Out of the Moral Morass

Note: The following  (re-posted) essay is my attempt to write the essay I have asked my Writing 122 (Persuasive Writing) students to write. The assignment was to argue for what they think is the best source for moral judgments about public and social issues.

Many people in the last election cited moral values as their reason for voting for one party or the other. Candidates not receiving votes from those concerned about morality objected to being portrayed morally indifferent. The whole debate may be the result of the political parties having different sources or foundations for their central moral values. Beneath all the political arguments is a deeper argument about what is the best source of moral values. I believe the Judeo-Christian tradition is our best guide to right and wrong, but many today look elsewhere.

Those who reject a religious source of morality usually see morality as result of cultural influences. But insistence that morality is culturally determined offers no help when trying to decide between conflicting moral views within a culture or when deciding which culture’s values are best. To judge a society or a culture as racist, sexist, or unjust, we must stand outside the culture being judged. Our only alternative is to say whatever moral values a culture affirms are the right ones. And this could only be determined by following majority rule and assuming that even a 49% minority is wrong. Most people, however, know enough history to recognize the majority can be wrong.

Others simply choose a principle like the golden rule or the admonition to “do no harm” as a guide to morality. Although the golden rule is embedded in Judeo-Christian tradition, it is also widely accepted in other religions and, therefore, has universal appeal. However, when cut loose from divine authority, the Golden Rule can seem more like a personal preference. Others could simply say that they prefer to live by the rule of the jungle and survival of the fittest. Another weakness of the Golden Rule is that it doesn’t help us with many of the moral issues we most frequently debate: suicide, prostitution, pornography, abortion, and drug use. “Doing unto others as we would have others do unto us” only works if we clearly define “others”. If we exclude the Jews, the blacks, and the unborn children from “others,” we can justify the holocaust, slavery, and abortion.

The Ten Commandments and Judeo-Christian tradition have the advantage of possessing the authority of divine commands. Reasons to obey them are rooted in the character of God and his wisdom as man’s Creator. However, in a democracy, society must make moral decisions with many people of other religions and no religion. Does this mean religion cannot be a useful source of moral guidance? Not at all. It simply means that arguments for accepting Judeo-Christian values must be based on evidence everyone can consider and evaluate.

Fortunately, history provides a lot of evidence that the Judeo-Christian tradition has created the societies with the greatest freedoms and the greatest degree of justice. The Biblical idea of every person being created in the image God has, throughout history, made steady progress against all kinds of social evils: racism, Anti-Semitism, sexism, and caste systems. All of our modern experiments with religion-free systems (Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and communist Cuba) have been a disaster for human rights and personal freedom. But the idea expressed in Declaration of Independence that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights by their Creator has not only resulted in unprecedented freedom and prosperity, but also given us a firm foundation for opposing all expressions of injustice within our society. As a leader of the civil rights movement, Reverend Martin Luther King was able cry out for equality because “we are all God’s children”. Even earlier, Wilberforce in England and abolitionists in America found in the Bible the truths needed to fight slavery. In other words, Judeo-Christian moral values have been tested and found to work. So even if one thinks the Bible is mere mythology, it is hard to deny that biblical moral values have brought us greater liberty and human dignity than any other source.

At this point some will point out the many times that supposedly Christian nations acted with great savagery and barbarity—the Crusades, The Inquisition, the pogroms against Jews, religious wars, or even the pedophilia of some priests. But all of these evils are the result, not of faithfulness to biblical values, but rather a hypocritical rejection of those values. The evil done by some Christian leaders has not been the result of them being too much like Christ. It has been instead the departure from Judeo-Christians morals and the Church’s imitation of the world that has led to so much that discredits religion.

All of these failures of religion point out that following a moral code is more important than merely believing in one. And anyone can use morality as a hypocritical cloak for greed, hatred, or injustice. But once again the Judeo-Christian tradition has given us the clear warnings against hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and pride.

Because much of the last century has been a long journey away from Judeo-Christian values, we have had plenty of opportunity to evaluate whether this departure has led to moral progress or moral decline. I believe history reveals that our culture, our families, and our moral behavior have flourished best when we have followed Judeo-Christian values the closest.

