What's Good Over What's Lawful: Mark 3:1-6

Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. ² Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. ³ Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
⁴ Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
⁵ He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. ⁶ Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. (Mark 3:1-6 NIV)

In an article at Patheos.com, Morgan Guyton describes the disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees as a difference between consequentialist and deontological ethics. In consequentialist ethics, you decide what to do on the basis of what will cause the most good and least harm.  In deontological ethics, you find an authority figure to give you a duty to obey.  The more unreasonable the duty, the more "ethical" and faithful the observance.

People with deontological ethics only feel assured that they are submitting fully to an authority if they perform duties that make no sense from a consequentialist perspective. The duty must be opaque to be fully deontological. Deontological ethics says that unless I do what makes no sense to me, then my sense is my authority rather than the Bible.

In regards to this difference in ethics in Jesus interaction with the Pharisees, Guyton explains:

For the Pharisees, the Sabbath is an opaque duty. The test of whether you’re honoring the Sabbath or not is whether you avoid doing even virtuous deeds for the sake of honoring God. When Jesus puts the Sabbath in terms of “doing good or doing harm,” he’s making the Sabbath consequentialist rather than deontological. The Pharisees would say that Jesus is offering a false choice. The cessation of work on the Sabbath is a duty. Making the Sabbath pragmatic destroys the deontological authority of the law.

Jesus makes his consequentialist stance explicit when he says, “The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath, and the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). So to me, respecting Jesus’ lordship as the chief interpreter of scripture means reading it consequentially rather than deontologically.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mercynotsacrifice/2016/05/12/why-were-ethically-incomprehensible-to-each-other/

A further explanation of deontological and consequentialist ethics can be found in Joe Robinson's article at the link below.

http://www.joerobinson.net/2015/08/03/consequentialism-vs-deontology-vs-virtue-ethics/

I have to agree with Guyton in his quote above.  Jesus calls us to treat Scripture and I would say all social rules and practices in a consequentialist rather than a a deontological manner.  This is consistent with the Gospel writers' presentation throughout the works.  Jesus is never shown as giving us more autocratic rules, but instead uses open ended devices like parables to encourage us to look at rules and customs from a different perspective. In another blog, Is Following Jesus About Turning Off Your Brain?, I argued that Jesus could be held up as the poster child for free thinking and critical reasoning.  Both are required when you approach religious rules and laws from a consequentialist stand point.

Following an authoritarian interpretation of rules and laws is in some ways much easier.  It allows us to let authority and social custom make our decisions for us and relieves us of accountability in our moral reasoning.  However, as we have seen in history, "I was just following orders", is not an acceptable stance and it applies to blindly following social custom and Religious Law equally.

There is another strain of ethics mentioned in the picture I've posted above, virtue ethics.  This branch focuses on character as a guide in moral decision making and outlook.   I would contend that this is also a major factor in Jesus' teaching on how and when to apply religious law and social rules.  Jesus, in his parables invites us to share his vision of God, one where God is primarily loving, compassionate, merciful and forgiving, and to view life including religious law through that lens.

This way of living rather than relying on religious and moral laws is difficult for us.  Besides asking us to think and feel our response, it calls us to risk "getting it wrong", in a way where we alone are accountable.  I would argue that the possibility of making the wrong choice and of acknowledging it is an integral part of the Christian process.  It is only in not viewing ourselves as blameless and not making that as our goal that we experience the mercy and forgiveness of God and of ourselves.  And it is this experience that allows us to have the empathy to better extend the same to those around us.  If our goal is to be always technically and legally correct and in the right then we have no need for God and little empathy for those who do not measure up to the legalism we impose on ourselves.


Now that I have explored what this passage means to me, let's move back to the objective of this blog series, to try to understand what these stories meant to the writers and their community.  As we have explored in earlier posts, the community of the Gospel of Mark would have found themselves questioned and perhaps censured by the more mainstream Jewish sects in their wider community for failing to follow many of the purity laws or for failing to interpret or practice them in the manner prescribed by Rabbinical authority and tradition.  After all, they practiced the law as instructed by Rabbis who had been "certified" and granted Semicha, the authority to interpret the law and make legal judgement, through a succession ritual of, "laying of the hands", that ensured that each new Rabbi granted Semicha was the next link in the Sinaic tradition.  These followers of the way of Jesus did not.

This is why I believe the gospel community called upon the Messiah narrative so strongly in their stories of Jesus.  The Messianic tradition gave an alternate legitimate source for interpretation of the law outside of the existing Rabbinical authority system and institution.  The first century expectation was that the Messiah would show the people of Israel the correct way to interpret and practice the Law.  By placing Jesus in the Messiah role the community of Mark were able to claim that their perspective and practices in regard to the law were legitimized by an authority that fit within the Jewish tradition.

We saw in the beginning of the second chapter Jesus portrayed as citing his identity as the "son of man" as his authority to interpret the Law in a radical new way.  Here he also performed a healing on the Sabbath and proclaimed the man's sins as being forgiven.  We looked at this in the earlier post,
Your-Sins-are-Forgiven Mark-2:1-12.

In the passage we are looking at presently, Jesus again breaks with the traditional interpretation of the law, but this time gives guidance on how the Law should be interpreted. "Doing good", and, "to save life", are what is lawful.