Howard C. Wilkinson and Joe F. Harris - "Situation Ethics" (January 29, 1967)
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| - | They teach us the responsible use | 0:06 |
| we ask with all our gifts. | 0:09 | |
| Save us from wasting our substance in foolish living. | 0:12 | |
| Save us from squandering great gifts on trivial ends, | 0:16 | |
| and deliver us from making money a barrier | 0:21 | |
| rather than a bridge between man and man. | 0:25 | |
| In the name of Christ, amen. | 0:30 | |
| - | Being a Christian has always involved three things. | 0:53 |
| First, there is a minimal set of beliefs, | 0:57 | |
| which a Christian is supposed to have, | 1:01 | |
| beliefs about God, man, the world. | 1:03 | |
| Second, a Christian has always been thought of | 1:07 | |
| as a person who worshiped God, | 1:10 | |
| but there is a third ingredient which Christians | 1:13 | |
| have always been expected to possess. | 1:16 | |
| Merely having a set of intellectual beliefs | 1:18 | |
| and going to church | 1:21 | |
| have never been considered sufficient marks of a Christian, | 1:23 | |
| unless he also lived a certain kind of ethical life. | 1:27 | |
| The conduct of a man's daily living, | 1:31 | |
| the way he treats his fellows. | 1:35 | |
| This has also been considered | 1:37 | |
| an essential part of being a Christian. | 1:39 | |
| And none of the Orthodox theologies of the last 19 centuries | 1:43 | |
| has a serious case been made | 1:47 | |
| for the view that this third ingredient | 1:49 | |
| may be left out of the basic | 1:51 | |
| essentials of being a Christian. | 1:53 | |
| Well, what is that ethic? | 1:56 | |
| How should a Christian relate to his fellows, | 1:59 | |
| to his neighbors, to his enemies, to everyone. | 2:02 | |
| For 19 centuries, the Christian church | 2:06 | |
| has taught that the conduct of its members | 2:08 | |
| should be responsible to certain ethical principles, | 2:10 | |
| which are built into the faith as God has revealed it | 2:14 | |
| through the Judeo Christian tradition. | 2:17 | |
| The church has taught for example, | 2:21 | |
| that a Christian should not tell lies, | 2:22 | |
| but that he should intend to tell the truth | 2:24 | |
| as best he can understand it. | 2:26 | |
| The church has taught that it isn't enough | 2:29 | |
| for a man to say he believes there is a God | 2:31 | |
| and go to church to worship him on Sunday, | 2:34 | |
| but he should also be honest | 2:36 | |
| in his business dealings on Monday. | 2:38 | |
| He is no Christian. | 2:41 | |
| We have been taught if he recites the Apostle's creed | 2:43 | |
| and faithfully attends church services, | 2:46 | |
| then cheats on his examinations or his tax returns. | 2:48 | |
| The church has held that sexual intercourse | 2:53 | |
| was intended by God to glorify the relationship of marriage. | 2:55 | |
| And that fornication before marriage | 2:59 | |
| or adultery after marriage are unacceptable modes of conduct | 3:01 | |
| in any Christian's life. | 3:05 | |
| Although the church has never had a unanimous belief | 3:09 | |
| about the accessibility of a so-called just war. | 3:12 | |
| It has always taught that at least the taking of human life, | 3:16 | |
| and what has been defined as murder | 3:19 | |
| is out of bounds for a Christian. | 3:22 | |
| This brief listing does not exhaust the church's supply, | 3:26 | |
| but it is enough to indicate that what we mean | 3:30 | |
| when we say that the church has insisted through its history | 3:33 | |
| that living by certain ethical principles | 3:38 | |
| in the context of all human relations | 3:40 | |
| is a necessary ingredient of the total package | 3:43 | |
| of being a Christian in this world. | 3:46 | |
| Whereas the church has always assumed | 3:51 | |
| that the gate to destruction is very wide, | 3:53 | |
| that many people pass through that gate. | 3:55 | |
