The technocratic paradigm

Someone pointed out to me how Jesus's command to “do unto others how you would have them do unto you" is a *positive* command vs. the *negative* command found in the book of Tobit, “Do to no one what you yourself hate.”

I was thinking about that along with the pope's really sharp definition of the "technocratic paradigm" in his book, "Let Us Dream." There he says:

"[The technocratic paradigm] is a mindset that despises the limit that another's value imposes."

I see this paradigm very clearly in my own heart. My wife and I were up in Traverse City over the weekend for our (upcoming) anniversary. As we are walking around looking for a place to eat lunch, we ran into a homeless man who called himself “H.” He never asked for money (handing him cash would have been more convenient for me). Instead he talked with us (more like at us) for twenty minutes. H is another Christ, someone who apparently just wanted another person to talk to. Yet the whole time I only felt like he was an imposition. I only felt annoyed.

This mindset is clearly very personal. And it's also social. The structures of sin in our society that the pope rightfully criticizes are precisely this mindset writ large.

So with that in mind, the *negative* command would be to not despise the impositions that another's value places on my life. That's certainly the first step. But the goal is to be like the Good Samaritan who *welcomed* the imposition that another's value placed on his life.

That's the mark of some of the greatest saints, isn't it? They found joy in the imposition that others placed on their life. They celebrated it precisely because it was in that imposition where they encountered Christ.

This is partially why the institutions of family and marriage are so essential to society. In Amoris Laetitia, the pope teaches that "The family is the first school of human values, where we learn the wise use of freedom."

Nobody has imposed on my life like my wife and kids have. Especially when the kids were infants, even the minimal amount of sleep required to function was taken away from me. Because I loved my kids my selfishness began to burn away. I didn’t realize just how selfish I was until I had kids...and living with them reminds of my selfishness every day.

Freedom isn't being able to do whatever I want regardless of the impositions that others put on me. Rather, freedom is desiring and finding profound joy in that imposition. That is the kind of freedom that’s not only promised to us as Christians in eternity, but it’s promised to us *in this life.*