Speaking Clearly

Though not Roman Catholic myself, I found this resource provided by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to be well-written. It speaks as to Church teaching and policy on issues of gender and sexuality at a time when certain cultural minorities are seeking to redefine these concepts and demand universal acceptance of these redefinitions across all of society.

I appreciate the even tone that does not condescend or insult. It speaks clearly and with the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and two millennia of doctrinal development based on the revealed Word of God in Scripture. It makes no apologies for this Word or the resulting doctrines and practices, while still seeking to be considerate of those who may be confused in their personal experience of their gender and sexual identities. It speaks positively about what the Church does and has taught on these subjects rather than reactively against a particular situation or incident. In doing so it proposes to provide guidance going forward that must be of great help to various Catholic institutions grappling with these issues.

What’s the Moral?

I read this short book summary and can’t stop thinking about it.

I’m not so interested in the anecdotal story but the conclusion drawn from it at the end – in general, that people should choose ethical behavior in case there is a possible, undetermined and unknowable material benefit to them. In other words, rather than responding to a given situation based on an internalized ethos, people must be encouraged to rationally process all of their options and then select one based upon possible personal benefit.

It sounds reasonable enough. But it’s troubling and I assume indicative of larger ethical and moral issues challenging our culture right now. More and more, people do not have an underlying moral and ethical framework which dictates to them the appropriate course of action in any number of possible situations. As such, morality and ethics often gets boiled down to a matter of personal benefit. Actions we once considered moral and ethical in and of themselves (not stealing, returning lost items when possible, etc.) now are only opted for when a maximum personal benefit is evaluated.

Years ago when I was teaching ethics in technology at university I discovered this troubling reality. Students were quick to affirm that shoplifting a sweater was wrong, but they saw no such problem with illegally downloading software or movies and video games. Their explanation was that they felt they were far more likely to get caught physically shoplifting an item, whereas the odds of them being caught and then prosecuted for digital theft were slim to none. Their definition of the right thing to do was determined solely by personal benefit. They rationalized digital theft as really of no difference to the producers of the content (who were already rich) and justified by their own current impoverished circumstances as students.

I was raised however with a different set of criteria, a criteria that still guides my actions and decisions often at a subconscious level. This criteria is a codified and unified system identifying some actions as right and others as wrong. My personal benefit in any given situation is rarely a factor. There is simply a right course to be followed. While I could follow the wrong course – and at times have – I would do so knowing what I was doing was wrong. I might try to justify it on any number of subjective grounds but I would still know such attempts were ultimately inadequate and the reality remained that I was doing something I should not do, whether I personally benefited from the decision or not.

This system of criteria was embedded in me through my religious upbringing as a Christian. It wasn’t a matter of economics. Certainly finding a wallet with money in it might have been very advantageous to me as a young person, but I understood clearly that this was not the primary consideration. The primary consideration was whether or not I could return the wallet and everything in it to the rightful owner. Certainly there might be a temptation to keep the money, justifying it as a small loss to the owner but not nearly as severe as someone more dishonest who might attempt to steal more by utilizing whatever debit or credit cards were inside. But that temptation – whether heeded or not – was recognized and categorized as exactly that. The right course of action was clear and not dependent on whether someone might be watching me or not, or whether I would benefit more or less.

A morality or ethics based purely on economic considerations can hardly be called that. Economics can justify certain courses of action based on personal benefit, but cannot ensure that such personal benefit is uniformly present in any given situation. What results is a very situational and subjective approach to morality and ethics. If I’m as positive as possible there won’t be any negative consequences to my actions, my actions become permissible and even defensible. This excessively complicates our actions and makes them externally unpredictable.

Economics is a poor substitute for Truth, even when economics might approve of a course of action I would personally prefer, but which Truth dictates is not permissible. Yes, there are times when doing the right thing might result in further benefit than peace of mind. This is because the wisdom of God the Creator is woven into creation and cannot be completely eradicated or eliminated by our sinfulness. The truth that honesty is the right choice sometimes plays itself out in unforeseen benefits, like being approved for a loan. But even if it doesn’t, I benefit from a clear conscience and the joy of knowing my choice to deprive myself whatever benefit my wrongdoing might have brought makes the other person’s life better and easier.

However my choice is not justified by this emotional or spiritual reward. This is not a form of spiritual economics. It is not karma from Eastern religions nor is it an attempt to earn a less tangible reward as Islam would suggest, stacking up enough good deeds to outweigh my bad deeds. Rather, it is an understanding that this is who I have been made to be – someone who is able and willing, albeit imperfectly – to recognize and live the way I and all of creation was intended to live. My opting to do the right thing without regard to my personal benefit is in gratitude for the reality that my sinful (selfish) and broken self has in fact been redeemed not by my good efforts but rather by the incalculable sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus, for me. I am now free to respond not in fear but gratitude. Not in a calculated self-seeking but in love for the God who saved me as well as those around me who I hope are also brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is not an alternate set of evaluations and computations in any given situation, but rather my condition. The air I breathe, so to speak. And I’m also still free and prone to rejecting this beautifully clean air for contaminated and unhealthy air, so to speak. I’m free to act against what I have been shown is right. But I do so at risk to myself and others, rather than benefit.

There’s an economic reversal only God is capable of!

Book Review – The Lost Temple of Java

The Lost Temple of Java by Phil Grabsky

Having lost a great deal of enthusiasm for my upcoming project, I decided to step away from anthropological and sociological texts and guides and do something a bit more basic. This is a great book primarily because it has a lot of photos. Much of the book is history – specifically the history of Thomas Stamford Raffles, under whose governance this massive Buddhist temple was rediscovered in the 19th century after having been abandoned roughly 1000 years earlier.

