An Interactive Moral Vision

In response to some of my comments on Relevant asking for something by me to read, here is something new to look at if you want. What follows is my Faith and Ethics final exam (a take-home essay) from this spring. In it, I outline where my changing "moral vision" is right now. I still feel like my writing, even after much revision, is rough. So take note of that. Feel free to make comments and pose questions as you see fit.

An Interactive Moral Vision: How To Live As Christ In Community

I welcome challenges to my faith. I like to be stretched beyond what my limitations normally are, and asked to think in ways I might never have thought before. I want, and I need, to ask tough questions about my faith to stimulate spiritual growth. I have a sense of mysticism concerning my belief in the Holy. I have an insatiable need to question traditional orthodoxy, but also to respect it because of the precedent it has set for the Church. Most importantly, the aspects of Christ – and ultimately God – that govern my life are not specific. They cannot be strictly and concretely defined. They are general, more akin to an attitude: Love. Peace. Compassion. Hope. Grace. Redemption. These are the aspects of Christ that make me a Christian, and that form the foundation of my personal moral vision.

I have been challenged this term, and in fact since the beginning of this academic year, to contemplate the ramifications of being a Christian more than I ever have before. How do the general principles of Christianity listed above enter in to a contemplation of specific issues like homosexuality, abortion, war, capitalism and consumer culture, death, the environment, and medical research? The answers are tough to come up with sometimes. Scripture often doesn’t give us straight answers, but in fact toughens the search for what is right or correct in our lives because of our interpretive distance from it. Everything is not black and white, strictly definable and answerable. It is out of this mindset that the four points of my moral vision have begun to form.

What We’re Here To Do: Love (Unconditionally)

Love. It should be at the root of anything that we do in our lives. No matter where we are, whom we are with, or what activity we are engaging ourselves in, we should think of love first. We must remember always the words of Christ to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10.27, NASB). Jesus even gives the illustration of the Samaritan helping his enemy, a Jew, to safety and after he had been robbed and beaten to challenge our thinking on the matter.

Ultimately, if we are to believe the promise of God through Jesus, we realize that love was the complete manifestation of who Jesus was and is for us. He was love, realized in wonder and amazement. His person and his actions are utterly unable to be comprehended in rational form. That he would die for anyone, let alone everyone, makes it so. And yet it is not just his actions on the cross at Golgotha, but the whole of his life – his teachings, his stories – that we marvel at. They spoke of unconditional acceptance, no matter who you were or where you came from. His love was for oneness – with God and with each other. And he spoke of such things being hard to accomplish, but their pursuit being holy.

How anyone can be expected to act with such love is almost ridiculous, something non-human. It was, and it still is. The bottom line is that love is hard, and a difficult thing to continuously accomplish in all of our relationships. But if we examine Jesus, we ultimately see love. If we are to follow Jesus, then, we must have a mindset of love in all things and at all times.

Here is where we begin to contemplate action. Whether we are building a friendship with a homosexual, having lunch with an elderly woman in our church or talking with a young teenager who is considering an abortion, we must make love our foundation. We love the person we encounter, regardless of their homosexuality or their sexual exploits. We treat them just as we would treat the elderly woman we would have lunch with, or our close circle of friends we spend all of our time with. Exclusion is not built around love, but the self-righteousness found in thinking one is ‘better’ than someone else. If anything is unlike what Jesus might have lived like, it would be this. The love we see in Jesus and the love we must therefore exhibit if we claim to be his followers is built around inclusion, with no limitations or conditions attached. If he did that for us, we should not hesitate to do the same for others, no matter its difficulty.

‘You’re Wrong!’ (Because God Says So): Suspicion of Absolutes

Secondly, we have to be suspicious. We should question and think critically about what Jesus has called us to do. Within all of that, we should feel a call to demonstrate his love through humility. We must realize the equality of one another, that God is not hierarchical toward humanity in any way. Such a mindset is especially relevant when considering our interpretation of scripture and how it affects our moral decision-making.

