Christian Ethics and Modelling Heaven

One of the complaints you hear levelled against Christianity every so often is the one about how 'there's too many rules and stuff, man, I don't wanna sacrifice my freedom to do whatever I want, you know'. (Perhaps uncharitably phrased, but you get my drift.) And at first glance, for a religion claiming that following rules won't get you to heaven, there do seem to be a lot of rules.


And not only are there a lot of rules, a lot of them don't seem to make any sense. Like this one:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:22

What is this submission nonsense? Didn't we realise a while ago that men and women are equal? Or what about this:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters.

1 Corinthians 6:7-8

So I'm not supposed to take fellow Christians to court. OK, fine, but what if a fellow Christian takes me to court? Don't I have the right to be vindicated in a court of law? 

Or, finally, this:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." [...]
"“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

Matthew 5: 38-45

This doesn't even make any sense. Do not resist an evil person? Why not? Evil persons don't deserve my stuff. And if I loved my enemies they wouldn't be my enemies. Plus, not only does it not make sense, it's a command that's practically impossible to keep. How can I love my enemies? Jesus has really gone off the deep end here.

I think the thing that seems craziest about these commands is that they all leave us vulnerable. Submission is voluntarily giving up your power to someone else; that seems like a dangerous position to be in. Likewise, if I'm convinced that I shouldn't take other Christians to court, I lack the ability to seek compensation if I've been wronged. And if I have to turn the other cheek and give my enemy my shirt and coat, well, that just seems like I'm open to exploitation by anybody who decides they like the look of my stuff. In the world we live in, it just doesn't make sense to leave yourself vulnerable like that.

I'd like to suggest that the reason these rules don't really make sense is because they actually don't make sense in a vacuum. If you look at these things on their own, they just seem like crazy rules that nobody in their right minds would submit themselves to, but if you take a step back things start to make more sense. Let's go back to the first example, but widen a little bit:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. [...]

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her... In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

The command to submit only makes sense in the context of self-sacrificial love. A husband that really loves his wife 'as Christ loved the church' isn't going to take advantage of the fact that his wife is to submit to him. In fact, there's very little of the worldly conception of 'submission' going on if the person you're submitting to is radically concerned with your wellbeing rather than how he can profit from your vulnerability. Likewise, a man is going to find it hard to love his wife self-sacrificially if she uses that behaviour for her own personal gain. The commands only make sense in the context of each other.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in we can never entirely dispose of that vulnerability. You can never be sure that a fellow Christian won't take you to court, or that an evil man won't take your shirt and coat. In a sense we're back to square one; left with these commands that seem to saddle you with a vulnerability that seems downright crazy to voluntarily adopt.

And that's why I think there might be another dimension to Christian ethics; they point us towards a world where these commands are possible to live out. Christian ethics aren't rules, or even really commands. They're illustrations, pictures of what it looks like to live well in God's kingdom. As ambassadors of Christ, Christians are charged to bear that illustration and model it to the world. That's why you have to turn the other cheek; not because doing so will save you or because it's a new law, but because by doing so you point in some small way towards a time and a place where retaliation and retribution will be obsolete and completely forgotten. That's why you don't take fellow Christians to court - because by doing so you model a world where bitterness and conflict no longer exist.

Christians, in their behaviour on earth, have been set the joyously impossible task of pointing the way towards heaven.