The other day a friend and I were having coffee and he asked if I’d heard about a couple of news stories recently that both dealt with the post-Columbine “zero tolerance” approach to weapons in schools.  Both were about students who had pocket knives ruin their school record (one a future career, possibly).  Briefly, here are their stories.

The first is a local high school student in Lansingburgh (aka North Troy), NY.  He’s an eagle scout, a great student, and was on track for a career in the Army via West Point.  He had a two-inch pocket knife in a survival kit in the trunk of his car, and somehow the principal found out and asked to search the vehicle.  Long story short, the principle has suspended him for twenty days, and refuses to meet further with the family.  The school board refuses a hearing.  The incident may or may not keep him out of West Point.  Time will tell.  Here’s a link to the news coverage.

The second is that of a six year old cub scout in Delaware.  He took his new camping knife (fork, spoon, knife) to school so he could eat with it at lunch.  Pretty typical for a six year old with a new bit of camping gear.  Been there, done that.  He was suspended from his first grade class and is being sent to a reform school for forty-five days.  The kid loves school, so much so that he wears a suit and tie now and then to show how seriously he takes it.  Now there’s a news story!  Here is a link to his story.

Both stories are national, and it’s not because anyone believes either student posed a danger.  It is because both are immediately raising red flags about a policy that is being blindly and unwisely applied, and that’s why I bring all this up.  A day after my friend and I visited, I was back in the coffee shop working on the laptop.  When I was done I put it back in the case and noticed a book I didn’t remember having in the case.  It was  William Barclay’s commentary on Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.  I was going to be leading a study on Philippians later that evening, so I thought I’d just take a quick gander on what he had to say on the text for the evening.  I’m glad I did, for it had helpful insight not only into the text, but into the news stories I shared above, and why both decisions in those cases do not sit well.

The text we discussed Wednesday night was Philippians 4:1-9.  In particular, take a gander at verse 5 (NIV, emphasis mine):

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

When I’ve read this, I’ve always done so with pretty much the dictionary definition of “gentleness” in mind: “Considerate or kindly in disposition; amiable and tender. Not harsh or severe; mild and soft. (Dictionary.com)  Turns out, that really doesn’t even begin to tell the story of what Paul was getting at, and you’ll immediately see why, and its relevance to the stories above, in this quote of Barclay:

The word (epieikeia) translated moderation (or gentleness in the NIV –James) is one of the most untranslatable of all Greek words.  The difficulty can be seen by the number of translations given of it.  Wycliffe translates it patience; Tyndale, softness; Cranmer, softness; The Geneva Bible, the patient mind; the Rheims Bible, modesty; the Revised Version, forbearance (in the margin gentleness); Moffatt, forbearance; Weymouth, the forbearing spirit; the New English Bible, magnanimity. C. Kingsley Williams has: “Let all the world know that you will meet a man half-way.”

The Greeks themselves explained this word as “justice and something better than justice.”  They said that epieikeia ought to come in when strict justice became unjust because of its generality. There may be individual instances where a perfectly just law becomes unjust or where justice is not the same thing as equity. A man has the quality of epieikeia if he knows when not to apply the strict letter of the law, when to relax justice and introduce mercy.

Epieikeia is the quality of the man who knows that regulations are not the last word and knows when not to apply the letter of the law.

The Christian, as Paul sees it, is the man who knows that there is something beyond justice. When the woman taken in adultery was brought before him, Jesus could have applied the letter of the Law according to which she should have been stoned to death; but he went beyond justice. As far as justice goes, there is not one of us who deserves anything other than the condemnation of God, but he goes far beyond justice. Paul lays it down that the mark of a Christian in his personal relationships with his fellow-men must be that he knows when to insist on justice and when to remember that there is something beyond justice.

That is just what these boys need, isn’t it?  A little epieikeia.  These two stories are a perfect case study in the art of mercy in the face of justice.  Unfortunately for the boys involved, so far it’s a lesson in what not to do.  Maybe that will change before it’s all over.  I think  we have all found ourselves in the principles’ shoes, standing by “what’s right” refusing to do what is truly right.  That’s the lesson for us as Christians, isn’t it?  It is so easy to get caught up in rules and regulations and buy into the Pharisaic call of strict adherence to the Law.  However, it is always the call of Christ to moderate justice through epieikeia…the virtue of knowing justice and something better than justice.

“Let your epieikeia be evident to all.  The Lord is near.”