Hilton Head Island, SC – July 6, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
I Samuel 8:4-18; Luke 10:29-37
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. – Judges 21:25 (RSV)
First, we need a very brief explanation of terms. The word “libertarian” has been around for a long time, while the word “communitarian” is of fairly recent origin. Libertarian philosophy has evolved into promoting as little government as possible and as much personal freedom and personal rights as possible. Communitarian philosophy, on the other hand, readily accepts the necessity of government, although it doesn’t necessarily see government as a panacea. It promotes the good of the whole populace as compared to the good of the individual and individual freedoms and rights. In a single but admittedly exaggerated statement, libertarianism focuses on me and communitarianism focuses on us. There is much, much more to it than that, but that’s all the time I can devote to definitions now.
There is a much stronger libertarian streak in the USA than in most advanced nations in other parts of the world. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, people tend to nurture and extol the common good more than individual good, because those nations or ethnic groups have existed far longer. They generally believe that if everyone is not better off, no one will be better off. They know that in order to get along with one another, they must support the notion of government, however they may feel about any particular government at any particular point in history. Thus they do not have the incipient anti-government sentiment that many Americans have.
On the other hand, for the past 25 or 30 years, it has become increasingly hard to become wildly enthusiastic about American national government. We have grown so polarized that many think “the other side” has no good intentions at all, and that is true of both major political parties. We have become hyper-partisan. This is exacerbated by the fact that one party tends to be more and more libertarian, and the other more and more communitarian and government-oriented.
The tension between anti-government and pro-government forces within a society is not new, however. It is as old as the Bible. Specifically, it goes back at least 3200 years. The patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – lived in the 19th century BCE. The ancient Hebrews also existed then, but they were a people small in number, and they had no discernible ethnic government. Then the Bible says they were slaves in Egypt for 450 years. Next they were under the leadership of Moses for 40 years in the Wilderness Wandering. Then, for the next 200 years, from about 1200 to 1000 BCE, they were led by leaders who are described as “Judges.” That period is chronicled in the Book of Judges. The Judges were somewhat like the tribal elders and warlords today in many parts of the Middle East, central Asia, and much of Africa. They represented political and religious power and authority, but they did not signify a central government among the Israelites, because there was none.
The last verse in the Book of Judges clearly is intended to portray the reality of the political situation among the biblical Israelites at the time. It says, “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). What that very important verse implies is that without a widely accepted and supported centralized means of keeping law and order, every individual could do only what he thought was proper. There was no governing authority to maintain order for all the people, so everyone was on his or her own.
Because of the way the United States of America evolved, that was essentially the way it was for large periods of our early national history. When the first colonists came from England, the only people living on these shores were Indians, who had their own tribes and rules and customs. White Europeans who built homes for themselves in the wilderness had to be self-reliant, because initially there were not enough British soldiers to protect them. Probably every household had arms of some kind or another. Eventually the colonists turned against Britain itself, and the American Revolution established a new nation, conceived in liberty (of a sort) and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, except those who weren’t, who included females, white men with no property, and slaves of both sexes.
In the push west onto the frontier, homesteaders were again frequently on their own. Many old western movies featured bad guys constantly picking on the good guys. Libertarianism held universal sway when there was no established legal system, and individuals had to fend entirely for themselves, because there weren’t enough federal soldiers or marshals to keep the peace on their behalf. Life was governed by a “Guns Are Good” philosophy.
However, if you are going to have a strong central government, there are also going to be problems. Too much libertarianism or too much communitarianism results in unwanted side-effects. That was addressed by both God and Samuel in the First Book of Samuel. The elders of the people told Samuel they wanted a king. God told Samuel that He had served as their king for 200 hundred years, and Samuel told that to the people. But, said they, they wanted a visible king. Every other nation had a monarch, and they wanted one too. Samuel told them they might rue the day they acquired a king, and over the next 400 years many times they were indeed sorry about their insistence on having a monarchy. Whether the focus is too much on individual rights or too much on the good of the whole, there can be unintended consequences either way.
Nevertheless, virtually all the biblical writers seemed to believe that the centralized government of the monarchy was better than the libertarianism of the period of the Judges, which scholars call the Amphictiony. (You will be pleased to know, however, that word will not be on the final exam.) A strong preference for the wellbeing of the whole people over against that of the individual came to characterize biblical ethics in both the Old and New Testaments. We took precedence over I in both their thinking and in their teaching.
The king became the symbol of concern for the whole people of Israel. Psalm 2, our responsive reading for this morning, illustrates that concern. By means of his office, which the people believed was divinely created, the king was to seek the good of everyone in Israel.
The common good has especially been promoted among Jews, as compared to Christians. Jews have always seen their relationship to God being determined simply by their being Jews. They didn’t have to believe anything or do anything in particular to be in God’s good graces, although believing and doing the right things were important. But if they were Jews, they were in like Flynn, even if none of them was ever named Flynn. In order for Christians to have a proper relationship with God, they thought they had to believe the right things and do the right things. Thus the individual Christian had to earn God’s favor on his own, whereas Jews had it done for them via the community of the Jews.
How do these nuances work themselves out in contemporary American life? This past week we saw a glaring example. In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that the religious beliefs of the owners of a privately-held corporation can determine whether or not they are willing to allow certain kinds of contraception methods to be provided for their employees through the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Three of the conservative justices are obvious liberatarians and the other two are quasi-libertarians. They came out in favor of the individual rights of the owners and over against the potential if not actual wellbeing of all the employees. The four liberals strongly argued that society at large may be badly damaged by this legal finding. “We” are hurt when the legal focus is too much on “me,” they implied.
