Are we Moral Beings?

That time of the year

Pathway

A friend and I were sharing opinions on the condition of the world recently when we hit upon a surprising polar-difference on our perceptions of the general state of morality. His view is that we are sliding ever further in the wrong direction, i.e. we are becoming less and less governed by solid and time-proven moral stances. My view is that the trajectory is upward, that since the renaissance and the rise of more humanistic ways of thinking we are becoming ever more conscious of the need to teach and practice fundamentally moral behaviours in our day-to-day lives. I gave as examples the emancipation of women and sanctions against beating children. (I should add here that the “we” is given tentatively; I myself am not sure where the borders of this generalization begin and end.)

I guess no such discussion can get off on the right track unless morality is defined first. And there are plenty of books and websites that would be happy to define it for us. Christ in YouMinistries, for instance, insists that the very concept of morality is anti-Christian, and they pose an alternative view: Jesus did not come to give us a standardized moral code to which all should conform, but to give us His life whereby the divine character might be expressed through our behaviour. The implication is that the person who is regenerated by Christ has no need of a code—he/she acts out of the impulses of that regeneration and no longer acts in any other way than Christ would act. The person becomes, then, an “expression of the divine character.”

That's good on paper, as we say, but the questions about morality—particularly behaviour in the sexual sphere—have almost universally brought Christian denominations to the brinks of “holy wars.” There are only two possibilities, given the above: either the combatants have never been truly regenerated, or else the view of Christ in You Ministries is oversimplified to the point of uselessness.

Take the question of gay marriage: moral or immoral, should-be-banned or should-be-seen-as-legitimate. Former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, described his metamorphoses on the question of same-sex marriage more-or-less as follows: when after considerable study and prayerful contemplation he arrived at the conclusion that sexual orientation was not a chosen but a natural state, he could not in good conscience discriminate any longer against intimacy and marriage for gays and lesbians. This is seen as the liberal stance by many and when challenged scripturally on his position, he responded that the Biblical references to the homosexual act must be interpreted in the light of new knowledge, much as we have recognized women's equality in the church and home and have decided that slavery is immoral despite Paul's rejection of the first and his tolerance for the second.

Christ in You Ministries is decidedly right on one point: codified morality seldom resolves ethical questions satisfactorily. Take the following passage from Deuteronomic code 5:12ff:

“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."

Was this directed at the Children of Israel for a certain time and for a certain reason, or is it a commandment for all people for all time? What is work and what isn't? Is lighting the lamp work? Is milking a cow work? Can one morally cook a meal for a travelling stranger on the sabbath? Despite the commandments apparent clarity, applying it in each generation over thousands of years still taxes our interpretive muscles. The problem with our Sunday-shopping, worker-abusing economic culture is not that we defy the Sabbath outright, but that we have not reinterpreted it for the time: the need for rest and reflection has not gone away.

A code can't be written in enough detail to prevent debate over interpretation; the world just isn't orderly enough for that. There is, however, good reason—both Biblically and historically—to refresh our look at morality, particularly in the light of our ongoing confusion about sexual-sphere issues. Christ in You Ministries is probably onto something, even though we may not agree with their bottom line: moral people behave morally, end of sentence.

There's an interesting display in the public area of St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon. Posted on the wall are different versions of the same proverb as expressed by a variety of cultures and religions. It's the very simple: Do unto others as you would be done by. It's an almost-universal guide to behaviour that pretty much covers the content of any code one would care to promulgate. But are our imaginations up to the task? If you are a woman in love with another woman, for instance, can you expect to be treated as you would be if you were a woman in love with a man?

We have traditionally expected a number of moral behaviours of committed couples. They include fidelity, honesty, loyalty and faithfulness. I see no good reason to expect less of same-sex couples who wish to be partners in the adventure we call life. These broad attributes of moral behaviour as regards commitment between human partners—eroded and disregarded though they may be from time to time—can act as bulwark against the erosion of family while expressing the most universal of moral standards—don't disappoint your partner; treat him/her according to his/her human needs, which you recognize by examining your own.

That's why many support same-sex marriage.

I believe that position is consistent with the moral foundation so admirably depicted on the wall of St. Paul's: Be to others what you hope they would be to you.

Are we doing better at living in faith, hope and charity, or are we on the slippery slope down the hill? Either way, whether we are Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, atheist, agnostic or Christian, we will always fail to reach what we aspire to by attempting to codify our way to the peaceable Kingdom.

