No Excuse for Ignorance?

I got my first speeding ticket in Sedalia, Missouri when I was 25 years old. It was a stretch of road where the speed limit drops from 45 to 35. When I explained to the officer that I genuinely believed that the speed limit was 45, he was unmoved. Thus, I learned from that experience the meaning of the Latin phrase ignorantia juris non excusat: ignorance of the law is no excuse.

That makes sense. If not knowing were an excuse, we could engage in all sorts of misbehavior and get away with it by playing dumb. “The company has so much money I didn’t think anyone would mind if I helped myself to a little bit of it!” Even if you were raised by wolves and started living under a rock once you were grown, you’re still expected to know and obey the laws of the jurisdiction in which your wolf pack prowls and your rock lies. That said, ignorance can be a mitigating factor in sentencing, although when it came to my speeding ticket, I didn’t go to court and plead for mercy based on my ignorance. I just paid the ticket.

Is ignorance an excuse when it comes to violating the divine law? The question gets posed in the NBC sitcom The Good Place. (Spoilers abound, from here on. You’ve been warned.) The premise of The Good Place is that when you die, you either go to the Good Place or the Bad Place. Eleanor Shellstrop, the main character, really should have gone to the Bad Place, but wound up in the Good Place instead, and hilarity ensues. At the end of season one Eleanor and her afterlife buddies figure out that they aren’t in the real Good Place, and that realization triggers a post-mortem journey in search of the true Good Place. At the life after death accounting firm, where good and evil deeds get tallied up, they get some shocking news: no one has earned enough points to get in the Good Place in over 500 years! 

Michael, played by Ted Danson, explains why. “In 1534, Douglass Wynegar of Hawkhurst, England, gave his grandmother roses for her birthday. He picked them himself, walked them over to her, she was happy . . . boom, 145 points. Now, in 2009, Doug Ewing of Scaggsville, Maryland, also gave his grandmother a dozen roses, but he lost four points. Why? Because he ordered roses using a cell phone that was made in a sweatshop. The flowers were grown with toxic pesticides, picked by exploited migrant workers, delivered from thousands of miles away, which created a massive carbon footprint, and his money went to a billionaire racist CEO who sends his female employees (salacious) pictures of himself.” Tahani, another Good Place character, responds, “There are so many unintended consequences to well-intended actions! It feels like a game you can’t win.”

We live in an interconnected world. With greater connections comes greater responsibility, and with greater responsibility comes greater culpability. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, is ignorance of great moral evils committed on our behalf any excuse? If not, who then can be saved?

The Good Place is a great TV show, but it is a TV show, and you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the show’s resolution to this conundrum is something other than the gospel truth. So what does the gospel say? In Luke 23:34, the crucified Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” If we guilty people cannot plead ignorance, can Christ plead it for us? Will God grant such a request?

Was Jesus really praying for everyone involved in his crucifixion? Maybe he only prayed for those in the crowd who, in the words of John Calvin, were “carried away in inconsiderate zeal and not by premeditated wickedness.” Forgiveness for the clueless passers-by, but no forgiveness for the chief priests and Pontius Pilate. Forgiveness for you and me and Doug Ewing whose hearts are in the right place, but not for the high and mighty who build and operate systems of greed and exploitation. Reinhold Niebuhr distinguished between sin, which is universal, and guilt, which some people hold to a greater degree than others. Perhaps Christ pleaded for those sinners who didn’t know any better but not for the guilty priests and governor who really should have known better.

I’m not so sure. After his death and resurrection, Christ’s apostles made allowances for the ignorance of both unwitting sinners and the grossly guilty. Peter restored a disabled man’s ability to walk, and when this miracle drew a crowd, Peter told them some hard truths. “You rejected the Holy and Righteous One… and you killed the Author of life.” But Peter goes on, “Friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.”

So, I’m inclined to think that Jesus asked God to forgive everyone, both the callous and clueless crowd, and the leaders who cooked up this grotesque miscarriage of justice out of their own willful ignorance. I find that astonishing. I come from an extended family of professional grudge holders; it’s hard for me to forgive even small matters, especially when it’s a case of smart people doing dumb things. Christ, on the other hand, asks God to pardon the ones who nailed him to a cross out of a wicked will and sheer stupidity. And God grants this prayer because God is at work in this miscarriage of justice to justify sinners who didn’t know any better and even the guilty who should have known better.

The way to the good place is not by accumulating enough points to satisfy the bean counters in the sky. Christ’s obedience to the point of death makes satisfaction for us. But this forgiveness that the apostles proclaim is not a blank check. Peter invited the crowd to respond to God’s mercy with repentance. To change direction. To change our minds.

While we remain in this place, we can no longer turn a blind eye to the unintended consequences of our behavior. We can no longer pursue strategies of plausible deniability to advance ourselves and assuage our consciences. We cannot remain in denial about how we’ve hurt those who love us most. The cross calls us to change: to forgive as we have been forgiven, and to care for a suffering creation because Christ suffered for us. And because we will never attain perfect knowledge and perfect obedience in this life, Christ calls us, so long as we live, to return to the cross so that he can plead our case. We pray with the psalmist, “Clear us from hidden faults,” so that we can sing to God, “Great is thy faithfulness/Morning by morning new mercies we see.”

Image credit: Edvard Munch, "Golgotha," Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons