A Fable About the Fifth Commandment or An Anti-Abortion Zealot Approaches Heaven

Recently a man walked into a church and killed one of the ushers in cold blood. He did it because the usher was also a prominent doctor who performed late-term abortions. By killing the doctor, he believed that he was protecting the unborn. Thus, in a very twisted sense, he killed to enforce the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill. He will probably spend the rest of his life in prison and die there as an old man.

Let's imagine what happens when he appears at the gate of heaven. The man walks up to St. Peter and says, "I have done God's will and I am here to claim my heavenly reward." St. Peter asks him, "Do you repent the sins you committed in your life on earth?" The man honestly answers yes, because he did not consider killing an abortionist to be a sin. St. Peter tells him, "Based on your heart-felt confession, you ware welcome to enter heaven, my son."

However, as the man enters heaven, he is confused. Although heaven is packed with billions of souls, he immediately notices a teen prostitute who died of AIDS, a liberal politician and the very same abortion doctor who he had killed. In a rage of righteous indignation, he seeks out Jesus and demands that he be given a sword to drive the hated sinners to Hell. Jesus sadly shakes his head and says, "When I ate with tax collectors and sinners, it was to save them, not to condemn them. Why are you unhappy that I have succeeded?"

The man spits in Jesus's face and storms out of heaven to find a more righteous place.

Apologies to C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

According to a recent article in the newspaper, a majority of people now consider themselves pro-life, although they do not all oppose abortion in all circumstances. The man who slew the abortion doctor was not pro-life. His friends said that he had been consumed with an Old Testament eye for an eye mentality.

The problem with commandments is that we are so used to seeing them as negative that we fail to see them as a call to do good. In church this morning, the pastor said that he urges his confirmands to learn the ten commandments, but also reminds them that the commandments boil down to two things: love and relationships. Mind you, this was coming from the conservative church that I attend, not the liberal one.

I don't remember reading Luther's Small Cathecism when I was growing up. It may be that I wasn't paying attention or that our church was too modern to use such a dated text. However, when I read Luther today, I am amazed at how well he captures the paradoxical nature of Christianity. In Luther, the commandments are not just stop signs setting forth boundaries which may not be crossed, but beacons summoning us to a place where we can love God and love our neighbor. Here is what Luther had to say about the Fifth Commandment:

The Fifth Commandment.

Thou shalt not kill.

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God that we may not hurt nor harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need in every need and danger of life and body.

In the Large Cathecism, Luther expands on this theme. It is a long passage, but worth reading.

189] (U)nder this commandment not only he is guilty who does evil to his neighbor, but he also who can do him good, prevent, resist evil, defend and save him, so that no bodily harm or hurt happen to him, and yet does not do it. 190] If, therefore, you send away one that is naked when you could clothe him, you have caused him to freeze to death; if you see one suffer hunger and do not give him food, you have caused him to starve. So also, if you see any one innocently sentenced to death or in like distress, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him. And it will not avail you to make the pretext that you did not afford any help, counsel, or aid thereto, for you have withheld your love from him and deprived him of the benefit whereby his life would have been saved.

191] Therefore God also rightly calls all those murderers who do not afford counsel and help in distress and danger of body and life, and will pass a most terrible sentence upon them in the last day, as Christ Himself has announced when He shall say, Matt. 25:42f : I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not. That is: You would have suffered Me and Mine to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, would have suffered the wild beasts to tear us to pieces, or left us to rot in prison or perish in distress. What else is that but to reproach them 192] as murderers and bloodhounds? For although you have not actually done all this, you have nevertheless, so far as you were concerned, suffered him to pine and perish in misfortune.

It is just as if I saw some one navigating and laboring in deep water [and struggling against adverse winds] or one fallen into fire, and could extend to him the hand to pull him out and save him, and yet refused to do it. What else would I appear, even in the eyes of the world, than as a murderer and a criminal?

