MAD DOGS AND TEN-FOOT CHAINS
It’s often been said (and rightly but within definite
limits!) that we can’t legislate morality. We can’t make people good by
issuing laws. We might be able to stop criminals committing crimes by
issuing laws (and by a police presence to enforce the laws) but we can’t
turn them into people that don’t want to break the law simply
by making more and more laws. There’s so much truth in that. In fact,
it’s probably true that one of the markers of a society’s wickedness is
the huge number of its laws. Laws in a very real sense are for the
law-breakers (compare 1 Timothy 1:9). [Still, we sometimes make laws
that are so unjust that they encourage law-breaking and we
could with effort make laws that would encourage honor and shape
characters of righteounsess.]
It’s clearly true that the man that
longs to do evil and only keeps from it because he’s afraid of being
punished is an evil man (compare Matthew 5:22,32). If we’re compelled to
pass close to a mad and lunging dog that’s chained by a ten-foot chain
to a stout post, it isn’t the dog’s disposition we’re thankful for. The
savage animal straining at the chain is the same animal chained or
unchained. We breathe a word of thanks for the chain and hurry on by.
It
might be true that we all know people who act friendly toward us but we
know (in various ways) that if it were not for prudence’s sake they’d
gut us. We might even have been such people. Horrors—might even be
such people. In any case, to cherish the evil is to be evil; and for
all our politeness and surface smiles the seeds of corruption breed and
multiply in the dark below.
There are good reasons to be thankful
that fear and prudence keep us from immoral and criminal behavior. If
nothing else, there are those that go happily on their way, not being
brutalized, because there's a "ten-foot chain." And I know that if some
of us weren’t restrained by realities external to us that we
would do evil and that might lead to other evils and we might well
plunge into an abyss from which there is no recovery. At least, if we
are restrained we might at some point change and become good people
whose restraints are in our hearts and gladly chosen.
Fear
is no bad thing unless it has become a bad thing—morbid, paralysing or
the sole motivation from which we act. Fear puts traffic lights at busy
crossroads; fear puts lifeboats on ocean-going liners; fear builds
hospitals, organizes fire-fighting teams and funds sensible and needed
medical research. No bad thing fear. It's one of God’s gifts. But if
that’s all there is to us, then we’re pretty poor human beings. Other
gifts must be received with thanksgiving and cultivated if we’re to be
morally mature people.
And those who would govern essentially by
fear are poor leaders. I think I know some people whose central word is
"punish". It doesn’t appear that they think much about transforming and
inspiring—it’s all about "stopping" wrongdoing. But how can it be bad to
want to stop wrongdoing? Oh, I don’t say that we shouldn’t want
to stop wrongdoing, ours or someone else’s—we should. But it’s a very
narrow view that sees our moral business centrally to be about
"avoiding" or "stopping" evil and to choose "punishment" as the single
weapon in our armory. Would we be happy, do you think, if we thought the
children in our home responded only to some form of punishment? Would
we not grow weary of heart in sending them to their room or depriving
them of this or that? Would we be satisfied that he had "stopped" this
or that wrong act? Would we not long for a way to transform their hearts
so that the fear of or aversion to "punishment" would increasingly be a
thing of the past and that they would behave in response to an inner
something—something written on their hearts?
This much seems clear: any good thing that we have to constantly remind
ourselves to do, any good behavior or attitude that we have to
constantly practice or it will grow weak and die—that "virtue" is not
mature. To do the right thing is good nut to will the right thing is
better and to do the right thing characteristically without even
consciously thinking about it is best. The "virtue" that has to be
consciously watched and tended and fed, whatever else we are to say
about it, is nothing to be smug about. "Self-control" is a good and
needful thing [Galatians 5:23] but it is one of the lower level virtues.
Under very pressing circumstances a self-controlled response may be
nothing less than heroic but various impulses that must always be held
in check let us know we haven't "arrived" as virtuous people. It's
imperative that we don't allow ourselves to give up the struggle against
evil desires and go with the current but it's also imperative for us to
acknowledge the abiding presence of our susceptibility to the evil.
In more ways than one a man [or woman] mustn't think of himself more highly than he ought to think [Romans 12:3].