Dr. Rodney Plunket

Philip K. Howard is a founding partner of the law firm of Howard, Darby, & Levin.  He is also an author.  One of his books is entitled The Death of Common Sense:  How Law is Suffocating America, a book published in 1994.  In that book, Howard makes the case that America developed a new form of government in the latter half of the twentieth century.  At one point in his book he refers to that new form of government as “Governing by excruciating detail.”[1]  He argues that influential thinkers convinced lawmakers that effective governing could only take place when laws were extremely meticulous and comprehensive.  He cites one legal scholar who contended that “legal rules should be ‘self-executing’ and ‘aim toward solutions that can be carried into effect without discretionary administration.’”[2]  In other words, the argument being made was that laws should be so designed that human judgment on the application of those laws was not needed.  All a person should have to do is read the law.  The law should be so explicit and detailed that anyone would know exactly how to comply––no interpretation would be required.

The result of such a view is well described by Howard when he writes, “Once the idea is to cover every situation explicitly, the words of law expand like floodwaters that have broken through a dike.  Rules elaborate on prior rules, detail breeds greater detail.  There is no logical stopping point in the quest for certainty.”[3]

The United States Constitution including all of it Articles, Amendments, and even the list of names of the original signers and their states has a bit over 7,600 words.  In a paragraph in which Howard comments on the Constitution’s relative brevity he also writes, “The Constitution is a model of flexible law that can evolve with changing times and unforeseen circumstances.  This remarkable document, . . . , gave us three branches of government and a Bill of Rights built on vague principles like ‘due process.’”[4]  The change in approach to the writing of law is made clear when one learns, “Federal statutes and formal rules now total about 100 million lines.”[5]  (Be reminded that Howard’s book was published in 1994.  I would not be surprised to learn that the total is much higher today).  And an extremely high percentage of the increase of the number of those lines of law has taken place since 1963.[6]

Howard begins his book with an example of the result of this twentieth century approach to lawmaking.  He tells this story:

In the winter of 1988, Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity were walking through the snow in the South Bronx in their saris and sandals to look for an abandoned building that they might convert into a homeless shelter.  Mother Teresa, the Nobel Prize winner and head of the order, had agreed on the plan with Mayor Ed Koch after visiting him in the hospital several years earlier.  The nuns came to two fire-gutted buildings on 148^th Street and, finding a Madonna among the rubble, thought that perhaps providence itself had ordained the mission.  New York City offered the buildings at one dollar each, and the Missionaries of Charity set aside $500,000 for the reconstruction.  The nuns developed a plan to provide temporary care for sixty-four homeless men in a communal setting that included a dining room and kitchen on the first floor, a lounge on the second floor, and small dormitory rooms on the third and fourth floors.  The only unusual thing about the plan was that Missionaries of Charity, in addition to their vow of poverty, avoid the routine use of modern conveniences.  There would be no dishwashers or other appliances; laundry would be done by hand.  For New York City, the proposed homeless facility would be (literally) a godsend.

Although the city owned the buildings, no official had the authority to transfer them except through an extensive bureaucratic process.  For a year and a half the nuns, wanting only to live a life of ascetic service, found themselves instead traveling in their sandals from hearing room to hearing room, presenting the details of the project and then discussing the details again at two higher levels of city government.  In September 1989 the city finally approved the plan and the Missionaries of Charity began repairing the fire damage.

Providence, however, was no match for law.  New York’s building code, they were told after almost two years, requires an elevator in every new or renovated multiple-story building.  The Missionaries of Charity explained that because of their beliefs they would never use the elevator, which also would add upward of $100,000 to the cost.  The nuns were told the law could not be waived even if an elevator didn’t make sense.

Mother Teresa gave up.  She didn’t want to devote that much extra money to something that wouldn’t really help the poor.  According to her representative, “The Sisters felt they could use the money much more usefully for soup and sandwiches.”  In a polite letter to the city expressing their regrets, the Missionaries of Charity noted that the episode “served to educate us about the law and its many complexities.”[7]

Howard gives many other examples.  He cites incident after incident illustrating that, in America, lawmakers at all levels of government have come to believe that laws should be framed in such a way that no one had to think, no human judgment was needed.  Every action and ruling was so precisely described that all one had to do was comply.  Such an attitude led to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “at one point [having] 140 regulations on wooden ladders, including one specifying the grain of the wood.”[8]

There are at least two glaring weaknesses of this approach to lawmaking.  One weakness is made clear by the fairly obvious realization that that there is no way to write language in such a way that the intended interpretation is guaranteed.  Howard cites legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart who “has noted that ‘in all fields of experience, not only that of rules, there is a limit, inherent of language, to the guidance’ that words can provide.”[9]  To put it another way, exactitude of language is never fully achieved.  One will always need to interpret.  Judgment in the application of rules will always be required.