| It has assumed that one of the reasons why a few people | 3:58 | |
| go through the gate that leads to life | 4:01 | |
| is that these ethical principles | 4:02 | |
| narrow that gate sufficiently | 4:05 | |
| to require of a man that he walked a straight | 4:08 | |
| and narrow path if he is to pass through it. | 4:10 | |
| The church has always assumed that a minority | 4:14 | |
| in any generation would be Christian, | 4:17 | |
| but it has been sure for 19 centuries | 4:20 | |
| that among the marks of those who are Christians | 4:23 | |
| is obedience to God by following the principles of conduct, | 4:27 | |
| which God has revealed in the Christian religion. | 4:30 | |
| However, in this generation of which we are a part, | 4:33 | |
| voices are being heard within the church itself, | 4:38 | |
| which speak a new word. | 4:41 | |
| It is not a new emphasis merely, it is a new belief, | 4:44 | |
| one that is different from what I've just been describing. | 4:48 | |
| Indeed it rejects the view I have outlined. | 4:52 | |
| It does not deny the basic premise | 4:56 | |
| that being a Christian involves | 4:58 | |
| more than holding a set of intellectual beliefs | 4:59 | |
| and attending church. | 5:02 | |
| For this new teaching insists also | 5:04 | |
| that Christianity involves a certain | 5:06 | |
| kind of ethical relationship to one's fellow man. | 5:08 | |
| But from that point forward, there is a parting of the ways. | 5:13 | |
| The new view has been described both by its friends | 5:17 | |
| and by its critics, by the term situation ethics. | 5:20 | |
| The title is indicative of the ethic. | 5:27 | |
| Simply stated this teaching is that we recognize | 5:30 | |
| the validity of no moral or ethical principle, except one, | 5:32 | |
| which is that in each and every situation, | 5:40 | |
| we should do that which appears in the context | 5:43 | |
| of that specific situation to be the most loving action | 5:47 | |
| for all concerned. | 5:53 | |
| Dr. Joseph Fletcher of Cambridge, Massachusetts | 5:57 | |
| is recognized as the most articulate spokesman | 5:59 | |
| of situation ethics. | 6:02 | |
| And he clearly states in his book, which bears that title, | 6:05 | |
| that the Christian should not govern his actions | 6:08 | |
| by any traditional principle, | 6:11 | |
| unless it accidentally happens to be identical | 6:15 | |
| with what love demands in that unique situation. | 6:19 | |
| This means as Dr. Fletcher and others point out | 6:25 | |
| that for all practical purposes, | 6:27 | |
| we may as well forget about all of the moral | 6:28 | |
| and ethical principles mentioned earlier in this sermon. | 6:31 | |
| And we should govern our actions entirely in every case | 6:34 | |
| de novo by what we believe will come near us | 6:37 | |
| to being the absolutely loving thing to do | 6:40 | |
| for all who are concerned in that situation. | 6:43 | |
| Situation ethics dictate that an action is right | 6:47 | |
| if it is the most loving thing we know to do at that time | 6:52 | |
| and in that place and it is right exclusively | 6:54 | |
| for the reason that it was | 6:57 | |
| the most loving thing we knew to do. | 6:59 | |
| And not because it might accidentally | 7:02 | |
| have coincided with some one or more of the principles, | 7:04 | |
| which I mentioned earlier. | 7:08 | |
| Fletcher tells of a mother who with her children | 7:11 | |
| was making her way through a pioneer Indian country, | 7:14 | |
| attempting to reach a fort. | 7:17 | |
| One of her babies cried | 7:20 | |
| and was about to let the Indians know | 7:21 | |
| of the presence of the party. | 7:23 | |
| The mother feared that the Indians would kill them all. | 7:25 | |
| So with her own hands, she strangled her crying baby, | 7:30 | |
| thus allowing the remainder of the family to reach safety. | 7:34 | |
| He commands this as being a right action | 7:39 | |
| based upon the assumption that | 7:43 | |
