My generous thanks to Richard Dahlstrom out in Seattle for finding/posting the following quote. He was our pastor when we were living there and he continues to be a great source of intelligent and spirit-filled instruction. * * *
The following note was found on the body of dead child in the Ravesnbruck concentration camp in Germany:
"O Lord, remember not only men and women of good will, but ill will. But do not only remember the suffering they have inflicted on us, remember the fruits we have brought thanks to this suffering; our comradship, our loyalty, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to judgment, let the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness. Amen. Amen. Amen."
When I read this quote the other day, it shattered me to the core.
You see, for the majority of the world working toward goodness, righting wrong, and acting ethically is either a social or religious imperative. Most of us follow a set of moral or philosophical rules that are supposed to make us better people and most of us also do our best to invite the world to follow suit. Sometimes its through proselytizing our beliefs, or education, or even through force- stopping others from "evil" by the sword or the pen or the law and causing them to end their wickedness and move toward something better.
But that’s not really grace.
Grace is that child who witnesses the horrors of war- sees his sisters raped, tortured, and burned alive in a furnace and then earnestly prays to God that the patience, comradship, loyalty, courage, generosity, and greatness of heart that has grown within him are enough to cover the evil of those who enacted such violence against him.
In other words, it sort of like forgiveness by proxy- unattached to any sort of change of heart or behavior on behalf of those who need it. In this case, grace is not so much that the ill-willed oppressors repent, but that they are forgiven despite themselves, or even in spite of themselves.
Grace is the Son of God, dying on two planks of wood and crying out “Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”
And this is the aspect of Christianity that I find most compelling.
Grace, is ridiculous.
It's completely against human nature.
And yet, it’s undeniably one of the more important elements of Christ’s Spirit and the heart that He has for the world. Without it, I'm afraid, we'd all be sunk.
Were you there when they laid Him in the grave?
Were you there when they laid Him in the grave?
Oh, sometimes, if causes me to
Tremble... Tremble... Tremble...
Were you there when they laid Him in the grave?
-Spiritual
As John looked on, watching as the soldiers drove nails through the arms and legs of his Rabbi, I wonder if the words of his Master came to mind.
“This is My Body, broken…”
“This is My Blood, spilled out…”
This wasn’t how he expected those words to be fulfilled. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. And yet, here was the man on whom he’d pinned all his hopes, bloodied and bleeding and moments from death.
And then Jesus spoke; each word carefully and painfully uttered as if the effort was a labor that brought death a bit closer. “John… take care of my mother as if she were your own. Mother, take care of my beloved friend as if he were your own son.”
He arched his back in pain, struggling for another breath.
The sky darkened.
“Oh God, why have you abandoned me?” The words barely escaped his mangled lips.
And with that, He was gone.
A Roman Centurion standing close by looked on, awestruck.
“I think we made a mistake,” he said. “For that was surely the son of God.”
“Yes,” said John under his breath. “I believe he was.”
On that Thursday evening, Jesus invited His closest friends, young men who had traveled by His side for the past three years, to gather and experience the Last Meal He would receive before death.
As they entered, I’m sure each disciple must have been brimming over with excitement. It was Passover after all- the most important time of celebration and remembrance in the Jewish calendar- and in those days, as their backs broke under the boot of the Roman Empire, the twelve eager young men must have been ready; hoping and yearning for a miracle that would free them from oppression just as they had been freed from Egypt and Babylon and Syria.
Peter, no doubt was cracking Rome jokes, trying to get a rise out of Judas and Simon. Probably John was the first to notice Jesus’ somber mood. He watched as his Rabbi donned a towel and picked up basin full of washing water. I can imagine that the room became hushed as Jesus moved between His disciples, washing their feet, maybe even choking back some tears knowing that this was the very last lesson He would teach them before death.
“What are you doing Jesus.” asked Peter as Jesus approached him, “I should be washing your feet. I can’t let you humiliate yourself like this.”
“Peter,” He said, “Please let me do this. If you want to be a part of my life, I need to wash your feet. I need to do this and you need to learn.”
“OK, why don’t you wash all of me then?” said Peter.
Jesus looked him directly in the eyes. “Peter, I love you, but this is not the time for jest. But, I know why you’re making a joke out of this. This seems like menial labor to you and you think it’s beneath me. But, I tell you the truth- no job is menial if it serves another. And if you truly want to be great in my eyes you’ll follow my example and serve others- no matter how lowly or menial the role seems to be. Now, you don’t need me to clean your whole body, for it is not unclean. You do, however, need your feet cleaned, for they are dusty from the dirt on the streets. So please, allow me to make you clean.”
