Lesson 16: Law – The Basis for Ethics
Another practical reason people give for going to Church is the desire to find moral guidance. They believe religion provides a basis for ethics and send their children to learn right and wrong as they did. For most this means learning laws, such as the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and Jesus’ call to love God and others as yourself. However, making laws the basis for ethics has its limits and has caused all sorts of troubles in our time and place.
Nonetheless, a great deal of our public religion supports this perspective when it presents some supposed “laws of creation” as the heart of Christianity. One large group claims these are revealed by Jesus. He saves us by revealing a secret knowledge that guarantees we shall be healthy, wealthy, and wise– if, and only if, we observe these laws in every respect. A second large group claims these are natural laws on which all right- thinking men agree. They are woven into the creation and are as basic for societal health just as the law of gravity is for the cosmos.
Both groups claim their laws combat the self-serving positions of modernism. Yet both use them in what certainly looks like very self-serving ways. The first group applies its seed principle law primarily to guarantees that contributions to their ministries ensure automatic large returns. The second always seems to talk about right thinking “men” as it reduces ethics to abortion, contraception, and life style choices– issues most women hope would reflect the views of right thinking “women.” Both see feminism as the epitome of the unnatural, lawless life.
By making law the means by which God relates to his people, these groups pretty much ignore the New Testament covenant in which God relates to us through a person, Jesus Christ. As John proclaims, “the law comes through Moses, but grace and truth from Jesus Christ.”
In fact, Jesus responded to a society very similar to our own. Ours pretends justice can be achieved by juridification, making laws to cover every possible situation. The religious authorities in Jesus’ time practiced a type of casuisty that also tried to apply law to every conceivable circumstance. For instance, their efforts to specify exactly what working on the Sabbath involved led to criticizing Jesus for plucking grain and healing sick on that day.
In our day reducing ethics to laws ends up pretending justice is simply not breaking the law, and judgment is finding ways to get around as many of these as possible. People consider themselves moral according to what they think and say, rather than by what they do.
Jesus showed the limitations of this when he pointed to the hypocrisy of Pharisees who imposed on others what they did not demand of themselves. He responded in a quite different way when he reduced law to love that he described as its true spirit. Love is flexible enough to consider the singularity of all situations and the uniqueness of all people. The spirit of love recognizes justice is fairness and care for all, and judgment is the ability to discern what is really necessary in each situation. The bottom line becomes Jesus’ words that people are not made for the law, but rather the law is made to serve people.
The obsessive search for more and more law creates dis- ease rather than health in society. It diverts us from the basic thrust of the Old Testament law that identifies the major sickness of our society as its continual coveting, stealing, and false witnessing. The New Testament makes clear the basis of ethics is not law but a proper relationship with others and God. Next week we’ll look at the role community plays in providing this basis for ethics.
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People are taught that God is ABSOLUTE power, knowledge, love, etc. For many then it does not make sense that God’s ethics are “relative” or “situational.” The phrase “it depends” does not make sense for a Being who knows and understands everything — past, present, and future. So they believe that God must have absolute rules and answers that govern every situation and we are called to obey these specifically. Of course, one can fashion arguments from scripture that show that this conception is simplistic, but it is certainly no surprise that many accept absolutist ethics.
Bob,
I like the way you started that, “people are taught.” I still am not sure I can buy into Christianity entirely for myself, and yet if I were to have a kid tomorrow, I’d march his butt to church every Sunday.
At least in this country, we seem to emphasize learning things in black and white, then scale back to shades of gray.
In journalism classes “we are taught” ethics. Some of those are tried and true ethics that work for human beings and journalists. Some simply work for journalists. Others we’re asked to ignore our natural instincts. A few examples: hiding the identity of sources, recording a victim’s fight for survival or acting to save them during a tragedy, or even just allowing yourself to be trusted to keep certain things private.
There are times where I’ve leaned hard on my journalistic principles and looked back months or years later and asked myself whether I did the right thing, even though I did exactly “what I was taught.”
In the moments that I broke character, which are few and far between, I’ve never looked back and regretted it, because I was able to make a progressive difference in someone’s life that was worth the risk.
Personal and universal experiences give us perspective and maturity to know when it’s important to stick by the black and white and when we need to allow the gray scales to add quality to the picture. That is the value of maturity.
Lesson 16: Informative and enlightening.
I got more direct responses than usual. Some were interested in discussing the basis of ethics and others noted Joel Osteen’s upcoming DC rally. I asked permission to post Sister Rita’s as an example of the first and Marlin’s of the second. Don’t be distracted by Marlin’s stream of consciousness style. Osteen is interesting, because he preaches the present day version of Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking. In a sense, he combines the two groups who preach Christianity as “laws of creation”, those who see the laws as revealed by Jesus and those who see them as available through reason to all people. I am inclined to think he is doesn’t have a clue to the importance of the difference.
I don’t know whether you heard a discussion with an author in the past week on NPR (can’t remember when or where), in which he was searching for the basis of ethics in our lives. He gave an interesting example that I remember. He said he asks his class in college to consider this case:
A brother and sister go to a beach for a weekend vacation and share a room. Things escalate to where they decide to share sex with each other. She is on birth control and he uses a condom, so the chance of pregnancy is minimal or non-existent. Question: Is this ethical? Moral?
His students immediately answer that incest is always immoral–period. “Why?” he asks them. “Because if they have children they could be deformed, mentally challenged, etc.” Then he reminds them that this is not going to happen. Most students still insist that it’s wrong, but they can’t say why. What he is searching for is what you are asking. What is the basis for our “moral code/ethics”? For most of us, it’s rooted in religious beliefs, parental admonitions, the Commandments, societal norms that we “picked up” over the years. But why is it that some things, even if we were never told are wrong, still cause guilt and unease? It’s an interesting questions, isn’t it? Do we just “know morality when we see it”? Or is there some intrinsic sense of right and wrong that we are born with? Did Staliln and Hitler also have it? Did Idi Amin? Good question, Fritz. I have to think about this one.
osteen
the feel good church
he has rented National Stadiums and expects 41,000 non denominational believers this month
love god, he loves you
all is positive
a good attitude is always right ’cause god will always make it right – good stuff is coming…..
and so very thin……..
see today’s on-line Washington Post article
tongue in cheek criticism
email and online ministry to the masses – who needs a building anyway……..
sorry – bricks, mortar, and flesh & will makes community
church is love and law
church is community for caring, teaching, training, admonishing………(or maybe not on the last one as it is way way politically incorrect and potentially divisive…….and causes breakage of the “church” community……..and happens way many times…..I have met at least 5 people in the last month that had a “church falling out” mostly due to pastoral guidance……………but love is many things – 1 Corinthians 13 ………………………perhaps that is the guide, but does it need more)
there is room (and requirement) for the law ——Anything (does not) Goes!