Vancouver United Church Of Christ

To listen to this sermon, click here.

Many years ago the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote a story that goes as follows: There was once a house in which lived three generations: a grandfather, a son and daughter-in-law, and a grandson. As the grandfather grew old, his body started to fail. He could no longer walk, see, or hear. His teeth were all gone, and so “when he ate, the food dripped from his mouth.” As these changes occurred, the son and daughter-in-law decided that they would no longer set a place for the old man at the dinner table. Instead, he would eat by himself in the back behind the stove. On one occasion, when his dinner was served in a cup, the cup fell and broke as he tried to move it. The daughter-in-law was quite upset over this. She grumbled about the grandfather breaking cups and ruining everything in their house. She decided that from then on the grandfather would be given his dinner in a dishpan. The grandfather didn’t speak in response. He simply let out a sigh.

Then, one day the husband and wife were watching their young son play on the floor with some pieces of wood. They could tell that he was trying to build something, so the father asked him what he was doing. In response, the boy replied, “Dear father, I am making a dishpan, so that when you and dear mother become old, you may be fed from this dishpan.” Upon hearing this, “the husband and wife looked at one another and began to weep.” They were filled with shame for what they had done to the grandfather. From then on, they “seated him at the table and waited on him.”[i]

In many ways, this story serves as a kind of metaphor for the potential role of Christian ethics in our society. A society without the voice of an ethical conscience can devolve into an increasingly callous and desensitized way of life. Care and concern for others disappears. Social ties and obligations disintegrate. All that matters is one’s own comfort and livelihood, and before one knows it, the disabled and the elderly are warehoused and forgotten. In worst-case scenarios, they become neglected and abused prisoners in barely monitored facilities. But then comes that voice of conscience that raises the question, “But what if that were you?” It’s a simple question that could come from the mouth of a child, but so often it’s never raised and never heard. Yet, every now and then it is raised, and it is heard. Society recognizes its wrongs and mends its ways. Everyone eats at the table again.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a fair amount about what happens during that period before the voice of conscience raises its question. It’s that period of the status quo. Wrongs happen not because anyone consciously thinks of doing wrong but because no one thinks of doing either right or wrong. The status quo normalizes everything, and this normality is especially dangerous for adults. I might be off base, but I would guess that most adults are a lot like me: we can go through a whole day and at the end of it not feel like we have consciously made any ethical decisions. This happens despite the fact that on a routine basis we all make moral choices in how we budget and spend our money, how we deal with our waste and recyclables, how we care for family members or friends, how we treat strangers like the homeless we pass on the street. Some of these decisions I do occasionally think through. For example, I do sometimes think about whether to shop in a place like Walmart or a local business. I might also think about buying products that are organic or are made with material that can be either reused or recycled. Still, a lot of the time I am probably on automatic pilot when it comes to ethical living. As it turns out, neuroscience actually supports this self-perception. Moral behavior can indeed be developed like a habit or a skill, so that it becomes second nature in our lives, but this only happens after going through the school of life we call childhood. The more children think through ethical decisions the more those decisions become unconscious and automatic.[ii] The problem occurs when a person or an entire society learns to fly on automatic pilot in the wrong direction.

The most prominent examples of this I believe are in wartime situations when an entire nation is mobilized to decimate the men, women, and children of an enemy country. Part of the moral norm directing people in such times of war might be the ingrained belief that their country is always on the right side. Nationalistic self-righteousness keeps the moral question from even being raised. Part of the moral norm directing people might also be the dehumanization of those living in the enemy country. Racism keeps the moral question from being raised because the moral question can only be truly raised when the subject of the question is considered fully human. Regardless of what one thinks of the morality of World War II, the anti-Japanese racism in our country was so strong that we dehumanized our own citizens of Japanese ancestry. That’s how we were able to ship them off to internment camps without any sizable opposition. In that period, it was a rare voice crying in the wilderness that spoke out against internment camps. It didn’t matter if you were a republican or a democrat. The bulk of our nation was flying on automatic pilot in the wrong direction.