A good characterization of the attitude we should take concerning our interpretation of scripture might be that of the biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann. In an essay entitled Biblical Authority, he asserts concerning scripture that “nobody’s reading is final or inerrant, precisely because the key Character in the book who creates, redeems and consummates is always beyond us in holy hiddenness” (Jung, 32). We should be humble in the realization that our knowledge of the Holy is utterly limited in scope. The scriptures we hold to be authoritative, while being so, are yet still minimal in their characterization of the God we believe in. And why should it not be so? Simple rationale would have us think that, lest we limit the abilities of God through the Spirit, there is plenty that we do not now know and plenty left to be revealed to us, through scripture or through human experience.

How does this relate to morality for Christians? This humility of interpretation and knowledge must be central to the way we live our lives in relation to others. To make definitive statements concerning the actions and character of God – if clothed in a belief in their absolute and unchanging authority – is a considerable problem. This is especially so if we defend such statements with only our limited knowledge of God that we have scripture. We should understand, within this, that “Jesus is always the critic as well as the foundation of our own Christian rituals and institutions,” challenging them “as surely as he challenged those of Israel” (Placher, 87) when we try to set limits upon the Holy. To try and turn God into an absolute, definable Being is to make scripture and to make our relationship with the Creator itself an idol.

How quickly such thinking brings into question our actions concerning our expression of Christ to the world. Can we profess to definitively know what God wants concerning an issue like abortion, considering that it is never specifically spoken of in scripture? What about for homosexuality or the justifiability of war? Ambiguousness, rather than certainty, defines such issues. Certainly there is scripture where war and homosexuality are mentioned, but those issues are briefly mentioned and contextually difficult to grasp, considering that we are thousands of years removed from the date of their writing. This is the case for many moral dilemmas we face in our society today. This is not to say that scripture has no meaning or authority for the Church. Rather, we need to restrain ourselves from making unmovable moral claims stemming from our limited knowledge of God. We must look for ways to balance scripture and experience in how we live our lives.

Circle Up and Hold Hands: Community and Conversation

If anything is definitive about Christ, it is general, as stated above: love, peace, compassion, and the like. But there is also something else that should be fundamental for us – community. If we are to express love – if we are to express Christ – we must do it in the context of individuals within a community. Paul tells us to simultaneously remember both our individuality and our need for community when writing to the Corinthians that “If we were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body” (1 Cor. 12.19-20). He writes at length about the unique gifts and talents each member of the Body has been given, and the different ways in which they are to use them. Differences are expected, and even cherished. “If the body were an eye, where would the hearing be?” he asks, and “if the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Cor. 12.17). Uniqueness in the Body of One, rather than strict uniformity, is valuable to Paul and should be of importance to us.

And thus we must deal with our differences, and not shy away from them. We must realize that we have drastically different views at times on how to live as Christ concerning a number of moral issues. Some of us will argue for the need for stem-cell medical research; some of us will voice strong opinions against it. Some of us will see no problem in shopping at Wal-Mart or eating at McDonalds; some of us will see their history of worker’s rights abuses and choose not to shop there. We will all try and justify our actions theologically and philosophically. We will cite scripture and form intricate explanations of our positions. But this is not enough.

Conversation and dialogue should form the core of a community centered upon becoming like Christ, rooted in love. With the recognition of our human limitations to fully knowing the ways and means of God, we realize we must dialogue if we are to experience what Jesus calls the ‘kingdom of God’. He tells the Pharisees that the kingdom of God is “in your midst” (Luke 17.21), and not simply something to be realized in the future but also in the here and now. It is something to be presently experienced. The ‘kingdom’ is fulfilled through the participatory understanding of the meaning of Christ upon our lives through communal dialogue.

In community – in a full understanding of the ‘kingdom’ – we challenge each other to live as Christ by simultaneously holding true to the generalities of Christ and yet encountering attitudes and interpretations unlike our own concerning issues of deeper specificity. We use the diversity of the Body as an example of how we are to relate to one another, openly and in conversation, full of love. Christ said as well that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all” (Luke 18.17). He was right. To live in community can be summarized that simply – circle up, hold hands and stick together.