Maimonides on Charity

Butter Churn

Poundmaker

Let's assume for argument's sake that I am a well-to-do person living next door to a poor family who apparently can't keep bread on the table without outside assistance. In other words, let's simplify the world artificially so we can take a look at how charity is done today in comparison to wisdom on the subject from Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher of the 12^th Century.

We Canadians are said to be charitable people, after all, but like the Jewish community of Maimonides' day, we ponder the difference between charity that is self-serving and charity that is truly sincere and of maximum benefit to those who receive it.

So how do I best help the poor family next door? It's not cut and dried, is it? If that family is headed by a ne'er-do-well who will take any gift straight to the pub, the situation will obviously be different from the case of a family where parents are trying hard but are unemployable for health or fitness reasons. And then there's every other possibility between the two.

Maimonides ranks different ways of delivering charity as follows:

1. The highest level of charity is where the donor and the receiver know each other and the donor partners with the receiver to take actions that will enable the receiver to become self-sufficient. It's similar to the current adage in NGO circles: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.
2. If this is not possible, the second level of charity is to give to reputable charitable funds that administer aid to the poor but where the donor and receiver do not know each other.
3. A third level—according to Maimonides—is to give anonymously to the poor. This might take the form of dropping off a basket of produce at night while the family is asleep. The anonymity indicates that the gift is not given out of self-interest.
4. Maimonides' fourth level has the receiver know who the donor is, but the donor is unaware of the identity of the beneficiary. Food aid during a famine with the name of the donor stamped on the bags of grain might qualify here.
5. The next level of charity is the giving of a gift to the poor family without being asked. The donor senses the need and goes over with hundred dollars for groceries, for instance.
6. The sixth level has the poor man ask me for help and I gladly give him hundred dollars for groceries.
7. Giving gladly to the poor man but giving stingily (say twenty dollars when hundred is barely reasonable) qualifies as number 7 in Maimonides' catalogue.
8. The lowest form of charity is the grudging, stingy gift.

Maimonides had neither a tax deduction to contemplate in all this, nor could he have envisioned a time when most charity would be state-administered. Revisiting his thoughts on charity in his time—or lack thereof—can help us clarify our own responses to the cries for help that come to us on a daily basis, as they no doubt did to Maimonides. His list contains a curious mixture of piety and practicality: this consideration we have in common.

The big difference, maybe, I guess, is that Maimonides was writing about life in a community that contained both the well-off and the poor; in our day the separation of wealth and poverty is so complete that the haves need never rub shoulders with the have nots.

It's too easy today to fall routinely into Charity Number Seven, or Eight.

Everything in Moderation

Bark!

Unidentified mushroom . . . Do Not Eat!

"Do everything in moderation, including moderation."

Although there's considerable speculation about whom Ben Franklin was quoting in his version of the moderation epigram, the sentiment has probably been around at least as far back as the Roman dramatist Publius Terentius Afer, 190 – 159 B.C. It's resurrected at times when alcohol is being consumed by people who still feel a tad bit guilty about cocktails and wine, or about gourmet feasting. “It's OK if you don't overdo it,” seems to be the thrust under these circumstances.

            Somewhere between the two poles of any indulgence lies the kingdom of moderation. Between the drunk and the abstainer, one finds the moderate user, the one who claims that he only has one glass a day with dinner, for instance. Somewhere between the anorexic and the glutton, you'll find the moderate consumer of food, the one who eschews a second dessert, desirable though it may be.

            There's no arguing the observation that life at the poles can be treacherous. The experimental rat who's been rigged up to experience sexual release whenever he pushes a button will do so repeatedly and continuously until he starves to death. I've been told that certain gambling addicts have worn diapers to the casino so they don't need bathroom breaks while they repeatedly push the VLT buttons like masturbating rats. Next to life at the poles, moderation can look pretty good.

            Our culture teaches us, however, that there must be a right answer for everything, and that value militates against the moderation principle. In my growing-up days, the right answer for dancing, drinking, swearing, movies, gambling, was JUST DON'T. The abstinence pole. The right/wrong determination was on a toggle switch. No space contemplated between the poles.

            Ben Franklin be hanged: moderation is manufactured in the devil's workshop. Moderation is that wishy-washy space where liberals and humanists live, the freaks who think laws are there to be tested and broken at will.

