Vancouver United Church Of Christ

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Some years ago I was taking a class in Spanish, and one of my classmates was curious about my background as a theological student. Very quickly she somehow got a whiff that my Christianity was different than hers and that I didn’t believe the entire Bible was the literal word of God. She accused me of having a wishy-washy faith. People could just believe and do whatever they wanted willy-nilly. The accusation stung me. I don’t like to think of myself as being wish-washy or flying through life by the seat of my pants. There was also the implication that anyone who is simply left to their own devices in figuring life out is a long ways from not only doing what’s right but also a long ways from God. While I knew her claims rang hallow and that I certainly had views and convictions that were well-considered and reasonable to have, I could also understand how her opinion made a lot of sense to her. She viewed the Bible as a kind of rulebook handed to us from God. Given this foundational belief it is logical that someone who believes in God would think there isn’t much of an option for what one should do. From her point of view, she held God’s moral trump card and all else was human folly. For her, the Bible defined Christian ethics in a very rigid and exact way that rose above all scrutiny.

The problem, of course, is her foundational belief in the Bible as infallible as well as her presumption that there is only one way to interpret the Bible. The Bible, of course, is open to multiple interpretations, and if you put twelve different biblical scholars in a room, you will get twelve different interpretations of the same text. Moreover, there are a number of reasons why it is hard to claim the entire Bible is infallible. For starters, there are some notable contradictions of not only facts but ethics. In a number of instances, parts of the Bible do not exactly exemplify the golden rule in loving your neighbors as yourself. The wiping out of the Midianites is just one example. Ultimately, there are passages that espouse views that are simply indefensible on any moral grounds. When philosophers try to imagine a universal moral wrong with which no one would disagree, they will often give the example of torturing children for fun. Who could possibly believe that is not morally wrong?  Is there anyone here who would like to argue for that position? And yet Psalm 137: 9 says, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” Let’s make sure we don’t hire any biblical literalists in our nursery.

The ironic thing is that some important parts of the Bible are a long ways away from promoting a dogmatic, rule bound faith of unquestioned obedience. In fact, it is quiet the opposite. In our Hebrew scripture for this morning, the father of the Jewish faith openly questions and challenges God. What’s remarkable is that God concedes to Abraham’s challenges. In the New Testament, the disciples are frequently portrayed as having trouble understanding the parables of Jesus. The parables ultimately were not meant to give us more rules for a rulebook but were instead meant to provoke our thinking. We might then ask ourselves what if we viewed the whole Bible in a similar way. What if we turn to the Bible not for simple answers but rather for more complex explorations that improve our ability to navigate and cope with life? A part of us might prefer the ease of wading in the kiddie pool of faith, but ultimately we know that a life well lived requires some deep sea diving.

A critic might claim that this non-fundamentalist approach to the Bible turns Christian ethics into a matter of what’s called moral relativism. What’s considered morally right is relative to each individual or each culture. According to this view, who are we to say someone else is wrong? We each have our own truth. There is no single set of moral laws that works for everyone and to which everyone must abide. Our critic would say this is exactly what happens when the Bible is no longer viewed as the unadulterated Word of God. Everyone is left to come up with their own beliefs, and there is no way to judge the good from the bad. That’s the argument. I personally don’t like being called a moral relativist either. Now, there can sometimes be some initial appeal to relativism. For example, I think it is safe to say that in our church we like to think of ourselves as open-minded. If relativism says that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and that none of us can say that one opinion is better than another, that can sound like one is open to a lot of diversity. As ethicist Anthony Weston has pointed out, the irony is that relativism actually leads to the opposite of open-mindedness. If all opinions are equal, than no one needs to debate the merits of the death penalty or whether or not it actually deters people from committing murder. There is no need to do so because we are not striving to have a common morality. To each, his or her own. As this implies, relativism also doesn’t lend itself to a mechanism for holding people accountable. If we have a live and let live attitude for every culture and country, then we don’t have a grounds for designating anything in those cultures and countries as a crime against humanity that should be stopped. We are forced instead to become mere spectators to abuses and atrocities.

