Day 5 - Justice... or Let's just assign ourselves extra credit.

Today was another pretty boring class, all we did was talk about justice, nothing too heavy.  But I did ask one question and received an answer from the teacher that will be worth remembering in the future.

So class was started and the teacher the teacher asked us if anybody has the right to extra credit?  We answered, no.  He then divided the classroom down the middle into two groups: East and West.  We were to write down our names on a piece of paper (for our respective groups) and he said that he will give five points of extra credit for rhyming words.  East's task was to find five words that rhyme with cat, West's job was to find five words that rhyme with dog.

Well both groups did the task.  He had East read their words, he wrote them down on the board and then wrote "+5 extra credit" underneath their list.  Our group (West) read our words, he wrote them down on the board, and then proceeded to start with class.

Now you could tell that it was OBVIOUS to everyone that my group didn't get any extra credit.  My former-teacher radar could tell that this was a little experiment to get the class thinking about fairness and stuff.  So we had a little discussion about what happened, how expectations were not met, etc. and this led into the topic of the day.  Justice.

But while we were still discussing the situation and the West group realized that we weren't getting any extra credit I asked the teacher, "Can we assign ourselves extra credit?"

He responded, "Sure, it won't make it into my book, but go ahead."  This response got me thinking.

While once talking to someone about the authority of God, I likened it to a classroom situation (now all analogies never have a complete one-to-one relationship but bear with me).  Let's say that the teacher is the god of the classroom.  In many ways this is true.  The teacher has authority inherent in his position, the teacher can tell the students what to do and what no to do.  The teacher decides what the expectations of the homework assignment are and how it will be graded.  The teacher can even choose to give or withhold extra credit.  Let's say that a student says to the teacher, "I believe that I deserve extra credit for being awesome."

If I heard this back in the day, I would probably have chuckled and kept on with my work.  But let's say that the student persists and asks, "So you're not going to give me extra credit for being awesome?"

"Nope," would be my reply.

"Well, then I'll just give extra credit to myself."

I can tell you that I would reply the exact same way as my ethics teacher did.  He is perfectly capable of assigning himeslf extra credit, but it certainly will not make it on the report card.  What the student chose to be his reality did not matter at all.  The only reality that ever mattered was the teacher's.

But let's say that there is no teacher.  If the student decided to give himself extra credit, is there any objective reality where the student will actually get some extra credit?  To whom is he speaking?  The other students?  Does all the students getting together and deciding upon the standards of extra credit and then applying it to themselves mean they actually have this extra credit now?  It's possible that the students may divide themselves into two camps with opposite standards of extra credit.  How then would they decide which standard is the correct standard?

Let's get out of the analogy and pretend that God does not exist.  If God does not exist, why isn't it the case that any human 'right' (like in Monday's discussion) or justice is not just humans assigning themselves extra credit?  Sure we can SAY that we have human rights and people ought to be treated in a just manner but does that objectively mean that human rights and justice exist?  Does all of us human beings getting together and deciding upon the standards of human rights and then applying it to ourselves mean we actually have human rights now?

The teacher ended the class with a story from Second Samuel where the prophet Nathan tells David that he did something wrong by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba (If you need a reminder of the story, click here).  The teacher used this example to explain that if you're in a situation it's tough to see if your own behavior was just or not (which is probably why people are not their own judges in a courtroom case).  According to my teacher, Nathan was there to tell David that he did something wrong and David was able to see this because Nathan was an 'outside voice' and saw the situation from a different point of view.

I should have brought this up, but why should David have listened to Nathan?  If all of the Hebrews were mistaken and there is no God, then all Nathan was telling David was that he doesn't get any extra credit for killing Uriah.  In fact, David got negative extra credit.  He got so much negative extra credit that David's report card was showing a big fat F in the class called Life 101.

Unless Nathan had some sort of authority then David could just have responded with, "Nu-huh!" stuck out his tongue, and ran away.  But Nathan did have authority.  Not inherent in himself, but his authority came from God.  David was cut to the heart and admitted that he sinned against the LORD.  It is God that is the standard of our behavior.  It is God who is perfectly just in all His actions.  He is the object in which human rights and justice rest.  Though we, like David, sin against Him every day, God tells us, like Nathan told David, that the LORD has taken away our sin.

So while I didn't talk about the topic of justice and its definitions and whatever, I'm just going to assign myself extra credit anyway.  :)