Going beyond but not against

“Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes

and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. You have

heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and

whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever

is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says

to brother ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever

says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna…” (cfr Mt 5, 17-37)

            Christ continued to make more clarifications about how we

should behave by following some laws. It would be good if we can

revisit the whole passage about this point since it can give us a

clear picture about how often we need to go beyond but not against

what our human laws permit us to do to attain what is truly proper to

us as persons and children of God.

            We need to see to it that our observance of our human laws

is not guided only by our human understanding of these laws nor by the

many human values that we can aspire and pursue. Our observance of our

laws should not be guided by our sense of justice alone.

            While these understanding and values and sense of justice

are indispensable, unavoidable and legitimate, we need to see to it

that it is charity that inspires our observance of our human laws.

            In fact, our understanding and the human values and the

sense of justice that can motivate us in observing our human laws

should come as a consequence of charity. They are not supposed to be

the original principle in our observance of our human laws.

            Short of that ideal, our observance of our human laws will

lead us sooner or later to all forms of anomalies, many of them can be

so subtle that we can hardly realize that they are anomalies.

            Our human laws should be understood simply as guides and

not as the ultimate end itself. And that’s because we can find many

exceptions to them because of their inability to capture all the

possible situations that man get into.

            That’s the reason why many of them become obsolete, or are

even outrightly rescinded, or at least updated, modified, fined-tuned

from time to time. Our laws should be made to serve our ultimate end,

and that can only be that we be led to God.

            It is quite clear that our laws should be made to serve

our ultimate end, and that can only be that we be led to God, our

original source and ultimate end. Our laws should be such that they

should not negate nor even undermine the achievement of this

fundamental purpose of the laws. Even our traffic laws, so

insignificant if impacted with our ultimate end, should respect this

fundamental purpose.

            Ideally, both the letter and the spirit of our human laws

should be in perfect harmony. But that is hardly the case in real

life. The problem, of course, is that the articulation of our laws is

conditioned and limited by our human powers that cannot fully capture

the richness of human life, considering its spiritual and supernatural

character that will always involve the intangibles and mysteries and

the like.

            That is the reason why we can go beyond but not against a

particular law, when such law cannot fully express the concrete

conditions of a particular case.

            So the proper understanding and application of our law can

only be achieved if we discern closely the spirit of God. Tackling our

laws only by means of our common sense or our other ways of estimation

can open the possibility of missing the real intent of the laws. We

really need to go to Christ to know the real spirit behind our human

laws!