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Negatives and Positives

             The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:9-10)

Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the state or federal government must do on your behalf. (President Barack Obama)

One of the things President Obama had against the Constitution was that it addressed what the federal government couldn’t do to a person, not what it must do to a person. (See the quote above.) He seemed to think this a failing on the part of the rules by which the government is required to behave. All of law, including the Mosaic Law hangs on negative liberties and negative requirements. Consider the laws against speeding, against taking drugs, against assault, against theft, against rape, against murder, against assault, against treason, against terrorism.

The reasons for this seem straightforward enough. First, there are identifiable categories of things that involve our doing harm to one another. Second, if God, the government, or we stipulated the ways in which we are to specifically treat one another – a list of “Thou shalts” in the place of “Thou Shalt Nots” then we would rarely, if ever, try to go beyond those minimum requirements, and would use them like cookie-cutters, like the people who jokingly proclaim, “Well, I did my good deed for the day.”

God’s goal wasn’t to limit our creativity in doing good – but to make clear that doing evil looked like. In the same way, I suspect that those who wrote the bill of rights didn’t want to limit the good the government could do but did want to limit and identify at least the more obvious evils. And as with the Ten Commandments can be summed up by our not doing harm, but loving our neighbors as ourselves, so the Bill of Rights can be summed up by the government not doing harm but loving its citizens as itself. The question then becomes whether what the government seeks to do is actually doing good or is actually doing harm. Often, I suspect it’s gaslighting, and therefore doing harm.

But we must not neglect turning this directive on ourselves. Jesus told us that the Law was summed up in our loving God as our primary love, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Paul shows us the first step in this. Loving requires that we not do harm. But Scripture doesn’t limit how we must do good, only how we must not do harm. This brings us to something like “Random Acts of Kindness.”

What can we do to love one another. Sometimes, the answer is answered in circumstances. But could we better prepare to be ready for those circumstances? I know of some people who carry little gift bags of toiletries, or gift cards for food with them. Other people clean off windshields after it snows. This isn’t really about coming up with new and different ideas so much as taking advantage of things you already do or that fit your personality.

 

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