Give me that Duck: On the Law and Idolatry

My friend Casey recently sent me the story of a wealthy Judge who went on holiday in Ireland and ended up duck hunting. Half way through the day he shot a bird out of the air and it dropped into a farmers field a few hundred yards away.

As the Judge began to climb over the fence, an old farmer called Seamus drove up on his tractor and saw him clambering over the fence,

“What would you be doing there,” asked Seamus

“I just shot a duck and it fell into this field, I’m going to retrieve it.”

“Well now, this here is my property, and that would be trespassing.”

“Be careful,” shouted the Judge, “I’m a powerful man and I’ll make your life hell if you don’t let me get that duck”.

Seamus considered what he said replied,

“Apparently, you don’t know how we do things in these here parts. We settle disagreements like this with the Three Kick Rule.”

“What’s the Three Kick Rule?” asked the Judge

“Well, first I kick you three times and then you kick me three times, and so on, back and forth until someone gives up.”

The Judge looked at Seamus and decided that he could easily take the old man on.

“OK,” he said, “lets do this”

So Seamus slowly got down from the tractor, walked up to the Judge and did a few stretching exercises.

Then he planted his first kick square into the Judges groin, dropping him to the ground.

The second kick was to the side of the head and almost knocked him out.

The Judge was flat on his back and in agony, when the farmer’s third kick to the abdomen nearly caused him to throw up. But he kept his resolve, knowing that his turn was coming up next.

The Judge summoned every bit of strength and managed to get to back his feet,

“Okay, now it’s my turn.”

But the old farmer simply smiled and said,

“Naw, I give up. You can have the duck!”

What we see here is the way that a prohibition (the Law) functions to make the Judge ever more attached to the duck. The prohibition effectively creates an excessive attachment to the duck that transforms it into an invaluable object (the Idol).

Here the duck is turned into a type of sacred-object for the Judge, an object that he must possess. An excessive attachment is formed that means the Judge is willing to go through ridiculous trials in order to gain it.

It is only when the prohibition is removed that he is confronted with the unreasonable nature of his stubborn attachment.

This removal of the Law and the corresponding destruction of the Idol is what I take to be central to the Christ event and thus the mission of communities attempting to be faithful to that event. It is this theme that has informed my most recent work body of work, namely Insurrection, The Idolatry of God and my forthcoming The Divine Magician.