"Principle absent human compassion is just intellectual masturbation."

The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbour as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
--Romans 13:9-10

That, it seems to me, is an issue most effectively judged not in a court of law but one of common sense. To live at peace in a pluralistic society is to perfect the art of give and take, live and let live. It is to learn to choose your battles.

I submit that this is a battle poorly chosen. Yes, the argument arguably has legal merit but you have to ask yourself: What's the point? Is someone really injured by a cross in the desert? Or is this not about validating principle at all costs -- even public peace and common sense?

That quote, along with this post's title, is from Leonard Pitts Jr, in his editorial Desert cross becomes court's burden. I just read it and haven't the distance to really make this claim, but it seems one of the best short editorial meditations on freedom of religion and separation of church and state I've read. He's writing about a recent Supreme Court decision on whether a memorial cross has any place in a national preserve. Antonin Scalia defended it based on the logic that a cross is a non-religious memorial symbol, which is rather ridiculous. How easily and readily the majority embraces the myopic view that its symbols and norms represent us all, writes Pitts. But then he goes on to say that even though the cross shouldn't be there based purely on principle, it should be left alone in this case because it's not excluding or coercing anyone. To live at peace in a pluralistic society is to perfect the art of give and take, live and let live. I'll let you practice your beliefs in our shared space as long as they don't hurt me and I'll expect you to do the same.

This reminded me of one of my favorite parts of the bible, the second half of Romans.* Romans is Paul's letter during his ongoing travels to a church in turmoil, advising them on how to proceed. The church is split into factions over the right ways to practice their new faith, judging each other right and wrong and arguing over how to identify the true believers and who to exclude from membership based on their practices. The verses above from Romans 13 are his introduction to talking about the specific issues he delves into in chapter 14. Some in the church feel they need to follow the traditional Hebrew food purity laws, others--including Paul--believe Jesus has redefined the laws and all foods are now to be considered clean. Similarly, some feel it is still necessary to observe the traditional Sabbath and others don't. Paul says don't worry about it, practice what works for you and let others practice what works for them: "Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat; for God has welcomed them" (14:3); "Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds" (14:5). And the most important thing, he goes on to say, is don't do anything that will create problems for someone who believes otherwise:

Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another. . . . If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. . . . Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. (14:13-21)

Paul concludes in the 15th chapter by revisiting his argument from earlier in Romans, that God's love is for everyone and not just some select group of righteous few who think they know God's will better than everyone else. It is, of course, a little bit of a leap to take an intra-religion discussion and apply it to an inter-religion one, but I feel Pitts' meditation on the cross legal issue captures the spirit of Paul's letter in a contemporary context about as well as anything I've seen.

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*I'm probably influenced in that opinion by the fact that I took a 3-credit class on Romans in seminary and have studied it and written about it pretty extensively.