By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Law school makes you see and think about things differently than normal people.
I realized this one day in property class, when we studied landlord/tenant law. I rushed home afterwards and read my own apartment lease with new vision. I was horrified about the one-sided contract I had signed.
It was not the last time I wore those law-colored glasses.
When I was a young lawyer and a new parent, our children sometimes got into disputes with each other. I’d try to sort out what had happened, but they’d often give conflicting stories about the cause and nature of the dispute. (In the law, we call this disputed issues of fact.)
Unable to render a ruling, I turned to alternative dispute resolution. I sat the youthful litigants down face-to-face on our wingback chairs in a form of domestic mediation. They could not leave until they agreed on what happened and how to avoid future similar problems.
Sometimes the contending parties took a while to get to yes but with the onset of boredom, and an occasional nudge from the paternal legal oracle, they usually got there. Often, they found ways to solve their own problems without me.
When those same kids turned into teenagers and had challenges in school, such as not turning in their homework on time, I drafted compliance contracts for them to sign. A breach meant less cell phone time or limited access to the car keys.
My legal mindset has followed me to church too.
During one recent Sunday we read Genesis 18: 1-33, about how God and two angels visited Abraham as he sat in the door of his tent. Abraham greeted and fed them. God then announced the imminent destruction of nearby Sodom and Gomorrah.
Understandably, Abraham was troubled. His nephew Lot and other relatives lived there. He asked, “Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?” He began to negotiate: “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?”
God said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking?” God said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”
Abraham spoke again, “Suppose forty are found there.” God answered, For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then Abraham said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” God answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.”
The intrepid Abraham whittled down God’s threshold for saving Sodom to the presence of only ten righteous people. Unfortunately, God found only four there—Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. The condemned cities burned.
This well-known Bible story is interesting for several reasons. When I heard it again recently, however, my law-trained mind focused on Abraham’s admirable negotiating skills and tactics.
He started with hospitality. Abraham created the right frame of mind from the beginning—establishing a relationship instead of a hostile standoff—and thus creating a setting conducive to reaching agreement. When the negotiating started, however, he was bold and persistent with his asks.
Abraham also was creative and humble throughout the negotiation process. He sublimated any possible anger or emotion into the purpose of obtaining a good result. And in the end, he brokered a decent compromise.
Arguably, Abraham made only one mistake. He underestimated the weakness of his position. Sodom was worse than he imagined, and so Abraham never even tried to save the whole city for the sake of just four righteous people.
Abraham’s verbal jousting with God foreshadowed a similar encounter for his family a few years later. Abraham’s grandson Jacob wrestled all night with God—or an angel of God—and fought to a draw. (In the law, we call this litigation.)
Jacob emerged from the conflict just fine. He even earned the great name “Israel” as a result of the epic standoff. Jacob re-named the site of the wrestling match to commemorate the place where he “saw God face to face.” (Genesis 32:30)
There are lots of published books and articles warning us against negotiating or wrestling with God. Why? Various reasons are asserted…the unseemliness associated with a transactional approach to salvation, the clear power differential, and the hubris to think our ways are better than God’s ways.
Despite these admonitions, another part of Genesis—the creation story—says we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). Catholic theology proclaims we are active co-creators of the world in which we live.
In the encyclical Populorum Progressio, Saint Pope Paul VI said the “whole of creation” is for humans, and that we are “charged to give it meaning” and “complete and perfect it.”
We cannot control and direct our lives like gods, but we are not powerless either. We get to negotiate, struggle, confront, cajole, disagree, act, and even wrestle with God.
To be a co-creator means we get some active say about what happens to us and what happens to those we love. At the very least, we get an ask.
What’s the best way to have that say or make that ask? We all have to figure that out for ourselves. Looking through my law-colored glasses, however, I’d cite the case of God v. Abraham on behalf of Lot et al and the case of Jacob v. The Wrestling Angel as useful precedents in my legal brief any day.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021 and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best non-fiction book of 2022
