Charting a New Reformation
Part XXVIII - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics
“The ability to define and separate good from evil can no longer be achieved with appeals to ancient codes like the Ten Commandments or even to later interpretations of the Ten Commandments like the Sermon on the Mount. Contemporary moral standards must be hammered out in the arena in which life-affirming moral principles are forced to engage the external structures of reality, for this is where the ethical life is formed. No modern person has any choice but to be a situationalist.”
Finding a basis for making ethical decisions in our contemporary world is far more complicated than most people seem to imagine. This is especially true for those who continue to insist that ultimate authority lies in some ancient code of laws like the Ten Commandments. In this section of our attempt to chart a new reformation, we bring ethical decision making into the full focus of our attention. In the process, whether we like it or not, the mythology that has grown up around all ancient codes of law will be dismantled and the necessity of ethical relativity will have to be embraced. We begin with an illustration that we invite you only to imagine not to copy. It is designed to illustrate the fact that the very same actions might be regarded as good in one context and as insensitive, inappropriate and wrong in another.
On a Sunday afternoon in America’s “great cathedrals” of worship, our sometimes billion-dollar football stadiums, thousands of fans gather during the football season, on occasion braving extreme cold, in order to see the game in person. Simultaneously, millions of additional fans view the game around the world on television. In the clear vision of literally millions a 240 pound linebacker will be seen regularly walking back and forth between the tackles and guards, who form the football line of scrimmage. These linemen are now in a three point pose, ready to charge at the next snap of the football. This linebacker will exhort these linemen verbally and not infrequently he will even swat their upturned derrieres to urge them forward. Most of the people who see this interchange will think it so normal that they might not even notice it, much less remember it. No one watching would regard this interaction as inappropriate.
Suppose, however, that we change the context from a football stadium to a church building during a Sunday morning service of worship. The worshipers have come forward to receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist. They are kneeling in a row at the altar rail. Now imagine an usher or even an acolyte, following the example of the linebacker, walking up and down behind these kneeling people and swatting each of them on their behinds. Would people notice? You bet they would! Not only would they notice, but this behavior would be viewed as “weird, hostile, offensive, abusive and inappropriate” Yet if we were to isolate the specific act from the two contexts, a football game and a service of worship, one would have to conclude that the deed done was identical, which leads us to our first principle. The judgment as to the goodness or badness of a particular human action depends, not just on the act itself, but on the context in which the act is carried out. Subjectivity in ethical judgments is thus inescapable.
Look next at those substances which our human society has defined as “drugs.” One of these drugs, the one we call alcohol, is used in the form of a fine wine to give grace and elegance to a banquet table. It is thus viewed as good. Alcohol, however, can be and often is used in other forms to perpetuate the hopelessness of a lost soul living on the fringes of society. The alcohol is the same; the context in which the alcohol is used renders the moral judgment. The same thing is true when we turn our attention to other drugs. In the hands of a trained physician they are dispensed to ease pain and to facilitate healing. In that context the drug is life-giving. Sometimes, however, that same drug is used as a coping device by a desperate person. In that context it can be and often is life-destroying. Good and evil are not fixed categories; they never have been. No matter what the religious claims of the past have been, it is now quite impossible to build an ethical system on the basis of an unchanging or eternal standard. Unchanging divine rules are little more than lingering religious illusions. Those who seek to chart a new reformation must face this reality, deal with it, dismiss it and look elsewhere for guidance in determining just what it is that makes good “good” and evil “evil.”
It is the common practice of religious people not to acknowledge these uncertainties or to face these realities. The word “relativity” in ethics is considered a “dirty” word in conservative religious circles. Relativity, nonetheless, confronts human beings at every turn and in every decision they make. One of the reasons that religious people do not want to admit relativity is that it forces adult decision-making on them. It is so much easier to remain childlike and to pretend that there is a set of eternal rules, which one just has to learn and agree to apply. Human beings want to believe that they can define the terms “moral” and “immoral.” It is, however, the existential context of life that more often than not, will determine what is good and what is evil.
From where then, we must ask, does the human sense arise that some things are good and other evil? How do we cope with so slippery a slope, which we experience every time we seek to define ethics? This apparently bottomless pit of uncertainty appears to drive us in search of some essential norm that we hope, and sometimes pretend, will define good and evil objectively for all time. We assume that such a norm must exist. Frequently, once we think we have found it, we elevate it to a status that is beyond questioning. We treat it with great respect. In the Western Judeo-Christian world that has been the fate of the Ten Commandments. Look at the importance our whole society has attached to that traditional standard.
In the Christian churches built in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ten Commandments were almost universally displayed in a prominent place on the inside walls of each church. The popular form for this display was to portray these commandments inscribed on a stone tablet, for stone tablets are not only biblical, but they also give the impression of indestructibility. Not infrequently, these commandments would be on not one, but two stone tablets; the first one including what we in our Christian catechisms have called “our duty toward God.” These are the commandments (1-4) that tell us that God is one, that God cannot be imaged and that God’s name and God’s day must be honored. The second tablet would include those commandments (5-10), which were thought to spell out our “duty toward our neighbor:” Honor your parents, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness and do not covet.
In the early days of my life in my church, I was treated to the opportunity of hearing the Ten Commandments recited in worship on a regular basis. It happened on the first Sunday of each month. The congregation was taught to respond to this recitation with the words: “Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law.” When the final commandment was recited, we were taught to say: “Lord have mercy upon us and write all these thy laws on our hearts, we beseech thee.” Great power and authority were attached to these holy words.
A decline in that power, however, began to set in in the 20th century. My church changed its liturgical directions to make the reading of the Ten Commandments voluntary not mandatory. The result was that the Ten Commandments quickly fell into liturgical disuse. Why did my church take this action? Perhaps it was the fact that both the new scientific discourse and the period of history we refer to as “the enlightenment” had served to erode our confidence in the supernatural deity, whose will these commandments were thought to express. Perhaps we discovered too many exceptions to the rules, which served to destroy the objectivity of this ancient moral code or at least to weaken its authority permanently. Whatever the cause, a very real demise was felt and was accompanied by a heightened sense of anxiety. To many conservative Christians rampant immorality appeared to be the only real alternative.
A judge in Alabama, named Roy S. Moore, decided in 2001 that, in the service of his fundamentalist faith, he would install in his courtroom a two ton statue on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. Since he believed these ten laws were dictated by God, in his mind he was doing nothing other than defending God’s truth. He was, however, charged with violating the constitutional amendment that guarantees the separation of church and state. His supporters rallied to his side. His critics were called “godless,” “immoral” and “modernists.” Moore suggested that his enemies were those who were eager to remove God and God’s words from America’s courts of justice. The law prevailed, however, and Judge Moore’s statue was removed.
Most people do not know that there is a wide sectarian disagreement over the order and even the way the commandments are numbered. Judge Moore’s Ten Commandments were not “objective” at all, as he claimed. On his statue he had followed the order of the “Protestant” version of these commandments. I happened to be in Montgomery, Alabama, during the time of this controversy and I went to see Judge Moore’s statue before it was removed. On the back were the words: “copyright 2001 Judge Roy S. Moore.” Surely by this time, the Ten Commandments are in the public domain. Are they eternal? Are they unchallengeable? I don’t think so. We move next week to trace the difference between religious rhetoric and religious practice in regard to the Ten Commandments. They are not the same.
John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