            Between the rabid socialist and the convinced capitalist there exists a moderate space, and it's always beneficial to think of the choices made in the public sphere with that in mind. If environmental conservation and resource exploitation are two poles of a set of choices, is the “right answer” somewhere in the moderation space between the two, and if so, where in that space does it lie? The moderation space can, of course, be vast: compared to the drunk and the abstainer, most of the world lives at varying places between; where someone lives in that space is a matter of thought, will and choice.

            Politically, the moderate space needs keen thinkers, activist organization and determination to find the balanced places: not zero, not ten, but four--possibly--or six.

            I think we're all a bit tired of flailing at the poles.

            As a footnote, I would argue that Franklin threw in the “even moderation” part of his epigram as a joke only; moderation is a noun and to “do” it, an active verb is needed. Grammatically, you can “exercise” moderation moderately, I suppose, or you can be a “moderate moderate” but that would be a frivolous redundancy at best.

            And as a footnote to the footnote, Ben Franklin is also purported to have said:

“Who is wise?

        He who learns from everyone.

Who is powerful?

       He that governs his passions.

Who is rich?

       He that is content.

Who is that?

       Nobody.”

            Maybe moderation, too, is a pipe dream.

           

Binsey Poplars



Rosthern Poplars

A month ago, my neighbour and I agreed that we would remove some poplars along the adjoining line of our properties. Two were huge—their stumps measuring more than a foot in diameter—and a third was in critical condition, its roots too shallow to keep it from falling in a strong wind.

            Two days ago, a man and machine arrived to complete the obliteration by grinding the stumps down to a foot below the surface. but like chickens struggle for life when the axe approaches, left-over poplar roots begin to send up sucker-trees in the yard, struggling for another breath of sunlight, tiny leaves that gasp at the air, fight to stay alive just a little longer (or in the case of poplars, to fill my yard with a “revenge bush.”)

            In 1879, workmen felled a grove of poplars at Binsey in England. Poet and professor, Gerard Manley Hopkins, penned what might well fit in the “Psalms” portion in an environmentalists' “Bible” in response to the devastation. Some of its memorable lines are: 

. . . O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will [mean] no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene . . . 

Hopkins is not taking sides in the economic argument here, nor in the sustainability debate. There is no hint here of renewable or non-renewable resources, resource stewardship, etc. His lament is about beauty and the eye of the beholder; what have we done when we rob “after-comers” of the ecstasy of walking through a grove of rustling poplars on a summer's day?

                        My workman and his machine left me with holes in the yard and piles of wood chips and dirt. What do I do now to restore the beauty of the spot where the “Rosthern Poplars” stood?  “. . . even where we mean/To mend her, we end her/when we hew or delve.”

 

                        How true. What a mess!

                        Most of us find ourselves somewhere between the hunter who kills for pleasure and the vegan who can barely bring himself to end the life of a carrot in order to feed himself. Between the entrepreneur who evaluates trees in terms of board feet and the “tree hugger” whose heart bleeds to see a poplar wounded. We need poets to remind us that it's not just about economics or food for the belly, that our happiness depends also on beauty and the tenderness, the gentleness of the natural world,

                        . . . on poplar leaves winking and rustling beside a winding stream on a summer's day in Binsey.

The Switcher's Dilemma

Sun through poplars

Graduate Room - Academy B & B

Imagine two people debating an age-old puzzle:

            It supposes you are standing at a junction where a spur line branches off the main line of a railroad and that you operate the switch. On the main line are five workers who can't possibly get off the track before a speeding train will arrive and they will be killed. On the spur line is a single man who likewise will be killed if you activate the switch and divert the train off the main line.

            What do you do?

            The one doesn't hesitate: the answer is clear; kill one man to save five; it's the right thing to do; it's simple arithmetic.  The other refuses to accept responsibility for any decision and says he would likely freeze or run from the situation. Still others might try to avoid the dilemma completely by arguing something stupid, like “I'd never be caught in that position because I don't work for the railroad,” or “How could they possible not get off the tracks when they realized the train was coming?”

            There are, of course, variations to the railroad switcher's dilemma: what if the single person on the spur line is not a man, but the switcher's young son playing on the tracks? Does that make a difference? What if the five men are known criminals trying to escape and the single person is a policeman pursuing them? Does that make a difference?

