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| Biff & Willy Loman - Death of a Salesman |
NIV Matthew 5:21-22
“You have
heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and
anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who
is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone
who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ [an Aramaic term of contempt] is
answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of
the fire of hell.”
Jesus said the above as part of the Sermon on the
Mount. In an escalating list Jesus specifies
types of offenses—from anger to contempt to the ultimate insult—that of calling
someone a fool. For me the ultimate insult
is to conclude one is foolish, that they are being irrational and
unreasonable. This is a stunning
observation by Jesus, for surely it is true that virtually all human behavior
is rational at the time to the doer. To
assume anything else is being appallingly dismissive of the individual. Take, for example, the actions of a
thief. While it is possible to become
very angry with a thief and hold them in contempt, we should never determine
that they are fools. What they do is has
a rational underpinning.
I ask, what would make me a thief—say at work? What would make me steal from my
employer? What would be my state of mind
at the time? The Robin Hood
justification would be the most direct explanation. For whatever reason (say a low wage or
repeated requirements that I work unpaid through lunch or that I work an hour
late without pay or that I am daily humiliated by a dictatorial boss) I would feel
victimized—that the employer “owed me something” and deserved my “getting
even.” With this frame of mind, I could
be tempted to fill up my gas tank at the company pump. Like Robin Hood, I would just be righting the scale
of injustice in a way available to me. Thus, when someone breaks into my house and
steals my flat screen TV, I should not call the perpetrator a fool. I had best assume that to him his actions
were rational—that he was “getting even” with society in some way. On can counter, “But the thief’s actions are
not Christian.” The thief can answer perhaps
with some validity—“As a Christian are you not concerned with justice? Even property rights must give way to wider
aspects of justice.”
Today I watched Death of a Salesman.
In this play Willie Loman’s son Biff “steals because he wants evidence
of success” (Source). Theft as a short-cut to appearing successful has
fundamental rationality. Here again, one
must not call such a person a fool. One
can be carefully taught as a youngster that the appearance of a thing is of more
importance than its reality—that reputation is more important than substance. With this upbringing, theft as an end run in
a bind makes perfect sense. Once again,
we see that the behavior has a rational aspect.
Why is it so serious a sin to call someone a
fool? Because in doing so we rob the
person of their humanity—of their rational aspect. We should never do this because behavior
however undesirable and wrong maintains a rational foundation. Even the bizarre behavior of the mentally
unstable makes perfect sense to the unstable mind. The better course is to try to identify determining
factors in the mindset of the individual—to identify the underlying configuration
of their rationality.
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