Liberation, not Moralism
Discipleship and Moral Questions
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"Decisions" is a dangerous word here in that it might
lead to some sort of view of life as consisting of decisions. We
seldom make moral decisions. "Character ethics" emphasizes, on
the other hand, that how life is lived depends not
on decisions but on what kind of person one is. |
The Bible does not respond to moral questions, but it does speak
about Christian discipleship. It makes no sense for Christians to
speak about moral questions outside discipleship to Christ. And
within discipleship to Christ, it makes sense only to speak of
discipleship to Christ. Discipleship leads to
decisions that might
be called "moral." Types of actions are renounced and taken on. These
decisions are not communicable to society because they take place
within discipleship to Christ and make sense only within
discipleship to Christ.
Discipleship to Christ is shared. There is a band of disciples.
There are common understandings within discipleship, given by the
one Lord. The Bible says Christians ought to live in certain ways
and not in other ways. But there will be instances in which a
person�s discipleship has not yet come to include all of
those "ought" ways. Our mistake has too often been to
understand all those ways too well and too much as a package, as
"Christian morality," which can be handed out to every
Christian for their ready compliance. We have to be patient with
discipleship. When I think of someone else�s moral question,
I seldom have an answer, not even from our store of biblical
Christian answers. The reason for this is that any answer I might
have would be an answer from within me and my situation and
understanding. I don�t mean that I deem right whatever a
person says is best for them to do within who they are and how they
understand their situation. It is, rather, even if I have what I
think is a right answer, a moral absolute if you will, I know that
other people cannot attach "right" to a kind of
decision only on my say-so. Perhaps I would go so far as to say
that the need to do what is right in one�s own understanding
and to be open to having one�s understanding increased is
more important than what decision is made.
But there is still exhortation and admonition within discipleship
to Christ. This is an area where Ellul goes too far in the right
direction, so to speak. He seems to leave out the shared
understanding of discipleship and therefore exhortation and
admonition. It�s as if, having done away with morality, he
has no church to go to. It�s almost as if he wanted to deny
that right and wrong exist. Within discipleship they exist, and
they continue to exist even when they cease to exist elsewhere.
Subjection to our creator�another way of saying discipleship
to Christ�is the right. Otherwise is the wrong.
Law and Persuasion
Thinking about abortion�more specifically the abortion
fight in America�has been at the heart of my thinking about
many of these more abstract issues. I am convinced that abortion is
wrong in general, in the sense that God is against it in general. I
don�t mind absolutism on this since any possible exceptions
(in God�s mind) would account for such a tiny part of the
number of abortions that happen that they�re hardly worth
thinking about at this stage of the game. If somebody comes up with
a situation that they think constitutes an exception, I�ll
listen, but it will face a strong battle. To take one kind of
example, "deformed" people and people that are hard to
take care of have always had a place in human society until now,
but now we are practicing genocide against that kind of people.
But if anyone comes to me with a particular case that has not
already been decided (no one�s beating down my door), I can
try persuasion, but that is as far as I can go. People have given
up on persuasion, on moral argument. Our first inclination these
days is toward coercion, not persuasion. Christians who can think
of abortion as a legal issue and nothing more are as good
postmoderns as anyone because they don�t know about or
believe in persuasion. Custom precedes law, we hope, so better we
should be persuading people. Let law follow along behind.
I am not really interested in laws. "It shall not be so among
you" (Matt 20:26). Laws are the human attempt to cope with
the post-Fall situation by coercion. Yes, the human drive toward
lawmaking is in some sense given by God, as were the animal skins
made for Adam and Eve as a more effective and durable post-Fall
covering. The kingdom of God comes not by coercion but by
persuasion. Any criticism about impracticality or heaven-mindedness
edging out earthly usefulness has a hard time finding any biblical
support. I don�t have to be everything, and the church
doesn�t have to supply everything society needs or wants. To
keep it short, in the old arguments about whether Christians can be
magistrates, I�d come down on the No side. Matt 20:26 says,
as I understand it, that we Christians are not in the coercion
business.
I'm not resurrecting
"can't legislate morality" arguments. Such arguments began, as far as
I know, as arguments against the civil rights movement, which intended,
insofar as it was about law and rights, not to legislate morality but
to forestall the effects of immorality (in which sense
anti-abortion is the legitimate offspring of the civil rights
movement). And now the task of persuasion is still with us in that
we white folks haven't yet faced up to history (see
this page) or to our
maladjustment to this multi-whatever-you-can-think-of society,
which maladjustment is pronounced
"r� si zm."