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Dog Blog Two

Monty Python’s Flying Circus used to a have a skit where a van with a Confuse A Cat painted on the side would pull in front of a cat. Out would jump several uniformed workers who would do silly things and then drive off. I too enjoy confusing cats, dogs, small children, and bewildered college students.

It is easy to confuse Mira when playing fetch in the cemetery. We have been there so often she thinks she knows where I am going to throw the ball. Often if I hold the ball up, she will head off in the direction she thinks the ball is going. Sometimes I don’t notice her inattention and throw the ball another direction. When she looks back, she sees my empty hands but has no idea of where the ball has gone. I end up retrieving the ball myself. I have learned to call her attention back to the ball in my hand before tossing it. (But what if she is only pretending not to know where the ball is to make me fetch it? Hmmm.)

Familiarity not only breeds contempt—it breeds confusion. We often think we know what God is doing because we know what he has done in the past. So we take off in the wrong direction—and like a confused dog wonder how we missed His will. We love formulas, programs, and seminars based on how God did stuff in the past or in some other place. Much harder but less confusing is to wait on God and see which way He throws the ball.

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Dog Blog One

I took Mira, our son’s Doberman, up to the cemetery for a run this afternoon. I have often admired and even envied how she runs and romps with joyous abandon. However, I also see her do stupid stuff that reminds me of myself.

This afternoon I took a small hard-rubber ball that she loves to chase. Mira raced after the yellow ball as it caromed off gravestones, and  then pranced proudly around with it lifted high. Instead of retrieving, she celebrates the joy of having the ball. But she is quickly distracted and will drop the ball while sniffing trees or chewing grass. Often she forgets where she dropped the thing after which she ran so hard.

We are often this way. The world throws something and yells “fetch” and we lickety-split after fame, money, possessions, or something else we just have to have. But thirty seconds after our victory dance, we are distracted and care little for what we just got. We always want more or want different. We sniff around for something better.

Eventually, we figure out that the world, or our own silly pride and ambition, is just playing fetch with us—doggone it.

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Will the Flock, Flock?

Bird watching in the winter is hit or miss. Sometimes I walk through woods or along the lake at the college and nothing is moving—not a single bird is rustling in the bare alders or tall Douglas firs. Other times they are everywhere: chickadees, bushtits, ruby-crowned kinglets, and yellow-rumped warblers. They swarm through bushes pecking at anything edible and then are gone. This feast or famine for bird watchers is because in the winter the birds flock up.

When the food is scarce and weather icy, the birds come together. I suppose there is some survival advantage that explains this behavior. Perhaps a flock gives more eyes looking for food. My theory is that discovery of food causes bird belches that attract the other birds.

I wonder if God’s people are somewhat like birds (sometimes bird-brained) in that when the food is plentiful and weather good, we all scatter and go our own ways. Perhaps as society grows more hostile and we in the West enter more fully into a post-Christian age, the weather will change for Christians. Weather forecasts don’t look promising. But on the positive side, maybe we will flock together: rufous-sided Baptists, black-capped Presbyterians, golden-crowned Pentecostals, and swallow-tailed Nazarenes.

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Winter Flowers

While walking the dog last week, I was surprised, delighted, and then saddened to see wild strawberries blooming. On a south-facing bank along the road five white blossoms turned their faces to the December sun. In late November we had a few amazingly warm days. Those days must have warmed the clay of the bank enough to fool the plants into blooming.

It was a delight to see the delicate flowers amidst the strands of dead grass and fallen leaves. But the false spring that brought the unseasonal blooms is cruel. Everything froze last night. There are no flowers, and no hope of sweet fruit.

Too much of life is this way. Many hopes are out of season, doomed to bear no fruit. Dream jobs turn to nightmares. Some dream relationships turn into hard work, compromise, or worse.

Church folk feel the presence of God in a service and wonder, “Is this it? Is this when God moves powerfully and people are transformed and the community touched by God’s love?” The next Sunday the frost sets in and people are freeze-dried in the same religious routine.

