"If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you who is wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a believer--and before unbelievers at that?" [1 Corinthians 6:5-6]
Everybody knows the saying: "Drastic times call for drastic measures." The trouble is, everybody's also easily convinced that whatever times they are living through are "drastic" ones. And once you've told yourself that the special nature of your particular situation gives you permission to do something extraordinarily desperate or extreme, but which you wouldn't let others get away with, the consequences can become really bad, really fast. I hear politicians, pundits, and talking heads on TV throwing around language like "the nuclear option" when they want to take severe and unusual action, as though they have forgotten there is always fallout when a nuclear bomb goes off--and usually it is hard to contain or control. [Isn't that the lesson of every Godzilla movie and post-apocalyptic dystopia, as well?]
The thing is, we live in a time and a place where extreme, and often drastic, measures are threatened with more and more frequency, and with less and less regard for the damage that would be done if someone finally chose "the nuclear option." In a time of arch polarization where the language of "looking tough" is easily confused with actual decent leadership. We live in a cultural moment where pushing things to maximum levels of conflict is passed off as "character" rather than sheer dumb stubbornness, and where the ones who look for off-ramps to de-escalate tensions are often called "weak," "cowardly," or "gutless." So of course, in an environment like that, where we keep being told that we are living in desperate times, we are going to tell ourselves we have permission to do desperate things and go to extreme measures rather than looking for common ground or lowered tensions.
And here, the apostle Paul would like to have a word. In both his congregation's first-century setting as well as ours in the twenty-first century, there are voices pushing toward greater and greater conflict, convinced they must do so because "these are drastic times." Unfortunately, the twenty centuries in between reveal just how many terrible things can happen when people tell themselves they are living in exceptional circumstances. Paul, however, would remind us that maybe the sky isn't actually falling in most areas of our lives at any given moment, and that we don't get special permission to take the nuclear option against someone else just because we are mildly inconvenienced. And maybe there is a difference between living in times of "mild inconvenience" and "drastic" or "desperate" ones.
Once again, the context here is the question of how the followers of Jesus resolve conflicts and address disputes with one another. And Paul has been making the case that these ordinary run-of-the-mill disagreements could be resolved in-house within the Christian community, possibly with the mediation of other wise voices from within the church, rather than taking one another to court. Importantly, he doesn't say there could never be a situation where a church member would take a grievance to a public/Roman court, but he does seem to think that an awful lot of routine situations don't require that. Most of the time, we aren't living in extreme circumstances, and so the nuclear option--taking one to a civil court and pushing the conflict into more extreme territory--shouldn't really be on the table.
It's probably also worth remembering, too, that from the early Christian perspective, the Roman Empire wasn't terribly reliable when it came to administering actual justice. After all, our central story is of Jesus' wrongful torture and execution by an empire that was more interested in making an example out of rabble-rousers than actually serving justice. And Paul himself had lived through plenty of wrongful accusations, beatings, near lynchings, stonings from mob violence that never seemed to be reined in by the authorities, and corrupt trials. So the Empire didn't have much of a track record among those first generations of Christ-followers of producing righteous resolutions in trials, but rather was known for brutality and caprice in punishing people whether they were guilty of anything or not. You can easily imagine Paul saying, "Why would you want to take a case to the same judicial system that crucified Jesus when he was innocent, and that always seems to let the lynch-mobs off the hook after they've nearly stoned me to death?" And you can easily envision him thinking, "If we Christians take our petty disputes to Roman courts for resolving our conflicts, we'll be legitimizing the same crooked system that killed our Lord--why would we do that?" By comparison, finding a way to resolve differences without involving the Romans seems a lot better, doesn't it?
The only reason, then, that you would be itching to take your dispute to court in that context would be if you were convinced that you were entitled to skip right to the nuclear option. If you were more interested in devastating your opponent and taking a gamble on using the Roman "justice" system as a blunt instrument to bludgeon them into submission than you were with actually achieving justice, you'd have no qualms with taking your neighbor to court like this. But... if you were willing to let tensions simmer down, and to take the time to talk things through, then maybe going to the local Caesar-endorsed tribunal wouldn't seem like the right course of action. And that's just it: when we are truly committed to setting things right and restoring damaged relationships, we'll be less likely to resort to scorched-earth tactics that cause irreparable damage to others. When we are just trying to hurt or punish someone for the sake of our wish for revenge, we'll tell ourselves we are justified in taking extreme measures.
So, today can be a chance to calm things down, lower tensions, and lessen the drama in our lives. While there are still plenty of loud voices peddling outrage and pushing us to threaten people with "nuclear options" in our lives because we are convinced our situations are so unique and special as to warrant it, we can be the voices of wisdom that take a breath and strive to preserve friendly relationships over punishing for revenge. That may not always get headlines, because peacemaking is often quiet work. By definition it often happens without the courtroom drama of the movies. But it is worth trying, exactly because it is hard for anything to grow again after you've salted the ground or scorched the earth. And we are called to be people who can envision a future beyond our present conflicts in which new life sprouts once again. That can only happen, however, if we haven't wiped everything out under a mushroom cloud.
Today, pass on the nuclear option. Do the hard work of finding common ground, even if we only uncover it one inch at a time.
God of both peace and justice, keep us from bitterness, pettiness, and the need for revenge, so that we can restore injured relationships and make reparations with one another.
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