Still, a relativist might come up with all sorts of examples for why relativism is needed. One might cite Kant’s example of the axe murder who knocks on the door looking for your friend who is hiding in the back. Kant actually argued that one must tell the axe murderer the truth of your friend’s location in order to maintain the moral imperative of never lying. In my opinion, the relativist would rightly think such a commitment to a moral absolute of this kind is ridiculous, but to agree with this doesn’t mean that one is necessarily a relativist. It could easily mean that in lying to the axe murderer one is simply abiding by a different moral law. For example, when faced with dire circumstance, I will choose the lesser of two evils in order to preserve life.

Despite this, I am not so sure I believe the answer is moral absolutism—the belief that there are universal moral laws by which to judge others. This is especially the case if absolutism entails permission for someone or some group of people to believe they have a monopoly on determining what’s right and wrong. Like moral relativism, that again leaves no room for debate, for seeing the value of someone else’s perspective, or for changing one’s mind. At the same time, I am intrigued by recent studies in the field of neuroscience that indicate the universality of certain moral norms. For example, people might all have the same moral response when it comes to judging the fairness of a particular exchange of money. Brain-imagining studies reveal that a range of moral judgments are held by subjects across the board and that these judgments “reflect identifiable underlying brain networks.” Some of these universally held attributes are seen as early as infancy. Such research lends itself to the tantalizing idea that morality is woven into the fabric of our universe. It is part of the way life is inherently structured. The catch is that these research studies also show that there are a lot of moral judgments that have been determined to not be universal. In these instances, people appear to be strongly “influenced by local culture and learning.”[i] While science can point out to us these differences, it can’t tell us how to deal with them, how to adjudicate them. This is where the mystery of morality enters. Are there definite rights and wrongs in these areas? How are we to live with this ambiguity?

For people of faith, this is also where the mystery of God enters. For me, morality like the meaning of life is a matter of faith. Just as I believe we humans will never definitively figure out the meaning of life, I believe we will never be able to write a definitive rulebook of morals. It would seem that the quest for clear cut rights and wrongs in all matters will be forever beyond our grasp. Still, just as I take it on faith that ultimately life is meaningful, I also take it on faith that we should strive to lead moral lives. In doing so, I see myself as following in a tradition that is biblical in origin. Instead of being a rulebook, I believe it is more accurate to describe the Bible as the ongoing testimony of a people struggling to figure out what’s right and what to believe. This struggle didn’t end with the writing of the scriptures. In our reading for today, Paul himself speaks of early Christians living not according to the letter of the law written in the scriptures of old but according to the Spirit that gives life in the here and now. Paul liked to be polemical and make exaggerated claims. Clearly, early Christians like Paul did rely upon scripture. Paul, however, was seeking to place emphasis on the belief in the continued revelation of God. In our denomination, our recent motto expresses a similar belief in stating that God is still speaking. The flip side to this motto is that we are still listening. We are still searching. We are still wrestling with the fundamental questions of life.

In the end, I wouldn’t describe Christian ethics as necessarily being defined by notions of relativism or absolutism, wishy-washiness or certainty. Instead, I believe Christian ethics at its best is defined as the ongoing search for moral meaning by a people rooted in faith and inspired by Jesus. Christian ethics at its best isn’t about being willy-nilly, it is about communities thinking critically, engaging in dialogue, and ultimately finding well-considered convictions by which to live. On faith, I believe there is a Spirit that works in and through this community to give us our convictions, and I believe it is these convictions that define us. We have defined ourselves by our open and affirming stance. We have defined ourselves by our commitment to being a just peace church. We have defined ourselves by serving the homeless and advocating for impoverished children. Christian ethics are at the heart of who we are. They are central to what gives us our identity, our way of life, our purpose. They are what we pass onto our children every Sunday when we light the peace candle and share with them our beliefs. Christian ethics are a part of the air that we breathe in this sanctuary. Whether we are entirely conscious of it or not, they are what we carry out into the world after every service of worship. Over the course of the next couple of Sundays, we will continue to seek clarity on what exactly our ethics are and how they can serve us well in leading faithful lives. Amen.