| it was the most loving thing to do for all concerned. | 7:44 | |
| Now at some point in the study of these | 7:49 | |
| two contrasting situations, positions, | 7:50 | |
| each one of us has to make up his own mind | 7:53 | |
| which one he will choose. | 7:55 | |
| After careful consideration of the issues, | 7:58 | |
| I have made up my mind | 8:00 | |
| and I think it would be wise for me to tell you | 8:01 | |
| what my own thinking is just now. | 8:03 | |
| So that as Joe and I explore further | 8:06 | |
| the meaning of situation ethics, | 8:09 | |
| you can make allowances for my own orientation. | 8:11 | |
| I believe that the true Christian possession | 8:15 | |
| is the first one that I described. | 8:17 | |
| And I do not believe that situation ethics | 8:19 | |
| is a valid Christian position. | 8:21 | |
| Of course, I hasten to say that it is quite possible | 8:25 | |
| for an individual who believes in situation ethics | 8:27 | |
| to be personally a Christian. | 8:30 | |
| But I do not believe situation ethics | 8:33 | |
| is what the Christian religion teaches. | 8:35 | |
| - | Chaplain, the congregation of mine | 8:38 |
| have heard your summary of the two approaches | 8:40 | |
| to Christian ethics. | 8:41 | |
| And at this point, | 8:43 | |
| I think there's a question which needs to be faced. | 8:43 | |
| And I want to put it to you directly. | 8:46 | |
| You say that you believe the Christian position | 8:48 | |
| is the one which defines our Christian conduct | 8:50 | |
| in terms of ethical principles, | 8:53 | |
| such as honesty versus dishonesty, | 8:55 | |
| telling the truth versus lying, premarital chastity, | 8:57 | |
| and post-marital fidelity versus adultery, and so on. | 9:01 | |
| This seemed to bear resemblance to the 10 commandments | 9:05 | |
| in the Old Testament, | 9:07 | |
| which were part of the legalism of the Hebrew | 9:09 | |
| and Jewish system of religion by law. | 9:10 | |
| From reading the New Testament, | 9:14 | |
| I gathered the impression that Christians | 9:15 | |
| are somehow set free from this legalism | 9:17 | |
| and are asked to live a different style of life. | 9:21 | |
| Chapters three through eight of Paul's letter to the Romans | 9:24 | |
| make this especially clear. | 9:27 | |
| Now are you saying that this is not the case | 9:29 | |
| that the Christian Church does indeed | 9:32 | |
| expect its members to obey certain religious laws? | 9:34 | |
| - | No. Mr. Harris, I'm not seeing that. | 9:38 |
| And it's very important that this distinction be made clear. | 9:40 | |
| The Christian is as you suggest | 9:43 | |
| totally free from the Old Testament law, | 9:45 | |
| including the 10 commandments. | 9:48 | |
| The Christian more than any other person in the world | 9:51 | |
| is free from slavery to the commandment which says, | 9:53 | |
| thou shall not steal. | 9:56 | |
| And the one which declares, thou shall not commit adultery, | 9:57 | |
| not to mention all of the others. | 10:01 | |
| The Christian is absolutely and permanently | 10:03 | |
| and T totally free from every kind of religious legalism. | 10:07 | |
| He lives by the spirit. | 10:12 | |
| Now in that section of the book of Romans, | 10:15 | |
| which you mentioned, | 10:16 | |
| Paul describes how men have found it impossible | 10:17 | |
| to be righteous by keeping religious laws. | 10:20 | |
| He goes on to say that the way to victory | 10:23 | |
| is to crucify the passions and priorities of the flesh | 10:25 | |
| and worldly idolatries, | 10:29 | |
| and to join ourselves to the death of Christ on the cross, | 10:31 | |
| by dying to sin here and now, | 10:34 | |
| and those who do that are then raised to a new kind of life | 10:38 | |
| by being joined to the resurrection of Christ. | 10:42 | |
| And they find themselves serving him by obedience, | 10:45 | |
| through the leadership of the spirit, | 10:48 | |