The young man had been hunted his entire life. At first, it was mere shepherds who had witnessed visions of angels late one night. They were an uneducated lot, common outcasts who did work that no one else wanted to. Scholars arrived soon afterward; men from the East who traveled long and hard to witness for themselves the signs they had foreseen in the heavens. They brought with them gifts and tokens of adoration that could very well have overshadowed the enthusiasm of the uneducated herdsmen had the child's parents been from a different stock.
Dark enemies soon gave chase. Armed with death, they searched for the child on an evil King’s behalf, slaughtering infants who still clung to their mothers' breasts. But the child’s father was a man of vision and his family escaped the sword as they fled to Egypt.
Years passed. And the child grew older.
When he turned twelve, his parents were the hunters. Searching through family and friends they turned Jerusalem upside-down looking for their boy. But he was hunting too, for answers, in the House of the Lord. He called it his Father’s house and his parents were astonished.
When he was thirty, his mother sought him out to fix the wine problem his friends were having at their wedding. And when he began hanging around with fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots- she went looking again and begged him to come home.
During the day, men of religious influence laid out tricks and traps to trip him up. But at night, some of them would seek him out in secret to learn more about his ideas, while others plotted to kill him in dark rooms lit by fine candles.
Soldiers overtook him one day to request a miracle on behalf of their commander. Later they overtook him in the garden with a warrant for his arrest.
Was it the same men?
Oh, how quickly we turn from wonder to violence.
At the suggestion of Micah Tillman, I recently picked up Tim Keller’s The Reason For God from the library. So far, it’s been pretty reasonable even though it doesn’t have any particularly new ideas. Much of his work here is borrowing from CS Lewis or dressing up old arguments in new clothing, but it’s a good refresher course on basic apologetics.
As I get further into the text, perhaps I’ll throw in some commentary on Keller’s ideas, but so far I've decided that he’s one of the few Christian writers who know how to use theology and philosophy together in a way that makes sound use of each. Some writers, like John Piper, are really great on the theology end, but don’t use philosophy very well while others, like Brian McLaren, are powerhouses of Christian philosophy but don’t really do well at articulating their theology.
Keller seems to have his feet grounded in both realms.
It's quite refreshing.
Here’s a link to his book on Amazon:
I’m still mulling over this thought I picked up from Rob Bell the other day:
(Paraphrased and expanded by me)
The narrative of the Bible is mainly concerned with God waiting and wanting to father/mother/brother/husband us while we’d rather spend our time running around looking for fruitless ways to earn the right to be a part of His family. * * *
Bell's point was accentuated as he brought up all the parents from the audience who were holding young infants on their laps. He asked them to relate to the rest of the room how they felt about their child.
“I’m completely in love”
“Best thing that ever happened to me.”
“He’s our little surprise, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“She is a miracle.”
“We’ve overwhelmed with love.”
“I can’t describe how incredible she is.”
“We’re just so grateful to be her parents.”
“We prayed and waited for years in order to hold him.”
I almost burst into tears a number of times when I thought about the unity of love and gratitude that was voiced by each parent. And I couldn’t help but agree that I feel the same way about my own son- one year old and more amazing every single day.
Sure, a few years from now when sin continues to creep into our relationship, he’ll become defiant at certain moments. And I’ll probably hold unrealistic/prideful expectations of him that he’ll never obtain. There will be hostility and anger between us from time to time and I’m sure that he’ll sometimes wonder what life would be like if he had been born into a different family with different values that don’t seem so constraining.
But even within the fallen nature of our relationship, cracked and tainted by sin, there won’t be a requirement for him to perform a certain way in order to be my son. There’s absolutely nothing that he could do that would increase or decrease my love for him or my protection.
He’ll be my son no matter what happens.
And so if this is how an earthly relationship works, tarnished as it is by the human condition- I imagine that God’s attitude and love for us are even greater. I imagine that God doesn’t even have any “expectations” of us when it comes to our relationship other than that we engage in it as fully as we possibly can- just as we’d engage in relationships with our parents, siblings, and spouse.
After considering this further for the past few days, I believe that thinking of God in terms of relationship is a must. And it's also a perfect remedy for legalism!
What I mean is this: Anything that is done religiously that isn’t a relational joy between God and ourselves either is being done with the wrong attitude or is not an appropriate practice for us to engage in.
God doesn’t want us to perform, He wants us to engage.