David Brooks is an always thoughtful and thought-provoking columnist for The New York Times. Several weeks ago he wrote a column called “The Leaderless Doctrine.” He noted that from World War II until the past several years, Americans believed in strong political, military, and economic institutions and leaders. Now, he says, that conviction has badly eroded. He cited a poll which asked whether most people in general can be trusted. Forty percent of baby boomers believe that, but only 19% of millennials. Mr. Brooks wrote, “This (the millennials) is a thoroughly globalized and linked generation with unprecedented low levels of social trust.” These numbers suggest that everyone must watch out for himself, that you can’t count on society for much at all. That philosophy leads to widespread libertarianism, whether or not younger people realize that or even care about it, which many do not. And many don’t vote, either.
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and jurist who was active at the turn of the 19th century. He taught a concept he called “utilitarian hedonism.” The word hedonism normally connotes individual pleasure, but Bentham believed we should always seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people, not just for ourselves. Thus his kind of hedonism was utilitarian, because he was convinced it benefited every person by benefiting all people. He was therefore either a libertarian communitarian or a communitarian libertarian.
After Hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast late in 2012, a Dutch expert in flood prevention named Henk Ovink was called in to discuss if such a disaster could be avoided in the future. Essentially the only way it could happen, he said, was to have a large regional plan in which state and municipal governments would agree to spend heavily to avert disaster when another such storm threatened them. He noted that in Holland when such disasters occur, Dutch farmers are willing to have their land flooded in order to lessen flooding in the cities. Thus they seek the greatest good for the greatest number. After Sandy, many residents in New Jersey lifted their waterfront homes up onto stilts. Henk Ovink said with a regional plan they could avoid having to do that, but they told him, “That would be a socialistic approach,” and they objected. Individually they preferred to pay the exorbitant price to have their homes raised onto pilings. (See The New York Times Magazine, “Water Works,” April 13, 2014)
The other night we rented Nebraska, which has become one of my all-time favorite movies. The main character, Woody Grant, played by Bruce Dern, is an elderly man in the early stages of dementia. He is a quintessential Midwestern-Westerner, who grew up in a small town in Nebraska and moved to Missoula, Montana when he was young married man. One of his most memorable lines is this: “I have a right to do any (blank blank blank) thing I want.” He is libertarianism carried to an irascible, if also strangely admirable, extreme.
No one is free to do anything she or he wants. We all must live within limits, and many if not most of those limits are placed on us by living in community with one another in a larger society which cannot function if all of us do whatever we want. My rights must be considered mainly in the context of our rights, and our good of necessity must take precedence over my good. God created us in community; He did not create us primarily for life by ourselves.
We all know there is a famous film festival in Cannes, France. What we maybe didn’t know is that there is also a Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This year they awarded the grand prize to Harvey Nichols, a high-end British retailer, and to their advertising agency. The idea was that people were able to order inexpensive Christmas gifts for their friends and relatives, but they were wrapped in high-quality, expensive Harvey Nichols paper. For us, it would be like getting peanut butter or toothpaste wrapped in Tiffany or Nieman-Marcus wrappings. The ad agency blatantly proclaimed, “A little something for them, a bigger something for you.” The cheap and chintzy product line sold out in three days, and Harvey Nichols and their crass ad agency got the creativity award. Shame on Lions International, says I.
Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a legal expert in the religious law who wondered what he must do on behalf of his neighbors to be properly justified in God’s eyes. We all are familiar with the details of the story. A man was attacked by robbers on a lonely desert road, who left him bleeding in the ditch. A Jewish priest and a Levite came by and saw him lying there. They were forbidden by both biblical custom and law to touch him, in case he might be dead. So they steered clear of him. But a Samaritan came along who took care of him. It is important to note that to Jews the Samaritans were perhaps the most despised ethnic group in their part of the world. They were Jews who had married local Gentiles, and thus became defiled in Jewish eyes. At the end of the parable, Jesus asked the law expert, “Which of the three men in the parable proved to be the best neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” After giving the obvious answer, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
What is our motivation in trying to please God? Is our primary concern usually for ourselves, or do we always try to consider what benefits all of us? Do we “look out for Number One,” as the book title years ago suggested, or do we attempt to do the greatest good for the greatest number? What is the better way to try to serve God by serving our fellow human beings?
One of our two major political parties prides itself on having more religious people within its ranks, and statistics clearly bear that out. They perceive themselves to be more biblically oriented. The other party is very nervous about overt expressions of religion, and yet it supports many themes which are strongly supported in the Bible. The first party is becoming increasingly libertarian, and the other one increasingly communitarian. Thus the supposedly religious party seems to reject many principles of biblical ethics, while the supposedly irreligious party seems to espouse biblical ethics. How ironic - - - and how uniquely American.
If it becomes evident that we have no choice other than to look out for ourselves because we are convinced society and government will not look out for us, then we will have entered into a very dark period of American history. The growing antipathy and distrust of government at all levels indicates a reluctance to entrust anyone else to seek or to effect the greatest good for the greatest number. The result of this unhealthy situation forces many people to turn to libertarian values as the only way to survive in the current cockamamie political climate.
What shall happen in the future? Only God knows that with perfect clarity. But if one or two more libertarian-leaning Supreme Court justices are appointed, communitarian ideals are bound to suffer even more than they have already.
We are at a major turning point in our history. You and I cannot determine what will happen, but we can do what we are capable of doing to prevent a “Me First” ethic from advancing any further. Are we courageously and wisely willing to do that, or have most of us succumbed to the spirit of the times?