| rather than by the lash of the law. | 10:50 | |
| - | Hearing what you say about the Christian dying, | 10:53 |
| a death to sin and mortifying all his passions | 10:55 | |
| and all the rest, it's quite possible for the listener | 10:57 | |
| to get the impression that the simplest way | 11:00 | |
| for a person to know when something is right | 11:02 | |
| or when it's wrong is for him to resign himself | 11:04 | |
| to the assumption that it's wrong if it looks like fun | 11:07 | |
| and it's right if it looks dull. | 11:10 | |
| Are we faced with a killjoy religion perhaps? | 11:12 | |
| - | Well, I want to give a short, | 11:15 |
| quick answer to that question. | 11:16 | |
| No. | 11:17 | |
| But having expressed a firm negative to it, | 11:18 | |
| I do not then wish to run from the question. | 11:21 | |
| Christian Church must grapple with that question. | 11:24 | |
| And I think the church has itself to blame | 11:27 | |
| for the fact that many people have asked it | 11:30 | |
| as frequently as they have. | 11:32 | |
| There are two insights in Christian faith, | 11:35 | |
| which bear upon it and about which the church | 11:37 | |
| has said far too little. | 11:39 | |
| The first is the Christian doctrine of creation. | 11:40 | |
| The second is certain Christian insights | 11:43 | |
| into the psychology of joy. | 11:45 | |
| As to the first, | 11:48 | |
| the biblical doctrine of creation | 11:49 | |
| is that God made everything in the world | 11:51 | |
| and he created it to be good. | 11:53 | |
| He intended that man should be happy | 11:56 | |
| and enjoy his creation. | 11:58 | |
| As early in the scriptures, | 12:01 | |
| as the very first chapter of the book of Genesis, | 12:02 | |
| we read that God looked at everything he had made | 12:05 | |
| and pronounced it "very good." | 12:07 | |
| In both the old and New Testaments, | 12:12 | |
| there are appeals to God's children to be joyful | 12:13 | |
| and to rejoice in the Lord. | 12:16 | |
| Now the second matter, | 12:19 | |
| Christian faith imparts special insights | 12:21 | |
| into the nature of joy and happiness. | 12:24 | |
| Certainly nothing is Christian because it lacks joy. | 12:26 | |
| The reverse of this would more nearly be true. | 12:31 | |
| Christian faith teaches its own special psychology, | 12:33 | |
| which I believe to be consistent | 12:38 | |
| with what modern scientific psychology has discovered. | 12:40 | |
| Namely that the person who seeks pleasure | 12:43 | |
| as an end in itself and who seeks it first and foremost | 12:46 | |
| will find that it rapidly begins to escape him. | 12:51 | |
| But the person who seeks first the will of God | 12:55 | |
| and his righteousness will be surprised | 12:57 | |
| by the quantity of joy and the quality of happiness | 13:00 | |
| which is added onto him. | 13:03 | |
| When I look directly at this matter of fun, what is fun? | 13:06 | |
| Something which brings fun to me might bore you | 13:09 | |
| and vice versa. | 13:12 | |
| The sadist gets fun by torturing other people. | 13:14 | |
| Do we want to help him have a good time? | 13:17 | |
| The heartless money grabbing scrooge has fun | 13:22 | |
| only when he's beating his fellow man in a business deal. | 13:26 | |
| Should we cheer him on to have fun | 13:29 | |
| in the only way he knows to have it? | 13:31 | |
| The Alfie who has fun only when he is using | 13:34 | |
| the bodies of women and then discards them | 13:37 | |
| like soil Kleenex. | 13:39 | |
| Should Christianity be blamed | 13:41 | |
| if it offers a substitute for his particular brand of fun? | 13:42 | |
| Albert Schweitzer is happy | 13:47 | |
| when he is healing diseased bodies in an African jungle. | 13:48 | |
| Some Duke students find delight in tutoring children | 13:53 | |
| who can neither spelling nor subtract. | 13:55 | |
| What is fun? | 13:58 | |
| As the popular song puts it, | 14:01 | |