I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my site lately from people searching in Google for the difference between Ethics & Morality. They’re probably getting here to this site because of this post I wrote a few weeks ago. Because of this, I thought that I'd flush out my own opinion on the subject a little bit more today:
Ethics is a term that most people unfortunately use interchangeably for morals. What I mean is that when they say that they want or expect another person to “act ethically” what they’re saying is that somewhere deep inside of them, they believe there is a behavior code that other people are expected follow. This code is based on a number of things- religious beliefs, normative social behaviors, public policy, and cultural beliefs.
But that’s not Ethics.
Ethics is historically the pursuit of ‘the good life.’ It’s an ideal. It’s a theoretical. It’s a utopia of sorts that we hope to move toward as we make our world a better place. Thanks to Mills (although we can see the roots of this ideal as far back as Socrates), ethics is normally used on a macro level rather than an individual one. Basically, his theory of utility says that the highest good is when the greatest amount of peoples enjoy a happy life. Different ethical theories hardly ever counteract this matrix although there are plenty of disagreements regarding the semantics of what good, happiness, and the greatest amount mean.
A little current events application:
When we ask a business to act ethically (if we really mean ethically) we’re saying: “Do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people and make the most people happy as you can.”
Most people assume that this means that no one lies or disregards other people’s money- but in theory, if a business can prove that lying and cheating a bit leads to greater returns for the majority of the people, they might have grounds to claim that they are acting ethically (for the good of all) when they deceive us.
Let’s counteract this understanding of Ethics with a better understanding of Morality (or Morals).
I’ve come to believe that people often use word ethics rather than morals because morality has a religious overtone. Morality obviously elicits images of Morality Plays and other Catholic traditions. And since not all people agree on religious issues, it’s assumed that when we’re discussing the public sector (i.e. business or government) we need to use a more secular term. Now, it’s true the religion does play a big part in informing our morals. Since religious and cultural upbringing play a big part in what values we inherit, it follows that morals (loosely defined as an inherited understanding of right and wrong) tend to be at least tutored by religion if not overtly religious in nature (yes, even for the atheist).
But consider the phrase: “The moral of the story is…”
Take for instance, the old Aesop Fable of ‘The Tortoise and the Hare.’ The hare is expected to win because of his speed, but as the story progresses the determined tortoise overtakes him as he vainly takes a little nap. Victory goes to the tortoise and the “moral” (or lesson learned) is that those who work steadily rather than quickly and haphazardly are the ones who accomplish their goals.
It’s within this example that I believe we find a much richer definition of morals/morality. Morals are the behaviors and expectations that we place on ourselves as a story or narrative progresses around us. Sure, this is partly religious because we learn from the stories of those who are in a religious community with us- but it’s also very secular.
Today, I drove passed a major wreck on the highway. Afterward, I began noticing all the little “Drive Safely” markers on the side of the road that are placed there after a fatal car accident. Believe me, my behavior and expectation was shaped in that moment. My “Morals” were adjusted and I slowed down a bit. The story/narrative of this road is that recklessness=death.
Let’s go back to the Business Example Again:
Suppose we asked Businesses to act morally in addition to ethically? Suppose we expected that as the story/narrative of history unfolds they should adjust their behavior to match?
From a young age, we’ve all learned that lies are (almost) always found out and the aftermath is generally more terrible than telling the truth in the first place. And if it wasn’t learned at a young age, within the past ten years we’ve seen plenty of businesses that were caught in lies and destroyed by them.
Asking a business to act morally, is to ask them to keep their eyes on those road markers and adjust their behavior accordingly. It’s expecting them to realize that there are certain behaviors (lying, cheating, stealing, killing) that simply don’t end well for anyone. Doing those things might make them a quick buck, but it’s rather short sighted if it ends up destroying their entire infrastructure over the course of time. It makes them like the Hare in Aesop’s Fable.
We need to be more like the Tortoise.
Summary:
Ethics is a theoretical pursuit of the good life (for as many people as possible) and morals are lessons learned and behaviors changed based on the story we find ourselves in. Asking someone (or a business or a government) to act ethically might not yield the results we want if we actually want them to act morally.
I went to a website yesterday at my pastor’s prompting and was instructed to enter my annual salary. Based on my yearly earnings, I’m apparently in the top 1.43% of the world’s richness scale. After showing me how many people in the world live significantly below my own standard of living, they politely asked me to consider giving some of my “new found riches” to others who are in need.
It was a pretty cool thing and a good reminder to be generous.
However, it got me thinking about the fact that if someone else here in the United States, making minimum wage, took the test- they’d probably pop up on this indicator as one of the richest people in the world, too. But they’re struggling. Really struggling. They’re probably wondering if they’re going to be able to pay their rent and eat (and still have enough left over to leverage transportation to and from work.
