled. “Is that true?” he asked. The younger monk thought about this for a moment. After a pause the older monk continued; “Anyway, I put her down on the other side of the river, but it seems you are still carrying her.”

If the older monk had followed the rules precisely, he would have ignored the woman’s needs and abandoned her by the waters edge, failing his higher values to be of service in the world. Jesus once passed through a cornfield with his apostles on the Sabbath. Hungry, they plucked, shucked and ate ears of corn. When charged with breaking the Sabbath Jesus responded that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The trials of Nuremburg relied on the notion that rules, laws and orders are not to be blindly followed when they conflict with higher moral principals.

Many religious teachings, many philosophical thinkers, and many legal arbiters all try to remind us that rules and laws are here to serve society, not the other way around.