It’s history, but it’s written well and the photos and sketches break up the text nicely. This is appropriate as we know frustratingly few details of the actual construction of the temple – who built it, why, etc. The biographical information on Raffles is therefore more concrete and relatable even if it’s somewhat removed from the actual temple. But it does help to contextualize the amazing nature not only of the rediscovery but Raffles’ progressive attitudes towards exploration and preservation.

Hard Words. But True

If you are responsible for raising children right now, read this. Or read it if you know someone responsible for raising children. If you take your Biblical Christian faith seriously and need to guide young people towards their future, ready it. It’s blunt. And maybe bluntness is something we need a bit more these days.

What Cancel Culture Can’t Account For

A short article, but a miraculous one in our climate of cancel culture and the scorched-earth ideologies and tactics of whomever wields influence at the moment. The article reports how former inmates with the once-imprisoned Bill Cosby still try to keep in touch with him because of the positive impact he had on their lives while he was behind bars.

The author struggles with what appears to be this impossible paradox – a man imprisoned for accusations of sexually assaulting incapacitated women – could still have wisdom to impart and be a benefit to anyone. Because by today’s standards, this shouldn’t be possible. Someone who commits a crime or violates the accepted or promoted values of the moment deserves to be destroyed. Deserves to have their honorary degrees revoked, their accolades trampled, their achievements obliterated. The idea that a deeply flawed human being could at the same time actually be someone capable of doing good to others doesn’t hold currency in our culture today.

St. Paul would disagree, though. Read the latter portion of Romans 7 (actually, read ALL of this letter, but the most pertinent part to this discussion is in Chapter 7 for my less patient readers). St. Paul is not trying to exonerate himself. He is not insisting that he does not sin, or that his sin should not count against him. Rather, he acknowledges full well the reality of his sin, the severity of the sin, his deserving of the full penalty of the law for that sin. He realizes that his intentions are not enough to satisfy the requirement of the Law. And he recognizes he is doomed under the Law if left to himself. He is totally dependent on being rescued, redeemed, restored by someone external to himself (vs. 24-25).

I’m not defending what Cosby may have done. I’m not arguing he should not be punished for those crimes if they occurred. I simply hope to remind people that we are incapable of perfectly fulfilling the law. Either laws we create for ourselves or the Law given to us in Scripture upon which all of our laws ultimately derive whatever validity they might have. As such, punishment must come. As such, all of us to varying degrees deserve punishment. And as such, all of us must pray and plead not simply for justice and obliteration but mercy. Because whether we’re guilty of gossiping or shoplifting or murder, most every one of us also has moments where we are capable of doing some good – large or small – to others. Therein lies our humanity and our love for tragic heroes.

It’s not hard to punish. But it’s hard to punish while still desiring the best for the person being punished rather than simply wishing their suffering for reasons of revenge.

Law and Guilt

I don’t keep in touch with many folks from my high school days. A handful of close friends tenuously held together by intentional and not-so-intentional mini-reunions is about it. But I have another friend that has done an incredible job of keeping in touch over the years, and taking the opportunity to get together for lunch or dinner whenever we found ourselves in similar parts of the country. So it was that we were meeting the following day, Thursday, for lunch at a Mexican restaurant she suggested.

She asked me to choose a place to eat initially. I opted for a small Mexican restaurant nearby. I’d never been there but the reviews were good and the place looked pretty authentic, as opposed to the more Americanized places. But she nixed the idea because of Covid considerations. She wanted to sit outdoors, which was fine by me.

Then the night before she sent a short e-mail. Her daughter back in South Carlonia tested positive for Covid, and my friend had obviously spent a lot of time around her in the days before her trip to Arizona. My friend didn’t have any symptoms but wanted to warn me in case I preferred to cancel. I didn’t, and we met as planned.

There were tears in her eyes as we sat across the table from each other. Tears of frustration and anger and fear. We did everything right. And yet her daughter had Covid. My friend’s husband had tested negative, but still the great fearful illness had infiltrated their careful defenses. Their double-dose vaccinations. Their isolating. Their fastidiousness in wearing masks. Her daughter had tearfully asked on the phone the night before if her mother was angry with her that she got sick. My friend was angry, but not with her daughter. She was angry with all the people who hadn’t been careful. Hadn’t vaccinated. Hadn’t isolated. Hadn’t insisted on masks everywhere.

Though she didn’t say it, she was angry with me, as I fit into those categories. And in the carefully constructed Covid mythology, if you followed the rules and did what you were supposed to, you could avoid the virus. Except for those people. The people who for whatever reason opted not to follow every twist and turn, scientific, political, social, calculated or arbitrary, designed to keep people safe. Healthy.

It was a striking conversation. My heart went out to her. And I gently reminded her that there are no guarantees in life. That doing all the right things might be a very good idea, but certainly could not ensure a perfectly predictable outcome. She knew this to be true, and yet she couldn’t get past the anger and fear that the efforts she and her family had made, the sacrifices they had made, were not enough to protect them.

So this article struck a chord with me, and does a better job than I might in explaining the theological metaphors illuminated in this very un-theological Covid crisis. It’s worth a read.

It isn’t that trying to do the right thing is wrong. It’s just that in this very fallible and sinfully broken world, there is no clear, perfect right thing. Nothing we can hold onto and cling to as justification for ourselves, as protection for ourselves. Nothing outside of us, nothing inside of us. Only Christ can do this for us. Can promise us to be enough. And that requires us to let go of whatever we’re clutching to and cling to him instead, acknowledging in that action our terrifying frailty and the transient and brief nature of our mortal lives.