Someone making the same yearly amount in a third world (or even second world) country would be the king of the neighborhood. OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but they wouldn’t be wondering where their next meal is coming from. You see, richness is relative.
This makes sense to anyone who has gone between cities/states/countries and realized that the a gallon of milk is a dollar in one city, four dollars in another, and ten cents in the third. And if all prices in the market are congruent to the milk- a person living in the city where milk costs four dollars per gallon is going to need to make 40x the amount that the person makes who is living in conditions where the milk only costs 10 cents per gallon.
Person one would need to make 40 dollars for every 1 dollar made by person two (or to put it in annual salaries, person one would need to make $80,000 a year to be considered in similar living conditions to person two making $2,000 a year).
Perhaps in dollars and cents, we'd consider person one to be "richer" than person two. But in quality of life, they’re technically equals. They both have the same buying power with comparable to their income.
This is why it’s hard to just make a blanket statement that one person is richer than another or that someone making a certain amount per year has an obligation to help out another person making less. If we’re not careful, we can end up guilting those who really don’t make a lot into feeling some sort of unachievable burden to help out those who may actually be comparatively similar to them in economic terms.
Instead of merely looking at raw data, you really have to look at disposable income rather than simply how much is made per year. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to coach people on generosity.
And I'm pretty sure this is why Paul said- "Let each man decide in his heart what he should give." Otherwise, it's just too complicated when we try to impose a mandated amount on anyone.
"Who are we saving them from?" asks NiteOwl in a moment of concern.
"From themselves." Answers the Comedian as he takes a drag from his cigar, grins like a fool and tosses a smoke bomb toward a young man. As the bomb explodes we see that he's been spraying 'Who Watches the Watchmen' on the darkened wall of an alley. * * *
When viewing Watchmen in the Theater, I was struck by how dark their world truly was. One film critic remarked that it was the darkest, most serious superhero film ever made- one without "comic" appeal. There wasn't even a moment of jest or comic relief to break up the brooding tension. It was serious, slow, and violent.
I'd honestly be surprised if anyone outside of fans of the graphic novel could sit through it without being bored to tears or utterly confused. At 2:35 it's a long trip through the darkness of man's heart.
About halfway into the film (when I was sitting there thinking, "yup, it's pretty much the same as the book only trimmed down to the point where it's going to seem ridiculous to all the people who haven't bothered delving into the real version") I suddenly became really overwhelmed by the words Nietzsche put in the mouth of his Madman Character to mourn the loss of God. I firmly believe that although he was convinced that God did not exist that he was equally convinced that the idea of God was a good thing and that in killing the idea of God, the would would be worse off:
"Where is God?" [The Madman] cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?"
Do you hear the sorrow in his prose?
This profound sense of loss that Nietzsche relates in his parable was also indicative of the film Watchmen. In it there is a heavy sadness. It's a world where men have usurped the law and enacted their own sense of justice. They're a cold bunch, full of flaws. They're practically criminals (some of them, like Rorschach are definitely criminals) and they rule the world around them- sometimes reluctantly- as it slips further into perversion and debauchery.
* * *
My own personal opinion is that this film is a great picture of what happens when men abandon God and set themselves up in His place. It becomes a terrible place where violence begets violence and the only way to find peace it through fear. Adrien knows this, and that's why he enacts his master stroke- blowing up the world to save the world.
The apostle Paul knew it too. In fact, much of the first chapter of his letter to the Romans seems to give a similar picture of darkness and fear. The world does become colder when its inhabitants try to play Ubermensch. That's just the way it works.
* * *
A few questions to wrap up WATCHMEN WEEK:
1. Whether or not you believe in God- do you believe that the idea of God is a good thing that should be mourned when it's missing from society?
2. Do you think that people respond better to fear or love?
3. Have you ever read a philosopher you disagreed with and found some truth there regardless?
* * *
* Those who avoid reading Nietzsche because he's associated with the phrase "God is Dead" miss out on a lot of his great contributions to Philosophy. It's true that he was an Atheist- but if we consider his teachings without condemning his beliefs, he's actually got a lot of interesting things to say about what life is like when people reject the idea of God.
One can reject the idea of God without debating whether or not God exists- for "killing God" in society or in your heart doesn't depend on His existence. Plenty of people who believe that God exists still reject Him. So talking through Nietzsche doesn't mean that we become Atheists, it means that we admit that we live in a culture who have in some ways "killed God" by ignoring or rejecting Him outright.
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