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One should understand, or at least empathize with, the difficult position a politician quite often finds themselves these days with the proliferation of divisive, hot-button political issues. Take Utah’s governor Spencer Cox and transgender youth in sports. Cox couldn’t easily decide what side to take on the issue–or at least he didn’t immediately act when the subject came before state lawmakers. Instead, Cox sought counsel from trusted mentors. He read books to understand both sides as best he could. He read books about figures he admired, who had to make tough choices in analogous situations. Then, after much circumspection, he decided to vote with his conscience:
That’s what Governor Cox said after he vetoed a ban on transgender students in youth sports. Now perhaps you vehemently disagree with his decision (though it’s worth reflecting on why something that affects so few people elicits such a strong response), but we can all benefit from applying this general rule.
Let’s go back to a moment in ancient Rome that many Christians might not know about. In 165 AD, a philosopher named Justin Martyr was arrested after a disturbance. Justin had dabbled in Stoic philosophy and then converted to Christianity, which was then a crime against the Roman state. Given a chance to repent by the judge, he declined and so he was sentenced to a gruesome death by flogging. That judge was Rusticus, Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy teacher, the one who introduced him to the writings of Epictetus, a slave.
What the Romans knew and believed about religion was, at that point, conflicted and contradictory and difficult to understand. The concept of freedom of worship was foreign and strange to them. The law? The law was clear and heavy. Still, Rusticus could have been merciful. He could have seen the gross mismatch between his enormous power and this single person who thought and lived differently. He could have been kind (as Seneca’s brother, Gallo, was to St. Paul). He could have erred on the side of “live and let live.
Alas, he did not. He could not, or would not, bring himself to make the admittedly more difficult decision to be fairer, kinder, more just than was required by the letter of the law. This tension between what is just and what is law has always existed, but it is of particular relevance today with the bevy of laws related to personal liberty being passed in state legislatures or adjudicated in the highest courts.
The solution to this puzzle, the sword that cuts this gordian knot, is as it has always been, to live and let live. A modern prescription, as we have said recently, that we could all do better at following, for the benefit of everyone, especially the vulnerable.
