Day 375 - The Beast from the Abyss

I'm still reading Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth, as you might guess from the title of this entry. But...this has to do a bit with Gulf business and Chattanooga business.

Barth has an interesting discussion about Pilate (remember the Apostle's Creed?). I find some of his observations about "politicians" uncannily relevant to my current experience with organizations, not every leader and every organization, just a couple or three who seem stand as types.

I choose for this discussion to lump into that category of "politicians" not just governmental folk but many (some?) of us underlings in organizations who allow the role playing of "leader" in our private little domain to proscribe acting in the best interest of the state (organization).

Barth, I think, would say it is our obligation as Christians to seek the best for the state by "choosing and desiring to the best of their knowledge not the wrong, but the right State, the State which makes of the fact that it has its power 'from above', not, like Pilate, a dishonor, but an honor."

A caution is in order. I mentioned in an earlier blog entry on the Christian Realists that Barth's line of thinking can lead (and did lead) into some pretty difficult and pragmatic ground where we end up justifying the power of the state to promulgate or force our ideas of moral conformity on everyone and thereby to justify immoral action. One can take Barth's logic too far.

As a pedestrian example of the argument's insideousness, I remember one manager from my engineering days who always got caught up in a misreading of Paul, at least I hope it was a misreading and not a calculated reading. He often criticized certain of his employees for "not submitting to authority."

So read these following words and think about those 'petty politicians' (Barth's characterization) akin to Pilate who get it wrong in organizations. I remind you that Pilate handed Jesus over to his cohorts to enforce the decision of the religious Sanhedrin to put Christ to death, though had he ruled according to the strict law of the State he would have released Him according to His innocence.

Barth comments, "What does Pilate do? He does what politicians have more or less always done and what has always belonged to the actual achievement of politics in all times: he attempts to rescue and maintain order in Jerusalem and thereby at the same time to preserve his own position of power, by surrendering the clear law, for the protection of which he was actually installed." (Italics are my emphasis.)

He continues, "In the person of Pilate the state withdraws from the basis of its own existence and becomes a den of robbers, a gangster State, the ordering of an irresponsible clique. That is the polis, that is politics. What wonder that one prefers to cover one's face before it? "

He concludes, "The state so regarded...is the polis in sheer opposition to the Church and the Kingdom of God."

Having quoted all these hard words, I must add that there is a little politician in all of us, or as Groucho Marx said, "I resemble that remark!"

Peace and Grace.