Means not ends

Fr. Roy  Cimagala

I’M referring to our human laws. No matter how well crafted, they are not meant to be the end or the goal themselves, but rather as means or a way to our ultimate goal who is God or our eternal life with God.

We are reminded of this point in the gospel of St. Mark (2,23-28) where Christ clarified to some questioning people that the law regarding the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

This was occasioned when Christ and his apostles broke the law on the Sabbath rest by picking some grain of wheat to eat, because they were hungry. In the end, Christ told those who questioned him that he, being the Son of Man, the Son of God who is the fullness of God’s revelation to us, has the right to revise or even revoke a human law when it is found to be irrelevant in a given situation.

We have to be careful with our tendency to fall into what is called as legalism, which is a way of making our human laws so absolute as to regulate even matters of conscience that they become the end in themselves. Legalism is when we make our human laws so absolute that they cannot stand any more improvement, enrichment, or even revision and revocation.

Legalism is when we get too obsessed with following the letter of the law at the expense of recognizing the true spirit of the law. It is usually characterized by rigidity and heartless treatment of people, especially those disadvantaged by a given law.

This is not to say that our laws are useless. No. Laws are always necessary and very useful. But they should be treated as means only, not as ends. As such, they cannot be treated as if these laws are the only laws that have to be followed. In a given situation or case, other laws may be followed.

We have to learn to be open-minded to other options that may be different from ours. As long as these options are in keeping with God’s natural and moral law, then they are valid and legitimate.

This also means that these human laws can be reformed. There should be a continuing effort by the authorized body of a given society to make their laws adapt to the changing circumstances of people and society.

While we need to have laws and a whole legal and judicial system to regulate our life in society, what we don’t need is legalism, or the distortion and abuse of our man-made legal system.

We are, of course, vulnerable to this predicament, since man’s intelligence and free will can take tortuous turns that in the end are determined by how our heart tilts—either toward God or is it just stuck with our own selves?

We need to see to it that our laws conform themselves as faithfully as possible to God’s law. God, after all, being the Creator, is the supreme lawgiver to whom all human lawmakers should defer.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com