What Do You Mean ‘You Don’t Know?!’: Keeping It Humble

Finally, we must once again remember our humanity. We must realize we are nowhere close to understanding the intricacies of the Creator. We must not be afraid to say the we do not know all the answers, that scripture simply doesn’t give them to us or allow us to comprehend them. We must take comfort in the activeness of God, that the Being we serve is not static and stationary but in constant motion through and around us, no matter whether we can pinpoint and accurately describe such experiences. We need to realize that saying ‘I don’t know’ concerning matters of faith doesn’t constitute a loss of spiritual foundation. It should be viewed as but a door to seeing the mystical revelation and creativity of God. This love exhibited through humility is central to following Jesus.

Quit Kidding Yourself: Points of Tension Within Our Pluralistic Society

Of course, my interpretation of a moral vision with Jesus as a foundation is quite different from the moral attitudes of the larger pluralistic society that we are all a part of. When considering the moral vision outlined above, there are quite a few ways in which religious, sociological and philosophical tensions make themselves known. Put simply, we are not all followers of Christ in the often presupposed modern Western context, and naturally do not consider the ramifications of his message in conjunction with our moral decision-making. More specifically, though, the tension we find has to do with the general fact that we are human, and intrinsically exhibit certain qualities.

The Easy Way or The Hard Way: Hate v. Love

First, there are certain qualities that are inherently human. One of those is the inability to control our self-righteousness. We live our lives in a tension between our realized redemption and our remaining physical and spiritual separation from complete communion with God. We still exhibit the destructive qualities of humanity, mostly because they are more natural. Society not only values but also fuels these qualities in us. We simply have to turn on the television or walk outside our doors to notice. Our society values individualism and ultimate concern for yourself over others. This individualism even boils over at times to hatred and contempt for those whom we disagree with. Hatred is much easier to exhibit than unconditional love, and our society deepens the difficulty in overcoming this.

Just Spin, No Dialogue

Society feeds upon discord, rather than harmony. It is much more interesting, as we can tell from the amount of debate shows on television today. Watch ‘Crossfire’ on CNN or ‘Hannity and Colmes’ on Fox News Channel, and you’ll understand the nature of our discontent politically, religiously, and socially. We engage too often in the political form of ‘spin,’ using anything we can to form unmovable arguments for our position and against those of others. Constructive, contemplative dialogue is of less value to us, viewed as a weakness in argument rather than an attempt at community and oneness. The concept of exhibiting Jesus through the unity and diversity of the Body is an idea still tough for mainstream society to grasp.

Certainty: What’s There To Hold On To?

And now we come to the ultimate point of tension. Certainty. The moral vision outlined above would surely be attacked as weak in terms of having visible roots. It would be seen as weak in terms of tangible ideas that we can stake our lives upon, where we know we are right and correct, especially concerning scripture. Our pluralistic society makes claims based on empirical evidence. We cite endless statistics through scientific studies aimed at being certain about one thing or another. Not only does mainstream society do it, but Christians as well. Many Christians continue to turn to literalist interpretations of scripture, making definitive claims about God and Jesus.

The point is that we all want something to hold on to. We want something to tell us for certain that life has a divine meaning, something that will comfort us amidst the confusing and chaotic life we often live here on Earth. Simply grasping the general concepts of love, grace, compassion, hope, and redemption that are central to the message of Jesus is tough for the world because of their lack of specificity and concreteness. In a sense, maybe this is the point of life. Maybe we should spend our years not forming for ourselves immovable theological positions, but learning how to instead be open to the powerful abilities of the Holy to show us how to manifest these general concepts for the good of the kingdom of God.

Citations:
Patricia Beattie Jung/Shannon Jung.
Moral Issues and Christian Responses. Wadsworth Publishing, 2002.
William Placher.
Jesus The Savior: The Meaning Of Jesus Christ For Christian Faith. Westminster John Knox, 2001.