Of Duty and Law

The concept of duty is worthy of careful consideration, particularly in its relationship to law. You genuinely subject yourself to law only after you consider it a duty to observe the law. This would also seem to involve an element of humility. When you humble yourself enough to recognize a duty to the law, the law then has force and operates within you (as contrasted with operating upon you).

Through the operation of duty the law becomes internalized. No police force or compulsion of any kind is then required. This is how true law, law in harmony with eternal justice, has a transforming effect, changing you for the better. Through continued growth in this process, of employing duty to internalize good law, you can actually “become” the law, even as Christ meant when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, emphasis added).

One who feels no duty to a law, but observes it only because of the coercion attached to it—from the fear of the consequences of breaking the law—has not yet submitted himself to the law. He observes the law only because it is enforced; when the enforcement is removed and no longer binds him to the law, he will do as he pleases regardless of the law’s mandates. Without a sense of duty to obey the law, he remains a law unto himself, subjecting himself when necessary to a greater force but not to the law.

Without this sense of duty, a system of laws becomes a competition of wills, of competing forces. It is not a system of rights and duties. Thus, the erosion of the sense of duty also erodes the moral and transforming force of law, and it erodes rights, that find their protection in law. Civilization is replaced with gangs and brutality.

(First published August 21, 2008)