While that’s one of those ugly parts of our history that some people would rather not look at, there have been moments when the voice of our moral conscience has raised its questions and been heard. In one case, it was quiet literally the golden rule that made the difference. Before I share this story with you, I must first confess that I almost didn’t want to share it with you because the first part of the story that provides all of the necessary historical background is about as depressing as a story can get, but sometimes we have to face ugly truths, and I am going to guess many of you have never heard this story previously, even though I’ve come to believe in the last week that it should be a required part of our education in this country. The story begins in 1946 when the United States began testing nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. In that first year, two “Hiroshima-size atomic tests” took place in parts of the Islands. Before the tests, inhabitants were relocated only to later come to the brink of starvation in their new homes. More tests continued with one test vaporizing an island and another test containing the strength of a bomb a thousand times greater than that of Hiroshima. Marshall Islanders suffered from skin burns and their hair falling out, but according to the government’s press release it was a “routine atomic test” with no skin burns and “all reported well.” In a few months time, the islanders were relocated back to their original homes. That was in 1954.[iii]

In the years that followed, there would be more tests, more experiences of starvation, more relocation of islanders back into effected zones. Islanders were assured little to no radiation was left on the islands only to later find this wasn’t the case. Years later on one of those islands it was found that wells were contaminated beyond levels safe for use and that certain fruits and seafood should not be eaten. In the end, 66 nuclear weapons were exploded in the Marshall Islands with extensive radiation fallout. Thyroid tumors were found to be rampant among some of those relocated as children. At one point, a study found that 69% of children from one of the islands who were born in a certain period had thyroid tumors. In documents that have since been made public, it would appear that part of the desire to relocate people back into the effected zones was to study what happened to humans living amid radiation contamination. In a transcript of a meeting, a scientist described a part of the islands as “by far the most contaminated place in the world.” He went on to say that “it would be very interesting to go back” and collect data from people living in the contaminated area. He then added that “while it is true that these people do not live” like Westerners and civilized people, “it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”[iv] In other words, they make good test subjects because they are like us even if they’re not fully human. For these less than human specimens, the golden rule doesn’t apply.

It was in 1957 that a former U.S. naval commander named Albert Bigelow joined with three others to be a voice of conscience. The four decided that they would put their lives on the line and sail a thirty-foot boat into the atomic test territory. The name of this vessel would be the Golden Rule. The apparent belief was that if the golden rule were applied to the people of the Marshall Islands our government would never test atomic weapons there. As a result of their voicing of opposition to a military policy, Bigelow and his crew were derided by one general as either “Communists or misguided humanitarians.” In response to their planned initiative, a ban on sailing in the test zone was created and a court injunction was issued against them. Twice the crew was arrested for attempting to sail. The second time they were given 60-day sentences.[v]

Even though they never fulfilled their mission of traveling to the test zone, they were successful in arousing the moral consciousness of the public and from there the anti-nuclear testing movement took off. Soon, a family with two children sailed into the test zone as an act of protest. Pickets outside government buildings sprang up around the country with signs declaring “Stop the tests, not the Golden Rule.” Radio and television stations reported on the issue. Public pressure was created, and in 1958, Eisenhower suspended tests and called for a nuclear test ban treaty. After various setbacks and more protests, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963 to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere. We might say that the Golden Rule incarnate in the form of a boat made all of this possible.

The golden rule can be applied today to issues ranging from elderly neglect to the drone strikes by our government in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. I am often amazed by the lack of public outrage over our actions in these countries with whom we are not even at war. Aggression has become the status quo of our morality. We are still waiting for that voice of conscience to raise the question, “What if that were us? How would we feel if another country conducted unmanned attacks inside our borders that killed our civilians?” It seems normal for us to do it to someone else, but it seems beyond the realm of imagination to think of someone doing it to us in part because it’s generally not a question that we ever permit ourselves to ask. Herein lies the desperate need and the great hope of Christian ethics. I am inclined to agree with Paul when he raises the golden rule to the pinnacle of our ethical system. I can’t think of anything that would transform our world more than to consciously apply this rule to both our personal lives and our public policies. I also can’t think of anything that I value more when I think of what makes for a good person. It’s for this reason that I place the golden rule at the top of everything I want to teach Danalyn. More than anything else I want to raise a child who is empathetic and who will hopefully one day take good care of me when I become an old man. Amen.