Serving The Law that Serves Us Best

When I think back on my career as a police officer, it was not uncommon to say or think, “I served the law.” While I knew there were reasons for the law, the phrase, “I serve the law,” never seemed problematic. I always knew I served the people and didn’t get too hung up on the phraseology.

Even outside the vocation of policing, we often think in those terms. We serve our boss, we serve our company, we serve our stockholders, we serve our nation, etc.

Heck, we even service our cars.

We say these things without too much thought; we sort of understand and believe its all good. I wonder, however, how often we consider what’s behind that service.

Words and phrases do work on us at many levels. Meanings morph over time. We need to be guarded against use of language; because, at times language can lead us astray. It can lead us in a direction away from our best nature.

Recently, I read an article that brought this notion of serving the law into a kind of specific relief, We Are Not the Servants Of The Law by Fr. Philip Powell O.P. In this piece he eloquently points out that natural laws can never be broken or erased; they are written into our being, into our hearts.  In contrast, man-made laws can be broken and are designed to govern our behavior.

Hopefully, we make laws that are compatible with and/or proclaim natural law as its parent. Our man-made laws should concern themselves with the ethical behavior that rises from natural law. That is often not the case however.

I was reminded in that piece of how we need to keep in mind what is best for the human being first. When I speak of the human being, I am speaking of the human being free. This does not mean free to do what he or she pleases. We are all capable of turning against natural law. But free from the bonds created when we serve laws or ideas contrary to natural law.

We are deluged in man-made laws, IRS codes, vehicle codes, air quality regulations, laws concerning our pets, rules and regulations at work, and many, many others. There is no way to know them all. We should do our best to follow them for sure.

To follow them we should ask why is that we have that law? It should point to something that serves the human person (natural law is universal and should therefore serve all people.) Then, we should ask, does it crush the human person’s freedom to live under natural law? If the answer to the latter is yes, there is no benefit to the law as it does not serve us. It can be said to be an unjust law.

How do we know what laws are just and what laws are unjust?  We must measure them against natural law. We are not obligated to obey an unjust law that violates natural law. In fact we are obligated to resist it, to fight against it.

In a sense, serving the law or anything rising from it is a kind of idolatry.

I think the difference between those who believe man should serve the law and the ones who believe the law should serve man is this:

It comes down to a faith in the human person.

The former sees the human as so defected that it needs to be controlled, restrained, even enslaved. The human being is thus objectified. The latter understand humans as flawed but also sees intelligence, responsibility, self control, beauty, courage, love, and self sacrifice in the human person. In this latter vision, the human being is recognized as made in the image of God. The former sees something darker.

And, in that dark vision, man is made something less human, something irrational. When we serve unjust laws, we follow rulers and man-made laws. We end up becoming the slaves we make of ourselves.

When just laws serve us, they free us to live in the way we were created, not free to do anything that pleases us as I have said. Rather, we are free in a natural sense. Not because we are ordered to follow the law by a ruler, but because we are ordered to the law itself by our nature;

it not only leads us to it, we lead ourselves to it with our heart, mind, and soul.