| "happiness is different things to different people." | 14:02 | |
| But no, Christianity is not a killjoy religion. | 14:06 | |
| It wants to help people have a really good time. | 14:09 | |
| Nothing is bad because it is fun | 14:11 | |
| and nothing is good because it is not fun. | 14:13 | |
| - | Well, chaplain let's think about | 14:16 |
| what you've just said now. | 14:18 | |
| The sadist gets fun out of torturing people. | 14:19 | |
| The opposite of torturing people is loving people. | 14:22 | |
| And the scrooge who finally found Christmas | 14:25 | |
| was a scrooge who began to love people. | 14:27 | |
| What is the motive of Schweitzer in Africa | 14:29 | |
| and of the Duke student in the tutoring program | 14:32 | |
| if it isn't love. | 14:34 | |
| So aren't you coming around to saying | 14:35 | |
| just what the situation ethicists are saying? | 14:37 | |
| That the only thing which really counts | 14:40 | |
| in human relationships is love. | 14:41 | |
| - | Well, Joe, you have drawn attention | 14:45 |
| to a supremely important point. | 14:48 | |
| And whether it means that I'm coming around | 14:50 | |
| to agreeing with Dr. Fletcher and his friends or not, | 14:52 | |
| it surely is basic to the whole matter of Christian ethics | 14:54 | |
| to say that love of one's fellow man | 14:58 | |
| is at the very heart of the Christian religion. | 15:00 | |
| Our Lord said that there are only two commandments. | 15:03 | |
| The first is to love God with all your being, | 15:05 | |
| and the second is to love your neighbor | 15:07 | |
| the way you love yourself. | 15:08 | |
| Let's be very clear on this point. | 15:12 | |
| There is nothing whatever wrong about the emphasis, | 15:14 | |
| which is situation ethics people place upon love | 15:19 | |
| as the fundamental Christian motivation. | 15:22 | |
| Love of neighbors should be the Christians golden attitude. | 15:24 | |
| And indeed, the New Testament is emphatic | 15:28 | |
| in declaring that the person who claims to love God, | 15:30 | |
| but who hates his brother is a liar. | 15:32 | |
| Now that is, if he hates his brother, he does not love God. | 15:34 | |
| And if he says he does, he's a liar. | 15:39 | |
| This is the case because God is love. | 15:43 | |
| - | Well chaplain, I hear you saying | 15:46 |
| that love's mighty important | 15:47 | |
| just like the situation ethics people say it is. | 15:48 | |
| But at the beginning of this sermon, | 15:51 | |
| I heard you say that there was some other things | 15:52 | |
| important as well, things like honesty and so forth. | 15:54 | |
| We understand now that the Christian religion | 15:58 | |
| does not regard them as a set of legalistic rules, | 16:00 | |
| but as principles or guidelines. | 16:03 | |
| But you seem to think that along with love, | 16:06 | |
| these are necessary to the Christian style of life also. | 16:09 | |
| So doesn't it boil down to being a matter | 16:12 | |
| that Dr. Fletcher believes Christian ethics consists of love | 16:14 | |
| and nothing else. | 16:17 | |
| And you believe Christian ethics is love plus honesty, | 16:19 | |
| plus integrity, plus all the other principles. | 16:22 | |
| - | Let's put it this way, Joe, | 16:26 |
| love is the central business of Christianity, | 16:28 | |
| just as winning is the central business of basketball. | 16:31 | |
| A famous football coach has been widely quoted saying, | 16:35 | |
| "winning is not the most important thing in the game, | 16:38 | |
| "it is the only thing." | 16:42 | |
| And yet there's not a single coach | 16:44 | |
| in either football or basketball, | 16:46 | |
| including the one who made that statement, by the way, | 16:47 | |
| who would think simply of telling his players | 16:50 | |
| winning is the central thing in the game, | 16:54 | |
| therefore you can forget about everything else. | 16:56 | |
| The football coach who is most determined to win | 17:00 | |