The second weakness of this approach becomes apparent when one makes the very common sense observation that human wisdom will never have sufficient foresight to write laws that “cover every situation explicitly,”[10] much less appropriately.  There are always unexpected occurrences.  There are always unintended consequences.  Well meaning lawmakers seeking to ensure that everyone is treated exactly the same way by every law written end out creating a bulky system that still requires interpretation and a system that does not produce the desired effect.  Good application of law is always best advanced when administered by persons with just hearts and wise judgment.  Good law can never replace the need for good people.

And this desire for exact rules that cover every situation is a desire not only found within America’s various branches of government.  The Christian writer William H. Willimon in his book, Calling & Character, contends that this approach to life extends “throughout our society.  We so hoped,” he says, “that there might be some way to devise a set of rules, an agreed upon set of procedures, that might enable us to bypass the need for good people.  We thought that just by following the right set of rules, any one could do good.”[11]  But, he says, “There is no procedural, principled means of bypassing the need for character.”[12]

Why have I spent so much time describing this phenomenon?  Because it has also pervaded Christianity.  Many people have tried to turn Christian faith, every aspect of it, into rule keeping.  Pray this way.  Fast this way.  Read your Bible this way.  Raise your kids this way.  Love your spouse this way.  Repent this way.  Do church this way.  The rules and instructions grow overwhelming.  No one person can remember them all much less apply them.

I remember as a college student working for a week at a summer camp as a counselor.  The folks in charge of that camp had so many rules, and they kept adding new ones.  Campers kept coming to me and asking me about things they wanted to do, and I didn’t know whether they could do it or not.  I would have to go and ask someone else.  I couldn’t remember all the rules.  This was supposed to be a fun week in which kids experienced the joy of the Lord out in God’s creation, but much of that joy was stolen because supervisors believed that the good judgment of godly counselors and other Christian adults could not be trusted.  A few basic rules interpreted by good folks would never do.  No, we had to cover every possible eventuality with an appropriate rule.  The fundamental goal of the camp was crushed by the resultant burden.

Do not let rules rob you of the joy of living for Jesus.  Jesus was not happy with the way God’s law was being kept in His day.  He sought to push law keepers deeper toward true righteousness.  Notice one of the ways that Jesus did that.  He summarized God’s law with just two laws on which He said all others hang:  “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:34-40).  Jesus did not address the sorry state of righteousness with more laws.  Instead He sought to bring people into true communion with the living God.  When that happens the law becomes an internal code created by the Holy Spirit of God; it is written on hearts and minds; it generates true Christian character.  Judgment is wise and good and just.  Life decisions are strong and stable and sure.  Not because we have learned a bunch of rules, but because we have been “transformed by the renewing of [our] minds, so that [we] may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans [Rm] 12:2).

Our Scripture reading this morning was from Romans 5:17, 20b-21; 6:12-14 (NIV).  In those verses Paul clearly expresses concern about the power that rules in the lives of believers, a concern clearly revealed by the fact that Paul uses the word “reign” twice in Rm 5:17, twice in 5:21, and once in 6:12.  Paul does not want sin to reign within followers of Jesus.  He does want righteousness and grace to reign.  And notice what Paul says in Rm 6:14:  “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”  Our tendency, strengthened by our national mindset, is to think that we are less likely to have sin as our master if we are under law.  We think grace is easily turned into a license for sin and that law is the force which can control that tendency.  Paul clearly disagrees.

A little later in this same book of Romans, Paul discusses the power that is an essential part of God’s grace.  Please follow along as I read Rm 8:5-11:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.  And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.  But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.  And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

The power of God to change our lives is not law.  The power of God to change our lives and to transform them is the power within.  It is the power of the Spirit of God.

Please look with me at another passage from the pen of Paul.  Ephesians 3:20-21:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!  Amen.

That is the power that is to change us.  Please do not succumb to a life composed of following rules and keeping laws.  Remember that in 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul says, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  Allow the Spirit of God to transform you from the inside out.  Allow God to reign in you.

If you are here this morning and are hungry for the power of God to live and reign inside of you, to change you from the inside out––please come to the front and let us assist you.  If you need to receive the saving power of God for the very first time, please come ready to repent of your sins, to confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, and to be buried with Jesus Christ in water baptism.

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