Nomian Idealism in the UMC

More than 2000 years ago in China there lived political philosopher named Han Fei Zi.  His work gave rise to a school of Chinese political thought called legalism.   The idea was quite simple. If the laws are clear enough and the punishments harsh enough everybody will behave and order will ensue.  

The classic legalist story has the philosopher leading a young disciple to the edge of a cliff. It was clear that to step over the cliff would lead to certain death.  And so the emperor asks his young disciple whether an animal ever stepped over the side of the cliff?  Had a child or an insane person ever stepped over the side of the cliff, or even approached it?  When the young disciples answered “no“ the philosopher had made his point.

This philosophy actually fit nicely with the earlier Confucian ideal of the "rectification of names." In an ideal society the title of an official, or even the name of a profession, indicates exactly what the person does. No one should do what they are not “entitled" to do.  Nor should anyone fail to do exactly exactly what they are “entitled" to do. (You can see that we have this idea in Western culture as well.)

Legalist philosophy deeply influenced the emperor Qin Shi Huang who united China after the Warring States era. 

In another famous story the emperor (also know for burning books he didn’t like) had fallen asleep and his bed covers had fallen off. His prime minister found him asleep and shivering and so lifted up the covers back onto the sleeping emperor. Upon awakening the emperor asked who had covered him up.  When he is told that it was the prime minister he ordered the prime minister‘s prompt execution. Because the PM had done what a PM is not entitled to do.

Apparently the prime minister hadn’t gotten the memo that no one ever jumps off the cliff. 

The Qin dynasty and its ideology lasted exactly 26 years before it was overthrown by people with more humanity and common sense. That dynasty, the Han, actually created a culture and not merely an empire. It ruled for half a millennia and left behind much of what we think of as Chinese culture today.

You cannot actually create and sustain a social order with laws and job descriptions no matter how carefully they are drawn and no matter how the harsh punishments for stepping beyond either.  

Societies and communities are created through an ongoing series of agreements and compromises between their members. These ephemera may be written down, but they are ephemeral nonetheless and constantly the subject of negotiation and renegotiation. Ink on paper, or its illusory digital forms, perpetuate the lie of perpetuity. Something the Han learned from a new dharma that came from across the Himalayas and planted itself in Chinese soil as Mahayana Buddhism and bloomed quite nicely alongside Confucian thought and emergent Taoism. And all three could tolerate in later centuries the arrival of Christianity.  

The best any society or community can do is try to define a set of processes (and these will constantly be negotiated as well) that allow agreements to be made with a minimum of conflict and violence.  The real heart of social order, as the Taoists understood, is learning to conform with the inexorable processes of negotiation and compromise out of which societies and communities arise. Like the interaction of Yin and Yang it is their interaction that gives forth to the myriad of things that make up our social world.

Unfortunately revolutions happen during the in-between times when people forget, deny, or refuse to conform to those processes.

United Methodists, witness the thickness of our Discipline, remain nomian idealists if not actually legalists. We seem to think that if we just keep tweaking the laws and job descriptions, which grow ever more lengthy and complex by the quadrennia, we can somehow escape the need for continual negotiation and compromise. 

Even in the midst of the current revolution we can only find a way out by generating a thick manual on dissolution. I hope we don’t print too many, hopefully soon to be out of print, copies. Trees are both orderly and precious. 

In the meantime the WCA, presumptively to be set free from its Babylonian captivity to the UMC, is busy creating an ever longer and more complex alternative Discipline in what will almost certainly be another futile effort to nail the rules on a sign (a really big sign) just this side of a meticulously if not tediously described cliff and chasm. 

Whether what remains of the post-split UMC can trim down the number of paragraphs and subparagraphs over which to toss people on its rather gentler slippery slopes remains to be seen. As does the question in either case of what remains when someone hits bottom. 

In the meantime we might all wish to pray for all those congregations, lay persons, and ministers who in their daily lives share Christ’s love by conforming to a real world of constantly changing relationships and needs. Because soon, too soon, they (and we) will all be falling one way or another and watching their friends and colleagues, our friends and colleagues, for years or generations dropping out of sight on the other side. 

And Han Fei Zi will laugh his hollow laugh from the pits of Hell where he and Qin Shi Huang will toast to their success. Unless of course the great wheel of karma has already deprived them of even the permanence of their depravity. As we hope it will all of us.