Jesse Stone, our favourite police chief with a remnant of a career in baseball, knows the difference. The difference, that is, between seeing life in terms of legal and illegal and in terms of good and bad. A police officer cannot afford to miss that distinction. He has to work within boundaries as do the rest of us.
We need legal boundaries. A society cannot function without regulation. And if the regulation is in some harmony with good we are fortunate; not all regimes do this. Some boundaries are better than others.
A common boundary for religious matters is caution. Religious belief has something mesmerising in its make-up. More than the enthusiasm that overwhelms football supporters, it can captivate thinking so that the thinker thinks he is drinking at the only trough where true nourishment is available. This loss of a sense of proportion is hailed as the right and proper outlook for a supporter. Unfortunately it is also a description of fanaticism.
Long ago the word ‘fan’ probably had its ultimate ancestor in the Latin word ‘temple’, which means that when we use the word we are acknowledging the enduring power of an idea. Religious belief can found hospitals, universities, schools. It can also sanction child-sacrifice and the extinction of independent thought. I can remember a technical inspector who said a bit of religion was a good thing but it shouldn’t be taken too far. He was out on the road regulating people’s behaviour and conscious of having to defend his own territory. without any great support from hq.
We see Christianity in a diluted form. If we saw it otherwise, we should flinch. One of the reasons we like Jesse Stone is that he has a firm grip on good and bad. His heart is in the right place. He knows the limitations of a term of life defined by legality. We have to be cautious when we encounter Christianity pure and unadulterated.
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