193] Therefore it is God's ultimate purpose that we suffer harm to befall no man, but show him all good and love; 194] and, as we have said, it is specially directed toward those who are our enemies. For to do good to our friends is but an ordinary heathen virtue, as Christ says in Matt. 5:46.

The man who shot the abortion doctor was a murderer. He may have been anti-abortion, but he was not pro-life. As Luther clearly explains, Christians are called upon to be pro-life in all respects.

Does the Supreme Court Read John Grisham?

A decision handed down yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court reads surprisingly like a John Grisham novel. In The Appeal , a polluting company financed the election of a conservative judge in order to shift the balance on a closely divided state supreme court. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Case No. 08-22 (U.S. 2009), the chairman of a company hit with a $50 million verdict financed the election of a justice to the State Supreme Court of Appeals who was the deciding vote in reversing the judgment. While Grisham's tale (spoiler alert here) was one where money won the day, the U.S. Supreme Court did not allow a similar result.

In the Massey case, a jury awarded a $50 million verdict against the coal company for fraudulent misrepresentation, concealment and tortious interference. The company's chairman took a sudden interest in state judicial races, spending $3 million to help elect a challenger running for the state Supreme Court of Appeals. This contribution was greater than the amount raised by the candidate from all other sources. The challenger unseated the incumbent judge, winning by just 50,000 votes. The newly elected justice then voted as part of a 3-2 majority to reverse the judgment. Not surprisingly, he refused to remove himself from the case.

At first it looked like Massey's chairman had made a pretty shrewd investment. He spent $3 million of his own money to get rid of a $50 million judgment against his company. Talk about return on invested capital!

However, on June 8, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court said not so fast. Under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, a judge must remove himself from a case if “the probability of actual bias on the part of the judge or decisionmaker is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.” Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy ruled that this was a case where the plaintiff did not receive due process because his case was decided by a judge who could not be expected to be fair. "Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias arise when . . . a man chooses the judge in his own cause."

The conservative judges dissented, worrying that the court had set too vague of a standard and that courts would be faced with a lot of frivolous motions to remove the judge. However, in this case, I think that the result was spot on. If nothing else, the result was justified by the sheer audacity of the effort to elect a judge prone to reverse the verdict.

I have long felt that electing judges is a dangerous proposition. A small percentage of the voters cast votes for candidates they know nothing about. A catchy name (see my prior blog article about Ken Law) or the right party affiliation can often mean more than judicial qualifications. The system also puts lawyers and judges in an awkward position where the judge must ask for money from the lawyers appearing in his court and the lawyers feel pressured to contribute to the winning candidate. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the Supreme Court stepped in and fixed an obvious abuse. Unfortunately though, you can't count on the Supreme Court to swoop in to the rescue in every case. The best that you can hope for is that judges will recognize when their contributors' interests are closely implicated in a case and have the courage to step back.

Grading the Presidents

After President Obama's first 100 days, pundits were already grading his performance and trying to predict his place in history. All of this strikes me as a bit premature, but it got me thinking about how we measure the presidents. CSPAN recently conducted a survey of 65 presidential historians asking them to rank the presidents. In an effort to make it look scientific, they came up with ten categories such as crisis leadership, moral authority and pursuing equal justice for all. While this approach produces a numerical rank which can be used to state that George W. Bush ranked 27 points below Herbert Hoover, I think that it creates an illusion of precision where none exists. For example, one category is relations with Congress. If a president was blessed with a boneheaded Congress, does that mean that the president gets a low score? Then there's "performance within context of times." What does that mean? Also, how do you compare JFK's 2 1/2 years in office to Ike's eight year term? If a president served just one day, but that was a pretty good one, do you give him the same points as someone who served out a full term?

Instead, I would propose a four category approach which looks at the big picture. What major accomplishments did the president achieve? What obstacles did he overcome? What blunders did he make?

The Great Presidents

A great president is one whose accomplishments permanently changed America for the better or who overcame a crisis which threatened to destroy it. A sub-category of great, would be the good presidents, those who accomplished something noteworthy even if it did not permanently change the country.

