Letter #125: Commies versus Love
Some things just can't be outsourced.
Dad,
Oh good, a chance to mention the time I met Antonin Scalia.
There are certain points of Catholic doctrine I just can’t get behind, but when it comes to intellectual life the Catholics are second to none. So in college I used to hang out a lot in the Catholic student center. Once I showed up for lunch to discover the scheduled speaker was none other than the great Nino himself. He had not yet retired to spend more time smoking cigars with the angels, meaning he was still on the Supreme Court He talked to us for an hour or so about justice.
One student asked him earnestly what he thought the government should do to help the poor. He responded in classic fashion: “I don’t think Jesus wants the poor to be helped as much as he wants you to be the one that helps them.” At the time I thought that was a bit harsh—and for what it’s worth I do think Jesus also wants the poor to be helped—but I see now what Scalia was getting at. He wanted to make us realize there are some things you simply cannot outsource, and the greatest is love.
So when you say politicians can’t do Christianity for us, I think that's by definition. No system, no program, no computer algorithm, be it ever so perfectly equitable, can replace the personal choice you make to give what you would rather keep. Making the choice is part of the point, because the point is you. In the interchange between the bloodied traveler lying by the road and the passing Samaritan who stops to get him cleaned up, something transpires in which neither party is expendable—neither the wounded nor the healer.
Of course, some political systems make this easier than others. In a system of ordered liberty like the one I think America’s founders envisioned, righteous laws define a wide scope of free choice in which people can learn to choose wisely and well. In a system like the one our incumbent party seems to be contemplating, buffoonish micromanagers smugly wield an ungodly amalgam of state and private power, supercharged with technology they barely understand, to frog march us all into a strained imitation of virtue. It’s brat!
Obviously I think it’s clear which outcome we should want. But Scalia was right that love depends on what you choose, not on the outcome the world delivers. And I think I’m starting to see how liberating that is. People say “God is good all the time” like they’re at a pep rally. But in the lion’s den it’s more of a rebel anthem: virtue remains the same yesterday, today, and forever, whether you have to choose it willingly out of a surplus of happy options or cling to it doggedly amid a hail of arrows. It's the one north star that never moves.
Love,
Spencer
Image: Stephen Masker, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Amen! The government can't love you.
I have often thought about the Samaritan, and the question that prefaces that parable; who is my neighbor. It seems that a neighbor is one who requires some assistance that you personally can give. It starts with you, and extends as far as you have means and ability to extend to. If you have the energy to go to a refugee camp and work there, more power to you. If you just help someone who drops packages, or is struggling with a door, there’s your neighbor de jour. Someone asking for information you can give or help you can offer, there you go. The closer to you, the more personal your interaction, the better. It must be freely given, not coerced (a la the present administration, as well as almost all previous administrations, to judge by my tax burden and the decisions regarding always raising the debt limit to blow more cash out the confetti cannons for pet projects). To paraphrase a certain governor “Do your own damn charity!”
I’m presently working through James Rosen’s Bio of Scalia. Love it so far, and love the fact that he is more sympathetic and I suspect more even handed than previous “biographers” were for this great man. I have read some of Scalia’s speeches and writings. I have also seen forwards written by Ruth Baden Ginsberg, and I doubt that there are any such warm friendships across the political divide today.