By James Wilson
One morning some twenty-five years ago I was a young parish priest contemplating the fact a woman in my congregation had missed an appointment in my office. Ordinary procedure would be to call her later, ask politely what happened, and schedule another appointment. Propriety – given the risk of the appearance of sexual misconduct – dictated I should never be foolish enough to go to her home when – if she was there – her husband would be away at work. Yet I knew two things about Caroline – she was afflicted with bone cancer and very reliable at keeping appointments. I tried calling her several times with no answer and the alarms in my head grew more strident that something was terribly wrong. I drove to her home.
What I saw shocked me. After some delay I looked through the glass center of her door to see her literally crawling up the hall on hands and knees. She managed to reach up to unlock so I could enter. I helped her to a padded bench up the hall where she managed to gasp that the cancer pain was really bad. I called her husband at work and he left immediately on what was a thirty minute commute, asking me to remain until he could arrive. At Caroline’s request I sat on the bench with her, cradling her head in my lap and telling her children’s stories to keep her conscious while we waited for her husband to arrive and hoped the medicine I gave her would work.
Clearly I had thrown propriety out the window in several ways. But I fully observed protocol. When her husband arrived he took over; I left when I could see he no longer required my assistance. Eventually God fully healed the cancer, but my preferential observance of protocol enabled her to survive long enough for that day to come. Caroline’s husband, Mark, thanked me and to this day credits me with saving Caroline’s life.
Our God operates on the basis of protocol in everything He does – from hailing the pagan kings of Egypt and Babylon before warning them to let His people go to washing the feet of the disciples who would desert the Son in His need. The Church – and certainly the secular culture – operates too often solely on the basis of propriety. Both concepts sound good but the difference between them is profound.
Propriety is observance of standards of conduct as they are laid down in law, policy, and procedure. Protocol is about honoring first God, second the people He loves and has called us to love, and third the laws, policies and procedures we have established to support the first two. Propriety is when we see to it the servants wash the feet of our dinner guests if they deserve such deference. Protocol is when we wash our friends’ feet ourselves, as Jesus did the night before His death.
Protocol never violates law. It simply extends itself to encompass and transcend the letter of the law in favor of its spirit, as the New Testament exhorts in 2 Corinthians 3:6. It is – for biblical Jews – observing the sacred Sabbath’s prohibition on labor while still happy to rescue someone trapped in a well, or confronting a friend with his misbehavior while steadfastly refusing to judge. It is also Jesus confronting the Pharisees – the primary legalists of His day – over twisting the spirit of the law to evade responsibility to support their parents in favor of the religious establishment by calling gifts corban in Mark 7. He goes after them on the same grounds in Matthew 23 when He says they tithe faithfully of their goods on legal grounds while neglecting the weightier legal matters of justice and mercy. It is what I honored when I allowed the prompting of the Holy Spirit – coupled with respect for proper procedure and the strong existing relationship I had with Caroline and Mark – to impel me to go to her home that day.
Propriety limits itself to legalism – following the procedures and remaining safe within the legal limits. It is what the priest and the Levite cited when they abandoned the man left for dead by robbers (Luke 10) leaving it to the “ungodly” Samaritan to demonstrate being a good neighbor. It is the hypocrisy of the men who dragged an adulterous woman before Jesus (John 8) with no explanation of why the man was let go – or why they had free time on a weekday morning to be peering into someone’s bedroom window.
Protocol is the way of God; propriety is our way of remaining out of His reach.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