Parents praying for wayward children look for signs of return—a change of heart. Many signs are winter flowers. But the cold drives the roots deeper. And even the untimely blooms promise spring will come. Though our lives are filled with winter flowers, an eternal spring is coming. There is a hope that does not disappoint.

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A Ranting, Raging Aging Father

Dylan Thomas asked his dying father to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” and “to not go gentle into that goodnight.” Although not dying, just aging, I too rage.  I long to go to war for the happiness and dreams of my sons. I want to swing a sword at the sin and the lies of the world that distract and mislead them. I want to drop 50 grand on each son so they can pursue their dreams. But I can’t. There is no sword to swing, no money to give. I hate it.

Yes, I know, I can pray, and my prayers for my boys may be something powerful. But they don’t feel powerful—just sad and pathetic. Faith or more of God’s Spirit might make me feel more like a warrior and less like a helpless old man. My prayers flutter heavenward more like frightened chickens than majestic eagles.

And, of course, it would probably be unwise for me to fight my son’s battles. They will only mature and grow spiritually if they fight their own battles, make their own decisions to consecrate their lives completely to Christ. So I sit in the stands like I did when they played sports, except now the stakes are high: jobs, marriage, and basic happiness—sometimes even having enough to eat. This part of being a father sucks. I hate it and tonight wish I had something to punch. My love makes me rage against this stupid, sinfully screwed-up world, full of lies and pain. I know the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God, but I rage anyway.

Much of the rage comes from feeling helpless—from longing to grip a sword and feel it slice into a real enemy. After all David prayed:

            He trains my hands for battle,

             So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

Just give my target! Give me an enemy that isn’t a prince of the air! Let me defeat just a few of my sons’ enemies. Even better, I want to stand by their side like Odysseus stood with his son Telemachus when they slaughtered their enemies in Ithaca. Raging from the stands sucks and prayer feels like shadow boxing. Yes, I know we walk and probably war, by faith and not sight. But I feel like a blind man swinging his cane at a mugger. It does no good to bend the bow of bronze if we can’t see the enemy. Maybe God guides the arrows.  

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Mom

These have been dreary days. Peter now has a place to keep his dog up in Portland so we are dogless. Mom is especially sad and keeps remembering that Mira was a sweet dog. On top of that, we have had three straight days of fog that hasn’t lifted. Last night Teckla and I stirred ourselves to go to the small Wednesday night prayer meeting at the church. There’s usually only four or five of us. We asked Mom if she was wanted to walk over to church with us. She said she was too tired, so Teckla and I started across the street by ourselves. At the edge of the street, we heard the front door open.

It was Mom. She said, “The Holy Spirit convicted me about being too lazy to go to prayer meeting.” She is 91 and doesn’t catch every word we say, but she hears God just fine.

I know Mom sometimes feels a little depressed about being unable to do all the stuff she once did. She is probably tempted to feel useless. But she shouldn’t. The example of her sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, her faithfulness to obey God, and the fervency of her love for God are pure gold. I would rather hear her pray than hear the most eloquent theologian preach. Is she useless? Not even a little. But she may need a dog.

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The Two Whatevers

One of the most annoying current expressions is the apathetic “whatever”. It is a popular response of teens to parents. Said with a roll of the eyes and an exasperated sigh, it effectively communicates a bored contempt toward whatever has been said. It’s a way of saying, “Yeah, yeah, whatever makes you happy.” It’s hearing without listening or caring.

Although this word may not be uttered, this can easily become the attitude of Christians who hear sermons every Sunday. We’ve heard it all before. The pastor explains that we should be on fire with a passion for God and compassion for those around us. We may say “Amen”—but often it is just another “whatever”.

There is, however, another kind of whatever. It is how we should respond when God asks what we will give up to obey him. We should say, “Whatever you ask me to surrender.” When God asks us to give up our pride, our dreams, and our comfort, we should humbly say, “Whatever.”

We must follow Jesus “whatever” the cost. Our prayer for ourselves and for our sons and daughters should be that the first kind of “whatever” is traded for this second kind.

