I was listening to Ravi Zacharius’ speak via YouTube yesterday. One of the questions asked was about subjective moral truth and its consequences. The answer was wonderful. People left to decide their own moral standards has created a world where China and the former Soviet Union killed more of their own people than all the wars throughout history. Left to our own direction we get less loving and more vicious than if we have a unified moral standard.
What people are unwilling to do on their own in correcting injustice and prejudice, governments often try to do through regulation. The government becomes a tool in the hands of the most powerful to primarily punish those whose moral standard is different from the ruling powerful class. Take the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). This law helps protect people with disabilities of many kinds from certain, very narrowly defined acts of prejudice. The most obvious visible sign of this act are the ramps that lead to building entrances.
But if we treated all people with dignity, then the law would have been unnecessary. We would have built the ramps on our own, without the pressure from the government. The problem remains that the ADA was supposed to fix. Individuals still don’t treat all people with the dignity they deserve as people created in the image of God.
Our text tells the story of one such individual. He had a hand that did not function. We are not told if this was a birth defect, or whether it was the result of an injury or sickness. All we know is that he had limited function of his hand. No matter which hand was injured, it would have been a life-limiting condition.
Like many cultures even today, toilet paper was not used. The left hand and water served the purpose. No matter which hand it was, his toilet hand also served as his eating hand. Socially this would have isolated him even more than our imaginations took us just a moment ago.
Mark includes this miracle here in his Gospel as the way to prove the legitimate claim of being Lord of the Sabbath mentioned in the teaching which Mark included directly before this passage. Jesus performs this act of kindness and restoration as a way to prove who He claimed to be, God in the flesh. The religious leaders hear that claim and the threat that makes to their own authority and they act in line with their subjective moral values. They plot with their secular friends how they might be able to eliminate Jesus. They plot to kill their enemy. Godly behavior if I ever saw it!
The Arnold Journey 