“…let us reflect on the following teaching of Jesus; ‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miiles.’ This teaching refers to a part of Roman law at the time which allowed a Roman soldier to compel a citzen to carry his military pack for one mile. Let us imagine that after Jesus offered this teaching to the Church, the leaders had enshrined this second-mile command into a law which stated that, if anyone was forced to carry a pack one mile, they would carry it for two miles. The let us imagine Jesus returning to this community a few years later. Would he say to them, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servants, for you have faithfully carried out my commandment’, or would he perhaps shake his head and say, ‘Dear friends, your law says carry the pack two miles - I say, carry it three’? If we are more drawn to the first response, then we are affirming that the teachings of Jesus are a type of ethical rulebook that must be followed in their substance; if we are drawn by the second, we are affirming that Jesus came to teach us a way of life that is dictated by the radical excess of love rather than an ethical rulebook.
He we can see the heart of the Christian critique of ethics at work. ‘Ethics’, as we have already mentioned, is used to describe a foundational approach to moral questions which uses a set of principles (derived from reason and/or revelation) in order to work out what to do in a given situation. Far from teaching an ethical system, this was the very approach that Jesus critiqueed when he called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs…for ethical systems allow us to follow the rules whether we love or not. While ethics says, ‘What must I do in order for fulfil my responsibility?’ love says, ‘I will do more than is required.’ ”
How (Not) to Speak of God, p. 64-65. By Peter Rollins
