On Roofs and Gravity--August 9, 2019

On Roofs and Gravity--August 9, 2019

"When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it." [Deuteronomy 22:8]

Here's a confession: I was thirty-nine years old when I first learned about the existence of this commandment in Deuteronomy... and my thirty-ninth birthday was two weeks ago.

I think I knew--maybe--that there were more general commandments in the Torah that told the Israelites they were not permitted to stand idly by when a neighbor is in danger of injury or death (see Leviticus 19:16 there).  And I certainly knew Jesus' teaching that we are called to come to the aid of the person at the side of the road, even if their ethnicity, citizenship, or nationality are different from yours... and even if there was a priest and a Levite who went right on by.

But this verse, a weird little fragment of ancient Israelite Revised Building Code, somehow I never picked up on it, for all these years I've been reading the Scriptures.  Maybe it's because this verse doesn't translate well into a Sunday School flannel board story or cross-stitched wall hanging, and there are no praise-band accompanied guitar-driven anthems on "Christian radio" based on this verse about roofing requirements.

But maybe there should be.

See, the thing I find so compelling, so thought-provoking, about this stray verse from the Law of Moses is that it insists on a kind of neighborliness that takes responsibility for even the random bad things that "might" happen in the future.  It reveals that in God's kind of community, we take responsibility for each other's well-being, simply as a matter of our common humanity.  And it won't let us off the hook or make the excuses when we have the ability to prevent harm or death.  This commandment makes it clear to me that "loving your neighbor"--that essential commandment of Scripture--is not primarily about emotions or feelings, but about being willing to hold yourself and your possessions to a higher standard for the sake of your neighbor's well-being.  It is about putting the other, whoever the "other" might be, first.

Let's be clear about what the commandment here in Deuteronomy was saying.  This book of the Hebrew Scriptures is presented as Moses' farewell address to the people of Israel before they enter the Promised Land. So a lot of its directives and prohibitions are set in the future tense, for the days when these wandering formerly enslaved people finally have their own land, their own farms, their own communities, and their own homes.  This commandment is like that: "When the day comes that you are building a new house for yourselves," Moses says, "don't leave a dangerous edge on the roof where someone else could fall off of it, because you are responsible for the lives of those around you."

Now, we might need to make sure we are picturing the right kind of mental image of an ancient Israelite house here.  We aren't talking pitched roofs and shingles designed to channel away rain water and snow, but rather a flat roof with access from the inside of the house, which made for a sort of usable bonus room in good weather. You could do your laundry upon the roof, sit in the sun, and handle a host of other chores up there.  So it's not that unreasonable that someone might be up on your roof--more so than in the communities where I live and work.  And because of that reality, the commandment was that everyone's home was to have a sort of ledge, or parapet, around the edge of their roof, so that no one would even accidentally fall off of the roof and get hurt.  It was a building code regulation imposed on all the Israelites for the benefit of clumsy people who might otherwise take a tumble.

Now the thing that pokes at me here is that the commandment isn't framed in terms of self-interest.  The commandment doesn't say, "You really ought to be careful if you are going to be up on your roof, and you might want to put a short wall around your roof to make sure that you don't fall off while you are hanging shirts on the clothesline up there."  Rather, the commandment seems to assume it could be someone else--some hypothetical stranger--up on your roof, who might accidentally fall off of it, unless there is a parapet to help keep them from falling.  The commandment is framed in terms of neighborliness--it is simply a concrete way of loving your neighbor, whoever that neighbor might be, that your house is built with a special additional level of protection to prevent people being killed or injured.  

To be sure, it is still possible to fall off a roof, even with a parapet on it.  It's just a lot less likely. And yes, to be sure, someone could have made the counter-argument to Moses, "Roofs don't kill people--gravity kills people when they fall from a height!"  You know how the rest of the grumbling would go:  "We don't have a roof-ledge problem--we have a clumsiness problem, if that many people are falling off of roofs, they need to watch their step rather than tell me how I build my house!"  Or, "Well, if we're going to require parapets on rooftops, are we going to take away windows, too, because someone could fall out of a roof?"  Or you could easily imagine, "Our ancestors left Egypt to be free of all those restrictions and regulations--no one should be able to tell me what to do with my house, because it's mine!" You could even say that if someone is up on a roof--even someone else's roof!--and they trip and fall, it's their own fault for being clumsy, or for trespassing, or for not paying attention to where they were walking.  You can argue that each person should be responsible for their own actions and that if you fall off a roof it's your own fault.

