Matters of law
man of honor has no need of the law; his sense of honor will govern him better than the law ever could. But law is needed for the good of society because there are so few honorable men.”
So said my father in one of his lectures on the difference between what is legal and what is honorable. He was right of course, but I was a young boy at the time and did not yet realize the truth of his statement regarding the severe shortage of honorable men. A man with honor lives by a code.
There are certain things he will not do, whether those things are legal or not. For this sort of man, the threat of punishment under the law is far less a concern than is the condemnation of his own conscience. For the man without honor, all the efforts of the law and the enforcement thereof will scarcely make his behavior fit for decent society.
Today, we have far too many of the latter and way too few of the former. One might argue that honor is a sort of currency, the more of it there is in circulation the better off a society is and the more freedom it has.
Today it seems, we are dealing with a society that is not only bankrupt of honor but seems to be unable to even remember the meaning of the word. On the one side terms like “toxic masculinity” are bandied about with reckless abandon; while among another cohort we have overgrown spoiled louts walking into Chili’s with an assault rifle strapped their back, claiming to be “defending the constitution,” deal with a couple these and you may think there is something to be said for the “toxic masculinity” argument. In my opinion, both are wrong, the symptoms of a society in the grip of the twin plagues of short-sighted selfishness and flagrant hypocrisy.
Today we allow our politicians and so-called leaders to blatantly ignore the standards of common decency, we justify this anti-social behavior by claiming that the other side is worse.
The “Culture Wars” have become an excuse for all manner of dis-honorable hypocrisy and “ends justify the means” expediency. It is dangerous path, not only for the current generation but also for the generations to come. This corrosion of honor has left us with only the law to protect us and our society from the evil that lurks within the dark recesses of the human psyche. But the law alone cannot effectively protect us, the law is a reactionary tool, it reacts to evil deeds already done. It does not prevent evil deeds from being done nor is it particularly effective at mitigating the consequences. We need more than just the law. This is one of the things we learn from the gospel of Christ. If the law alone were sufficient, we would not need Christ.
Pre-contact Cherokee society was a place where there were no police and no prisons, there was no need for them. The people lived according to a social code that always valued the greater good. Traditional Cherokee philosophy was and is based upon the concepts of equality and balance. Many centuries of learning and accumulated wisdom had taught the elders and wisdom keepers the mortal danger of short-term expediency. It is a lesson we today would do well to learn from. While we still can.
Moses gave us the law, Christ taught us about honor. “Do unto others” — it is a simple concept, easy to say and hard to do because it requires us to resist the evil that lurks within our own self-righteous hearts. Christ was not alone in this, great sages and thinkers from Hammurabi to Sequoyah have taught us to care for our fellow beings. Out of enlightened self-interest, if for no other reason.
The priests who delivered Christ to be crucified claimed they were following the law. The men who took the scalps of Native children were following the law. The men who delivered children to the gas chambers of Germany were following the law. The lynchings of the Jim Crow era were often done with the complicity of the law. They all had the law. What they did not have was honor.
Law is necessary, but for civilized society we must have honor. God help us if all we have is the law.