The Law of Unintended Consequences
Mark 1:40-45
Love begins at home. We care for those who are close to us.
We protect them. This is a sound policy. Most of us follow this policy. When someone
appears as a threat, we instinctively push them away. It is in this context we
got to see the first reading. Leprosy is infectious. So according to the book of Leviticus, such
people who are infected with leprosy should be isolated from the community.
Such people were to live outside the camp, and they were to call out “unclean,
unclean” as a warning to others to stay away lest they also become infected.
So we set up barriers to protect ourselves from others.
However, today’s gospel goes in the opposite direction. The gospel mourns and
regrets such barriers. Jesus message is very clear: whatever divides us lessens
us and that we are never complete until we are united with one another This is
why Jesus in today’s gospel heals the leper, not simply to remove the disease
but to remove the barrier, so that the leper might again join the community. Our mind plays such games as to exclude those
who don’t belong to our ethnicity, religion or nationality regard them as our enemies. Our mind games push people
away on the basis of race or religion, sexual
orientation or appearance. When we succumb to our prejudices and mind games we are working against the kingdom of God.
Moreover, when we work against the kingdom, we are in fact working against our
own best interests.
We exclude others to protect us. How many of us realize that this
law has unintended consequences. The law of unintended consequences happens everywhere.
For example, a couple of decades ago, the fashionable mantra among the environmentalists
was “save the trees.” Instead of papers to save trees, we began to use plastic bags. Now we know plastic
is a great hazard to our health. It pollutes seas and highways and endangers
wildlife and fish. This is very true of the medical field. The advent of
antibiotics saved the lives of many people.
Now germs have built up resistance to antibiotics and so our local
hospitals can be havens of germs and a dangerous place to go when you are sick.
These are great examples of the law of unintended consequences.
Thus we start out something to protect us in an innocent way but in the end we forget it could lead to unintended
consequences.I order to protect us we exclude others. It is a myth to think that we are better off by excluding others.
We all inhabit the same planet, and the
life of each person is interwoven with the lives of others in one great
tapestry of life. Whenever we choose to pull out a particular thread of that
tapestry, we mar the whole cloth.
Mother Teresa, a woman who worked with lepers throughout her
career in in Calcutta spoke of this once. She said, “We have drugs for people
with diseases like leprosy. But these drugs do not treat the main problem: the
disease of being unwanted and the disease to exclude others.”
We think that to exclude others to protect ourselves is
great policy. But the gospel always regrets and mourns such barriers, because
we know that they are not part of the ultimate plan of God. That is why we
continually commit ourselves to reconciliation, to forgiveness, and to building
unity. We above all should know that whenever we choose to divide ourselves
from one another, we do so at our own risk.