And yet, the commandment from Deuteronomy isn't interested in merely assigning blame, but more in preserving life.  From the Torah's perspective, the inconvenience of having to build an extra ledge around my roof is not more important than the value of a human being--whether I know that human being or not--who might someday be up on my roof.  And from the Torah's perspective, the effective banning of non-ledged roofs is worth the possibility that some klutz's life might be saved because they were blocked by a ledge when they were up on their neighbor's roof for a party.  This kind of concern for the well-being of the neighbor is hard-wired into the way the people of ancient Israel were commanded to see life.

The long and the short of it is this: God's people were taught from the wilderness days on that it was more important to preserve and guard human life--even the lives of strangers--than to avoid being inconvenienced or having to pay more (in home construction costs or what have you).  In fact, they were taught that "my individual freedom to do whatever the hell I want" is less important than preserving life all around, because we all belong to each other, and because God loves my neighbor as well as God loves me.  

The other thing that this sort of commandment reminds me is that sometimes I am going to be the one whose life is preserved by a guard-rail like this--literal or otherwise.  Instead of complaining that I have to make special accommodations for some other clumsy oaf who could hypothetically be trespassing upon my roof, maybe I should consider that I could be the one who one day is kept from falling to my death because someone else did what the commandment said and put up a ledge around their roof.  Or maybe it's a seatbelt that saves my life, or a fire exit that I am able to use, or a ramp that lets me participate in an event rather than be excluded from it because I am in a wheelchair.  The point is that even while I still maintain that I am responsible for my own actions, I also have to recognize that there are situations where I am dependent on others to look out for me, too.  And there are ways I am called to look out for my neighbor.

I am under no illusions that one rule from the book of Deuteronomy could have prevented all the possible deaths-by-falling that surely must have happened in those ancient centuries.  I don't think that the commandments were ever intended to be taken as magical that way.  But they do suggest a particular way of seeing the world, and our relationships with others within that world.  The Torah takes it for granted that our lives are connected with one another's, and that there is no way for me to live "the good life" without concern for the well-being of the lives of my neighbors.  The Torah assumes that my personal convenience is not the highest moral good, and that God reserves the right to put limits on my choices for the sake of protecting other people's lives.  The Torah also assumes that even though there is much in this world that is beyond my control, I still bear a responsibility for doing good for my neighbor.  The Torah understands that roofs by themselves don't kill people, and yet the Torah is perfectly willing to say, "Still there are regulations about what kinds of roofs people can have on their homes," for the sake of at least trying to protect life.  Who knows if anybody was ever actually saved by a roof parapet in ancient Israel?  We just don't have the statistics to know.  But from the perspective of Torah, that's not the point--the point is that neighborliness requires we go above and beyond for the well-being of others, and others are called to do the same for me and my well-being.  What is ruled out by the Torah is an attitude of, "My freedom to do what I want is of supreme value."  That's just not the way the people of God are taught to think, act, or see the world.  And God's intention with commandments like this one is to shape our hearts so that we do care enough about our neighbor to take the extra steps, energy, and labor to protect them from a fall--even if the hypothetical fall wouldn't be directly my fault, but gravity's fault.  God's intention is to shape us into the kind of people who care more about the well-being of others than our own petty convenience or having a little extra disposable income.

Now, I know that the comparisons to debates going on in our country right now are inevitable.  And I know that one blog post is not an adequate place to explore the minutiae of policy possibilities for the problem of gun violence in our society.  I even readily grant that any one social problem probably has many separate causes, both direct and indirect, so there's no single magic solution to the question of how to prevent people from being killed in a mass shooting. I also readily grant that the parallels between ancient Israel's commandment about roof parapets and present-day gun control policy only go so far--they are not completely comparable, and I know that.  At the same time, I do think that there is perspective and wisdom to be gained--at least for people who regard these words as Scripture--from the way the Torah prioritizes the value of human life.  

For whatever ways our present-day problems are different from ancient Israel's, there is no getting away from the fact that the Torah places a higher value on human life than on a lack of regulations for our lives together--yes, even down to the rules for how you are allowed to build your home.  The Torah rules out an attitude of, "As long as I'm not actively hurting you, I'm not responsible for what happens to you," because the God of the Scriptures cares about us together as community.  And if I dare to regard these Scriptures as the Word of God, then I'm not allowed to say, "Roofs don't kill people--gravity kills people" as an excuse for not putting a parapet on my roof in ancient Israel... and I'm not permitted to shrug off the possible deaths of others as just "not my concern." It is my concern, because we all belong to one another in the beloved community of God.  All of us--even the hypothetical stranger clumsily tripping above my kitchen ceiling. And even when I'm the clumsy one.

Lord God, give us your vision to see how we belong to one another because we belong to you, and give us the courage to act in ways that preserve one another's lives because you love us all.