Jesus on Lawfare

Matthew 15: 1 - 9

I’m ethnically Christian and often find sources of understanding in the Scriptures that aid a desire for clarity on American political phenomenology.

One such passage is when Jesus calls out the practice of Lawfare in his own day. He and his disciples were a target of Lawfare.

The conditions of Lawfare occur when there are a plethora of regulations that are such that it becomes nearly impossible to live them all out at all, let alone perfectly.

Such conditions were present in ethnic Judaism of first century Israel under Roman occupation. Not only were there hundreds of Jewish laws extending back hundreds of years into the tradition, but thousands of interpretations of how those regulations apply in the situation in life faithful readers encountered.

Add to that the bureaucracy of the local Jewish court and administration who themselves were under Roman law, itself a gargantuan militocracy administered a thousand miles away with layers of rules and regulations piled under discretion of one man, the emperor.

One could go wrong in any number of these on any given Sunday. In such conditions, it would be common for many of these regulations to fall into disuse and to be ignored altogether. When that happens for a long time, a new customary law emerges, which regards the former laws and traditions of the elders as outdated, though “technically” (as the kids say) still on the books.

Jewish leaders asked Jesus a question in this passage in Matthew:

That was the King James Version. Here it is in the New King James Version.

Jesus looks as if he’s merely pulling a “Whataboutism”, a concept we discussed on The Republican Professor Podcast with Cal. State University professor of logic and critical thinking Adam Stowell.

Meaning, it can look as if Jesus is merely changing the subject to avoid the charge.

But a closer, more careful reading I think reveals something else, a commentary on Law itself — Lawfare is itself against the law.

Lawfare occurs when the laws are so complex, many fall into disuse. But an authority can still make selective use of such violations of Law when it benefits their political agenda, when they perceive a threat to their authority. When such selective use of a laser focus on the letter of the law is made use of while failing to apply that same laser focus on everyone under law, including the perveyors or would-be perveyors of the selective prosecution, Lawfare appears.

Jesus is against Lawfare. He calls it out.

The evidence Jesus uses is the selective bias which his political opponents hoped no one would notice. That itself is evidence that the hearts of these would-be perveyors of Lawfare are far from the heart of God, and the true meaning of the Law.

In other words, selective picking and choosing undermines the very concept of being a nation under Law. It itself is unLawful.

Luke, for Trp