Expediency by Gary Rose

Yesterday afternoon, I decided to relax and watch some TV. After some looking around, I decided to watch a rerun of The Star Trek Deep Space Nine series, with the title above (minus the English explanation). The story line goes something like this: A doctor on a distant space station is recruited by a rogue government agency to manipulate a foreign government. He contacts his superior and is ordered to go along with whatever plans they might have.

As a result, people are tortured and some die. The doctor, realizing that Star Fleet (the legal government) was complicit in all this from the start, confronts his superior (An admiral) and the admiral quotes the ancient Roman orator Cicero.

“In times of war, the law falls silent”, is something I had not heard before. Its been over fifty years since I had my single course in Latin, so I had to do a little research to understand it. Basically, the statement refers to government ignoring law (s) that will impede their ability to wage war. There is a single word that comes to mind when I think of this: Expediency. Many different nations have practiced this when in danger, Russians sent dissidents to Siberia and during World War II, America sent thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens to “interment camps”.

Expediency is not limited to just war. People will often do things “The easy way” just to obtain their goals. Here is an example from the Gospel of John..

John 11 ( World English Bible )

[47] The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, “What are we doing? For this man does many signs. [48] If we leave him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” [49] But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, [50] nor do you consider that it is advantageous for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.” [51] Now he didn’t say this of himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, [52] and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. [53] So from that day forward they took counsel that they might put him to death.

Caiaphas was high priest; he should have upheld the teachings of The Old Testament, but instead he advocated murdering someone – Jesus. Jesus was in fact unlawfully put to death. Pilate, the chief priests, the Jewish people, Barabbas and the Roman soldiers all had their parts in this travesty. But God works everything out according to HIS will and so it was with HIS only son. The result was that those who follow and obey Jesus will be saved from their sins. There is an old French proverb which says: Man proposes, but God disposes. I wonder how long it will be before all humans realize that ultimately God is control of everything? Expediency is a waste of time.