| is the one who is most adamant | 17:02 | |
| that his players learn to block and tackle. | 17:04 | |
| There are 50 things the coach insists upon | 17:09 | |
| to the extent that I've heard some players grumble, | 17:11 | |
| that they suspect that the coach was more interested | 17:13 | |
| in blocking and tackling than in making touchdowns. | 17:15 | |
| But of course, the point is that the coach believes | 17:19 | |
| that the team can not win | 17:21 | |
| without superior blocking and tackling. | 17:25 | |
| Now it's the same way about loving your neighbor. | 17:28 | |
| God who corresponds in this analogy to the coach | 17:31 | |
| is primarily interested in our doing | 17:33 | |
| the thing in every situation, | 17:35 | |
| which is the most loving thing for everyone concerned, | 17:37 | |
| but he has made it clear | 17:41 | |
| that we failed to achieve this goal | 17:42 | |
| if we act contrary to the ethical principles, | 17:44 | |
| which he has revealed in the New Testament. | 17:46 | |
| An action which is dishonest | 17:49 | |
| is not going to be the most loving action. | 17:51 | |
| An action which involves cheating | 17:54 | |
| is not the most loving action. | 17:56 | |
| An action which is adulterous is not the most loving action. | 17:58 | |
| We have to understand that through the life | 18:02 | |
| and teachings of Jesus Christ, | 18:04 | |
| God not only revealed his loving heart, | 18:06 | |
| but his wise intelligence as well. | 18:08 | |
| In Christ he revealed how things are. | 18:12 | |
| He has given these ethical principles | 18:17 | |
| as guidelines to help us love our neighbors | 18:19 | |
| with a measure of intelligence, | 18:22 | |
| which is greater than that, | 18:23 | |
| which our unaided human intelligence | 18:26 | |
| would be able to fashion. | 18:28 | |
| - | If I understand then what's you're saying chaplain, | 18:30 |
| it is that the idea behind situation ethics is good, | 18:32 | |
| except that without the behavior supports | 18:35 | |
| of these ethical principles, | 18:39 | |
| it fails to accomplish what it sets out to accomplish. | 18:40 | |
| Namely, the most loving thing for everyone concerned. | 18:43 | |
| - | Yes, but more than that, | 18:47 |
| it has serious weaknesses which should be faced | 18:48 | |
| by any Christian who is considering | 18:50 | |
| whether to adopt situation ethics says | 18:52 | |
| his own approach to human relations. | 18:54 | |
| In the first place, it is not biblical. | 18:56 | |
| It lifts out of the New Testament one idea | 18:59 | |
| and rejects others. | 19:01 | |
| The same New Testament, | 19:04 | |
| which tells us to have love toward our fellows | 19:05 | |
| also gives us these ethical guidelines. | 19:07 | |
| The same Christ who taught us | 19:10 | |
| to love our neighbors as ourselves | 19:11 | |
| taught us these ethical principles | 19:13 | |
| as Abe Cox read a while ago. | 19:15 | |
| The second weakness I would mention | 19:18 | |
| is that it is a system of ethics, | 19:19 | |
| which is completely vulnerable | 19:21 | |
| to the weakest side of human nature. | 19:23 | |
| Namely our tendency to rationalize what we want to do | 19:26 | |
| into being what we ought to do. | 19:32 | |
| If in every situation, I am guided by no principle, | 19:37 | |
| except when I'm deciding that situation | 19:40 | |
| is the most loving thing for all concerned. | 19:42 | |
| It will be true, I must confess personally. | 19:45 | |
| Most of the time that I will find rationalizations | 19:49 | |
| to equate what I want with | 19:52 | |
| "the most loving thing for all concerned." | 19:55 | |
| Indeed, after you have agreed to love someone, | 20:00 | |
| you have not merely by that agreement | 20:02 | |
| learned what loving calls for. | 20:04 | |
| Dr. Harvey Seafords who is professor of ethics at Claremont | 20:08 | |
| has criticized situation ethics by saying | 20:11 | |
