Jesus, Ethics, and Us

these are notes from a class pre­sen­ta­tion I gave in Ron Howard’s class The Eth­i­cal Ana­lyst about ethics in Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive

The Hid­den Dan­ger of Ethics Class­es
There is a great but hid­den dan­ger in class­es such as this. By spend­ing hours debat­ing moral issues we too often train our­selves for ratio­nal­iza­tion instead of right­eous­ness. There is no point in try­ing to under­stand good unless we also seek to be good!

Why Should We Care What Chris­tian­i­ty Says?
Today it is com­mon to regard Chris­tian­i­ty as moral­ly bank­rupt. This is naïve and rep­re­sents mas­sive prej­u­dice.

Chris­tian­i­ty has proved and is prov­ing its wor­thi­ness as a moral framework—it has made the world a sub­stan­tial­ly bet­ter place (note: this could be con­strued as cir­cu­lar if you dis­pute the moral­i­ty of the out­comes, but it’s irrel­e­vant because I’m mere­ly attempt­ing to demon­strate that Chris­t­ian per­spec­tives on eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions should be tak­en seri­ous­ly because they actu­al­ly affect our lives on a dai­ly basis).

More hos­pi­tals, orphan­ages, rest homes, and res­cue mis­sions have been built to hon­or Jesus than all oth­er reli­gious lead­ers com­bined. This is a direct byprod­uct of the Chris­t­ian empha­sis on com­pas­sion.

In Amer­i­ca alone 128 col­leges were con­struct­ed in our first 100 years—all were found­ed by a church, denom­i­na­tion, or oth­er Chris­t­ian group. This is a direct byprod­uct of the Chris­t­ian empha­sis on love of truth.

Chris­tian­i­ty has had a rev­o­lu­tion­ary impact on the the­o­ries of human rights. In every cul­ture Chris­tian­i­ty has entered the con­di­tion of women has been marked­ly improved and slav­ery has been or is being abol­ished. Think of an effec­tive reformer and you are almost cer­tain­ly think­ing of a Chris­t­ian (William Wilber­force, the North Amer­i­can abo­li­tion­ists, and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. all come quick­ly to mind). This is a direct byprod­uct of the Chris­t­ian empha­sis on humans bear­ing the image of God.

Chris­tian­i­ty is respon­si­ble for the vast major­i­ty of char­i­ta­ble giv­ing in Amer­i­ca. This is a direct byprod­uct of the Chris­t­ian empha­sis on gen­eros­i­ty.

Even if you don’t think much of insti­tu­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty, you have to wres­tle with the eth­i­cal teach­ings of Jesus and his fol­low­ers. He was a world-class philoso­pher and is uni­ver­sal­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est ethi­cists of all time.

What Dis­tin­guish­es Right From Wrong? (Ontol­ogy)
Moral­i­ty flows from God. This is not to say that God cre­at­ed moral­i­ty arbi­trar­i­ly nor to say that he is oblig­ed by some exter­nal source to impose the laws that he does. Rather, it is to assert that moral­i­ty is a part of who God is. God is moral just as we have a pulse. In a sense, we can con­sid­er moral­i­ty to be a part of the divine DNA.

Bib­li­cal­ly, love is the foun­da­tion of all moral­i­ty:
34But when the Phar­isees heard that he had silenced the Sad­ducees with his reply, they thought up a fresh ques­tion of their own to ask him. 35One of them, an expert in reli­gious law, tried to trap him with this ques­tion: 36“Teacher, which is the most impor­tant com­mand­ment in the law of Moses?”

37Jesus replied, ” ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38This is the first and great­est com­mand­ment. 39A sec­ond is equal­ly impor­tant: ‘Love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ 40All the oth­er com­mand­ments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two com­mand­ments.”
Matthew 22.34–40, New Liv­ing Trans­la­tion

8Owe no one any­thing, except to love one anoth­er, for the one who loves his neigh­bor has ful­filled the law. 9For the com­mand­ments, “do not com­mit adul­tery, do not mur­der, do not steal, do not cov­et,” (and if there is any oth­er
com­mand­ment) are summed up in this, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self.” 10Love does no wrong to a neigh­bor. There­fore love is the ful­fill­ment of the law.
Romans 13.9–10, New Eng­lish Trans­la­tion

Self-cen­tered­ness, the oppo­site of love, is the root of all wrong­do­ing (also referred to as self­ish­ness or pride). This is counter-intu­itive to many peo­ple, but is a log­i­cal con­se­quence of admit­ting a Cre­ator. In oth­er words, posit that we and the entire uni­verse are the design of a supreme being. We then can­not be the cen­ter of existence—either He is or no one is. To make our­selves, our will, or our desires our guide for deter­min­ing mean­ing or moral­i­ty is to com­mit a fac­tu­al error with far-reach­ing con­se­quences. In addi­tion, this supreme being is per­fect in every way, and hence all ratio­nal moral beings will love the Cre­ator.