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The Great Work

For many years our church has prayed for a very sweet lady who has bravely faced one affliction after another: surgeries on both knees, twice, serious infections and pneumonia, and now kidney disease. Although not elderly, her hair is turning grey and she walks with a cane. Her life is pretty much locked into the four walls of her house.

Our prayers for her healing have not been answered. We never know if we are waiting for God or God is waiting for us. Should we be praying more earnestly and with greater faith? Or should we be simply resting in God’s grace and sovereign wisdom? Or both, at the same time? This world is broken—sometimes I am too.

But I know there is a balance, a paradox, and contrapuntal music of grace and works, resting and striving. In a poem from his collection entitled Leavings Wendell Berry captures the paradox in his description of an old man’s faith.

By grace we live. But he can go
no further. Having known the grace
that for so long has kept this world,
haggard as it is, as we have made it,
we cannot rest, we must be stirring
to keep that gift dwelling among us,
eternally alive in time. This
is the great work, no other, none harder,
none nearer rest or more beautiful.

We do not stir to get grace. We move to make room for the gift and to keep it alive in us. Like the character in this poem, I have lived long enough to understand that keeping grace alive in my life and heart is “the great work.” And as Berry says, no work has been harder and “none nearer rest”. Right now I am too much in the thick of it to know if it is beautiful.

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Porches and Pooches

At Auburn University students in the architectural department are challenged to build a home on a budget of $20,000. The resulting home isn’t fancy (see Time Sept 30, 2013), but I found it interesting that they thought it important to include a large porch. The houses are about 600 to 800 sq ft, so the porch helps expand the living area and gives them a place to escape the Alabama heat. They also say the porch is important part of social life. I have found this true, in a roundabout way.

Our house has a tiny porch and has a thick hedge that separates us from the street, but I spent a good part of the summer working on the garage and sawing wood in the driveway. I ended up talking to many folks who walked by. One day, I was smashing up some metal shelves to haul to the dump and a pick-up truck pulled up. The guy that jumped out explained that he was gathering scrap metal to help pay off the mortgage on the Christian Church down the street. We talked about his church a little. It turned out he knew Mom because she had passed him during a walk for life several years earlier. He said she was amazing and an inspiration. The more I worked out front, the more people I met.

I found myself wishing for a big porch because I could see how much just being out front of the house connected me to my neighborhood. In many places, many suburbs at least, front porches have been replaced with backyard patios that remove us from the community and recreate our private slice of middle-class paradise. Rather than sitting and talking to passing neighbors from our porches, we often retreat to our computers where we join a virtual community. One strategy that has been used effectively to stop street crime has been simply getting parents to spend more time on their front porches, not just because of more eyes on the street, but also because neighborhoods become safer when neighbors know each other.

Many churches strategize about how to reach their cities for Christ but miss the simple and obvious things like porches. Another obvious thing is pooches! For the last couple years I have been walking Peter’s Doberman, Mira, up the street to the graveyard on the hill. On these walks and up at the graveyard I have talked to lots of people—some other dog owners, other’s not. Just a couple days ago while working out in my driveway, a lady walked by who I had often talked to while she ran Fletcher, her pointer, up at the graveyard. She told me Fletcher had died of cancer. I told her Mira had torn her leg on barbed wire. We connected over our love of dogs. I was sad for her loss. All of this is another way that community is built. It’s good.

Several years ago I was walking Mira when I encountered Don, who was the husband of Sandy, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church at the foot of our hill. He was walking his dog Peppy. I mentioned that I had seen men with Bibles—a rare sight in Oregon– coming out of church on Thursday mornings. Don then invited me to come to men’s Bible study. I have been attending ever since and find my connection to my community much deeper than it had ever been because I am now connected to two congregations. In addition, some of the men in the Bible study were two and three generations in Myrtle Point and knew about everyone in town.

So next year I am hosting, here in Myrtle Point, the Global Porches and Pooches Evangelism Symposium. We will have break-out sessions on Spirit-filled dog walking and the art of porch sitting. Pets welcome.

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