            Moral philosophy can begin with questions like the switcher's dilemma and when we debate possible answers, we are doing moral philosophizing. Heaven knows we're prone to run away from such questions and keep our fingers crossed, hoping we never find ourselves in such a situation. The fact is, the switcher's dilemma faces us in many ways, every day. In differing versions it haunts us (or should) when we spend a lot of money on a luxury knowing that while we could live without a certain extravagance, the same dollars could vaccinate a thousand children for polio, possibly save five lives.    

 

           Money is a switch we hold in our hands; we don't even have to “kill one to save five.”

            Debating the switcher's dilemma might even illuminate for us questions like pipelines for crude oil, yes or no. Tar sands development, yes or no. Suppose that human civilization continues on this earth for five more generations. That means that every single person now will be replaced in the future by at least five other people, give or take. Is it right to trade the future of the five for access to cheap energy for the one? In this case, I fear, we're deciding to kill the five, not for the life of the one, but for his pleasure and convenience!!

            It's not surprising that we don't like debating the switcher's dilemma; we want so much to be free of the responsibility for the switch that we'd rather clap our hands over our eyes and ears. (Not easy to do!) But the truth of the matter is that someone must always assume the switcher's responsibility.

            Unfortunately, our current government isn't good at moral philosophy.

            Meanwhile, the rest of us are whistling through the graveyard.

From Whence Shall my Help Come?

Syrian Refugee Family - Lebanon

From Whence Shall my Help Come?

On the Lebanese side of the border with Syria, this very morning, a mother is nursing a newborn in a grimy tent huddled alongside hundreds of other grimy tents in the dust bowl that is a UN refugee camp. She watches her baby boy feed hungrily, notices that his cheeks are growing fatter even as her own body is dwindling, victim of refugee rations and the loss of appetite that comes with living in constant worry and fear. And she can't help but wonder if bringing this child into a world of war and madness isn't itself madness, and if someday soon, this baby boy will be nothing more to the warlords than cannon fodder.

            But she is just one casualty among the thousands rendered helpless and lost by the civil war in Syria. For all wars have at least these 10 things in common:

1.     principles of justice, honour and fairness are set aside when men resort to arms to settle their differences. The first victim of war is truth,

2.     food is stolen from the mouths of children to pay for guns and bullets,

3.     patriotism becomes the highest ideal and soldiers are lauded as the saviours of the nation,

4.     nothing is sacred any longer except an unconditional dedication to the cause of the conflict,

5.     dissenters to the military option are branded as traitors; prophetic voices must be silenced,

6.     good men turn into haters, trained to see the opponent as demonic and worthy of death,

7.     combat soldiers come home wounded, disappointed and, often, ill with an illness they pass on to their families and friends, their neighbours and the nation they thought they were defending,

8.     compassion for the vulnerable is set aside; power has bigger fish to fry than the needs of the poor,

9.     atrocities are disguised in euphemism: rendition, collateral damage, ordinance, just war,

10.  neighbour is turned against neighbour as every expressed opinion is met with suspicion,

            And in every war that ever was, women have sat in dirty places that are not their home and have looked down at nursing sons and wondered; for what madness have I given birth, for what unholy future am I nourishing this man child? Prophetic voices have been ridiculed, sidelined or thrown into wells where no one will hear their witness. It's in the nature of the beast we call war.

            As Mennonites, we are well-placed to speak up for all the men and women raising children in refugee camps. We too have been refugees. Our spiritual heritage has taught us what an abomination it is to take another person's life, even in battle. We have no Jeremiah among us, but we have our prophetic voices: John Howard Yoder, Rudy Wiebe, David Schroeder, Menno Simons who declared to us that true evangelical faith finds its Christ-like form in the feeding of the hungry and the clothing of the naked.

            The body of Christ has many parts; we have been assigned a role as that arm of Christ that looks out for the weak and the vulnerable, that speaks to power, urging them to make choices that don't resort to weapons of murder and destruction, that proclaims that history teaches us that there is no just war.

            In parts of our Mennonite community these days, flags are flying at the fronts of churches, the rhetoric of winners and losers is gradually replacing the humble admonitions of the Sermon on the Mount, the creation model is giving way to the economic, patriotic model. 

            We too have begun to find our prophets’ messages uncomfortable . . . and have been tempted to throw them and their rantings down the well.