Some of the great presidents were (in no particular order):

George Washington. By becoming the first president instead of the first king, he laid the foundation for democracy in this country.

Thomas Jefferson. The Louisiana Purchase made it possible for the United States to become a continental power rather than a few struggling states hemmed in by European outposts.

Abraham Lincoln. Had the courage to fight to keep the nation together.

Frankin Delano Roosevelt. While it can be debated whether his policies helped or hindered the Great Depression, he clearly mobilized and motivated the nation for World War II. Without decisive action by FDR, democracy could have become an endangered species.

The Terrible Presidents

The terrible presidents are those whose blunders permanently damaged the country or who failed to act when action was necessary to save the country. You could argue that this category should be relatively empty since nothing has happened in our relatively short history to permanently mar the nation. As a result, it is necessary to go to the lower level of bad presidents, those whose blunders could have led to permanent damage or whose failure to step up could have led to disaster if someone greater hadn't followed them.

The bad presidents include (in no particular order):

James Buchanan. Although he was a northerner, he championed the rights of slaveowners to move into the Western territories. When the election of Abraham Lincoln prompted southern states to secede, he stated that secession was illegal, but that it was also illegal for the United States to prevent secession. He stood by idly while federal garrison were seized by the Confederates. The Civil War might have been inevitable. However, by failing to act, he laid a bigger burden at the feet of his successor Abraham Lincoln.

Andrew Johnson. He tried to follow Lincoln's path for reuniting the country but screwed it up. While he sought to accelerate the return of the Southern states into the union, he was willing to tolerate the Black Codes which laid the foundation for segregation and denial of civil rights. His mishandling of a delicate situation paved the way for the Radical Republicans to impose military discipline upon the South, which caused the South to become more reactionary when it regained control over its territory. The next century was one when former slaves in the South were free in name but not in right.

Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was a simple man who promised to bring an outsider's innocence to clean up Washington. However, he was woefully unprepared for the job. He talked about malaise while inflation and unemployment skyrocketed. He watched helplessly as Iranian revolutionaries took over our embassy and then botched the rescue mission.


The Insignificant

There should be a third category for presidents who occupied their post without leaving the country any better or worse off than when they took the oath of office. The obvious contenders for this designation are the presidents who died shortly after taking office. What else can you do with William Henry Harrison, who served for just one month? Zachary Taylor who served just 16 months falls into this category as well. I would also tend to place Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur and William Howard Taft into this category because I am not really sure what they did. George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton will probably fall into this group as well, although it will take history a while to make its judgment.

The Tragic

Finally, there should be a fourth category for presidents who would have been great were it not for a failure which clouded their legacy. There are two obvious presidents who fall within this category.

Lyndon B. Johnson. It took a Southerner pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Johnson presided over what was arguably the second Civil War, laying the legal foundation for civil rights and enforcing it with federal might. Lyndon B. Johnson accomplished what the first President Johnson failed miserably at. Unfortunately, his legacy was clouded by Vietnam. While he inherited this mess from JFK, his policy of throwing hundreds of thousands of troops into a jungle to try to achieve a stalemate turned the nation against him.

Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon changed the landscape of the Cold War era. He ended the Vietnam War (although it took him four years to do so), established relations with China and negotiated detente with the Soviet Union. By reducing the tensions of the Cold War, he ensured that there was not a sequel to the Korean War and Vietnam as well as reducing the risk of nuclear annihilation. While Nixon had his faults, he would have been remembered as a great president except for one thing: Watergate.

Honorable Mention

Unfortunately, my system of four categories doesn't adequately account for one president who deserves recognition. As the nation's first unelected president, Gerald Ford was doomed to fail. Following Richard Nixon and a constitutional crisis made it nearly inevitable that he would be a one-term president. However, this decent man took one for the team. He showed up and he held things together, which is what history demands from a transitional leader. While he would otherwise fall into the category of insignificant presidents, not making things worse during a time of profound crisis is an achievement worth recognizing.