That is why we should love God, so why should we love oth­er peo­ple? Because oth­er peo­ple are cre­at­ed in the image of God, and part of lov­ing God is lov­ing the image of God in them. Fur­ther­more, they belong to the one we love, and so we ought to love them because they are His. Final­ly, we are debtors to God and as part of the con­di­tion for absolv­ing that debt he requires that we love one anoth­er: If any­one says, “I love God,” yet hates his broth­er, he is a liar. For any­one who does not love his broth­er, whom he has seen, can­not love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has giv­en us this com­mand: Who­ev­er loves God must also love his broth­er. 1 John 4.20–21, NIV.

How Can We Know Right From Wrong? (Epis­te­mol­o­gy)
The prob­lem with most eth­i­cal the­o­ries is pre­cise­ly in the area of know­ing right from wrong. Humans are noth­ing if not self-decep­tive when it comes to mak­ing moral choic­es, and so we must always be cau­tious when reach­ing moral con­clu­sions.

In Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy the ground of all moral­i­ty is an all-know­ing being who has cho­sen to reveal moral­i­ty to lim­it­ed beings such as our­selves (both through His world and His word), thus neat­ly solv­ing the prob­lem.

In addi­tion, it allows for the vague moral pre­cepts to have some def­i­n­i­tion. For example—the injunc­tion to love is mean­ing­less with­out some com­mon under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes love.

4Love is patient and kind. Love is not jeal­ous or boast­ful or proud 5or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irri­ta­ble, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. 6It is nev­er glad about injus­tice but rejoic­es when­ev­er the truth wins out. 7Love nev­er gives up, nev­er los­es faith, is always hope­ful, and endures through every cir­cum­stance.
1 Corinthi­ans 13.4–7, New Liv­ing Trans­la­tion

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our broth­ers. 17If any­one has mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions and sees his broth­er in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear chil­dren, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3.16–18, New Inter­na­tion­al Ver­sion

A Chris­t­ian Per­spec­tive On High-Pro­file Moral Issues
Sex­u­al­i­ty: Sex­u­al inti­ma­cy is reserved for het­ero­sex­u­al covenant rela­tion­ships (mar­riages).
Genet­ics: Our goal must be to heal, not to per­vert. Unborn humans are peo­ple and have the same right to life as we do.
Copy­right Issues (MP3s): The laws may be ill-con­sid­ered, but they are laws nonethe­less. Chris­tians obey just laws (even those that are unwise, as long as they are not dis­as­trous in their con­se­quences). In a sim­i­lar way, Chris­tians pay their full tax­es even though cur­rent tax laws are bad.
Pover­ty: Those who have are to be gen­er­ous towards those who do not, but in such as way as to lift them out of their pover­ty and not to trap them in it. Hav­ing wealth is not immoral, but being dri­ven by greed is.
Paci­fism: Gov­ern­ments may use force both in the pros­e­cu­tion of domes­tic jus­tice and in the case of just wars. This specif­i­cal­ly includes the government’s right to impose the death penal­ty.

How Can We Do Right And Refrain From Wrong? (Prac­ti­cal­i­ty)
Believ­ing that right and wrong are more than arbi­trary cat­e­gories is the first step. Wis­dom (want­i­ng the right things and know­ing how to attain them) and willpow­er (dili­gence, self-con­trol) are also essen­tial. In addi­tion, there are cer­tain habits we can acquire that will make us more like­ly to do right. For exam­ple, asso­ci­at­ing with peo­ple who val­ue being moral and strive to improve them­selves. Read­ing wis­dom from the ages, and not mere­ly from our peers. Think­ing rig­or­ous­ly and ques­tion­ing our assump­tions.

But all that hits a wall: we can’t be good on our own. That’s not to say that we’re each the epit­o­me of wicked­ness, but rather to say that we have all fall­en short of per­fec­tion and can­not attain it.

Bad News, Good News
We are all eter­nal beings, bear­ing the very image of God. That means that we each face an after­life. To admit imper­fect crea­tures to a per­fect place is to make that per­fect place imper­fect. If the per­fect place is eter­nal, then we have admit­ted an infi­nite amount of imper­fec­tion. God must dis­patch us to one or the oth­er, and we are not fit for Heav­en. To make it worse, for Him to uni­lat­er­al­ly change us (to make us per­fect) would be immoral. That means we’re head­ed for the oth­er place—the place of eter­nal imper­fec­tion.

There is a solu­tion to this problem—if we were to give God per­mis­sion to change us he could make us per­fect, and there­by just­ly admit us to the per­fect place. This is pre­cise­ly the foun­da­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty. God promis­es that if we place our trust in Jesus He will begin a change process in us that will cul­mi­nate at our res­ur­rec­tion from the grave. At that point we will be fit cit­i­zens of Heav­en.

23All of us have sinned and fall­en short of God’s glo­ry. 24But God treats us much bet­ter than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, he freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins. 25–26God sent Christ to be our sac­ri­fice. Christ offered his life’s blood, so that by faith in him we could come to God. And God did this to show that in the past he was right to be patient and for­give sin­ners. This also shows that God is right when he accepts peo­ple who have faith in Jesus. Romans 3.23–26, CEV