            For the sake of the mother and child in the Lebanese refugee camp if for no bigger reason, we dare not be silent in times like these.

A reflection on old things

There's an old spinning wheel in the parlour

Ancient Walkman

I spent this afternoon in the Mennonite Heritage Museum, ostensibly to show visitors around, answer questions about Mennonite history here in the Saskatchewan Valley. As sometimes happens, there weren’t any visitors and I had time to ponder the purpose of museums and heritage sites, places where people can come and learn what the past was like.

               Yesterday was different. I spent time with a couple from Quebec who knew very little English. The man wanted to ask questions about Mennonites but he couldn’t say the word: “What is Memen . . . Nemmeno . . .” and I would finish his sentences, except after a few of these exchanges, I was having trouble saying the word myself! They stayed for about twenty minutes, walked through the various rooms and thanked me, tipped the museum a dollar and were gone on their way to Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg and eventually, Quebec. “We have a beautiful country,” the man said, and I agreed.

Almost a dozen people wandered in and out yesterday. A delightful young couple were overjoyed to find a picture of the girl’s  grandma in an upstairs display room. The girl drew a happy face after her signature in the guest book.

               Meanwhile, our B & B hosted Metis people attending the annual Back to Batoche event across the river. A lady from Lethbridge was attending in order to get in touch with her Metis past so she might pass that legacy on to her young adult children. She lamented that she’d neglected to do this as they were growing up and had herself lost touch. Some of you will know from the news that at this year’s event, a long-lost bell (taken from the Batoche church by the Canadian Militia after the Battle of Batoche, then stolen and finally resurfacing) was returned and celebrated by the thousands of people at the event.

               How important is a church bell—even a silver one—in the maintenance of a cultural identity? How much is David Toews’ desk an artifact that meaningfully connects Mennonites to their ethnic and spiritual heritage? Would my life be less if the world’s last cream separator were to be thrown into the sea? Why would anyone sit in a moldering museum through a Sunday afternoon with no company except the musty artifacts of an age gone by, pictures and more pictures of our ancestors long gone?

               This is the point where I should answer the questions above, but that’s not my purpose. They say we learn history so we may imitate its successes and avoid its mistakes. Are museums and heritage places helping us to benefit from history, or are they primarily places where one can be amused by the quaintness of the “olden days” for an hour or so. My observation has been that artifacts on their own are incapable of transmitting ideas. What’s your observation been?

As Happy as Kings

Blue Iris



Courtesy James Bernier



Courtesy James Bernier

Ferintosh, Alberta: 

On the window sill are numerous knick knacks; just outside, intensely green vines with huge leaves climb up to the roof; beyond that twin poplars and a yellow wren house; farther away, Little Beaver Lake rippling in the morning light and in the distance, the rolling yellow hills of canola. We're having coffee in the lounge and early risers are eating breakfast in the dining room: fruit, breads, eggs, juice squeezed from fruit, coffee transported from Colombia.

            As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote—albeit as a bit of doggerel for children— “The world is so full of a number of things, I think we should all be as happy as kings.”

            I worried a lot when I was a kid. I worried about my health, which wasn't great; I worried about my parents dying; I worried about the social challenges of school: you name it, I worried about it. So naturally, I came early to that great philosophical question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Only for me, it was more in the form of, “What if there had never been anything?” and the corollary questions, of course: “What if I'd never been born?” and “If God made the universe, who made God?”

            And so, I was naturally drawn to Tim Holt's Why does the World Exist? Holt chronicles the history of thinkers' struggles to get a handle on this question as well as the dismissal of the subject by believers who know a creator beyond any somethings that might exist, thereby taking an easier route to a satisfying answer. I'm only half way through the book today, but far enough in to know that Holt's is a keen mind with fabulous writing skills. I'll review it on Readwit when I'm done.

            I accept that the universe suggests a starting point: if it's expanding outward, it makes logical sense that it originated from a point. The relevant question is: where and what constituted the point and what caused it to explode into matter? The speed of expansion makes the calculation of the time of the“big bang” a simple mathematical exercise.

            In the meantime, I'm awed by the beauty and variety of the things that exist to make a world. Maybe Stevenson's admonition is enough for the day: I think we should all be as happy as kings. We're pretty sure, after all, that we've been blessed with—at least—a short but intense existence in an amazing world. That's got to be immeasurably preferable to nothing.

            At any rate, I'm inclined to think so this morning.