| that it leaves the norm of love | 20:13 | |
| too nebulous to be meaningful. | 20:15 | |
| He went on to say, | 20:18 | |
| either we give meaningful content to love | 20:18 | |
| by a system of principles | 20:21 | |
| or we leave conduct essentially unguided by love. | 20:23 | |
| And this same point was emphasized | 20:26 | |
| by Dr. Graham B. Blaine Jr. | 20:28 | |
| who is chief of psychiatric services at Harvard University, | 20:30 | |
| speaking as a psychiatrist, not as a professor of ethics. | 20:33 | |
| A third serious weakness I would mention is | 20:37 | |
| that the situation ethics people | 20:39 | |
| never make the situation broad enough | 20:41 | |
| when they're deciding the course of action. | 20:44 | |
| Their decision is based upon a snapshot view | 20:46 | |
| of the situation rather than on a moving picture view. | 20:50 | |
| And really I think a more appropriate description | 20:55 | |
| of their ethic would be to call it snapshot ethics | 20:57 | |
| rather than situation ethics. | 21:00 | |
| Take the example given by Fletcher, | 21:02 | |
| which was mentioned earlier, | 21:04 | |
| the decision of the mother to strangle the crying baby | 21:06 | |
| to death to avoid detection begs dozens of questions, | 21:08 | |
| which would immediately arise | 21:13 | |
| if we substituted a moving picture for a snapshot. | 21:14 | |
| We might ask what that family was doing | 21:19 | |
| trespassing on the Indian's territory in the first place. | 21:21 | |
| Also we should ask what previous brutal acts by white men | 21:25 | |
| had stirred up the hostility of the Indians | 21:29 | |
| and what had been done to correct these injustices? | 21:31 | |
| Really to broaden the situation sufficiently, | 21:35 | |
| to pass Christian master, | 21:37 | |
| we would have to include the Indians in our love, | 21:38 | |
| and that would radically change the contextual situation. | 21:42 | |
| But Joe, I think I sent some concerns | 21:47 | |
| struggling for expression in the kind of questions | 21:49 | |
| that you were asking a few minutes ago. | 21:51 | |
| So why don't you say what they are right now? | 21:53 | |
| - | All right, I will. | 21:55 |
| You've made some good points, | 21:58 | |
| but let's look at them more closely. | 21:59 | |
| Shall we define ethics | 22:02 | |
| in terms of what most people could follow | 22:03 | |
| or at least know when they were not following | 22:06 | |
| and thereby know they were being ethical | 22:08 | |
| or shall we approach ethics as the Christ, | 22:11 | |
| which while being admittedly unattainable | 22:14 | |
| and which few will follow. | 22:17 | |
| Still who ever thought that the real Christ | 22:18 | |
| would be something many would follow anyway? | 22:21 | |
| Reading the New Testament, | 22:24 | |
| I don't see a Jesus determining his daily life | 22:25 | |
| by a set of rules. | 22:28 | |
| He didn't need indeed would have been an adulteration | 22:30 | |
| to refer to something else before acting. | 22:33 | |
| He was what he did. | 22:37 | |
| The Christ was in him. | 22:39 | |
| And he led the coherent and holy life | 22:41 | |
| in which thought, spirit, and existence were one. | 22:44 | |
| Articulate systems of ethics while they seemingly simplify | 22:48 | |
| the problem of living life morally | 22:52 | |
| are in fact dangerous potentially. | 22:54 | |
| First, we run the risk of confusing | 22:57 | |
| a set of principles with the Christ. | 22:59 | |
| And anyway, I've always been led to believe that Jesus died, | 23:02 | |
| not for a set of principles, but for love. | 23:05 | |
| And second, we run the risk of pride. | 23:08 | |
| Quite obviously from some I know, | 23:11 | |
| Christian Phariseeism is as much in evidence | 23:13 | |
| among the saved today as it was among the Sanhedrin | 23:16 | |
| in Jesus' time. | 23:19 | |
| Third and finally, we run the risk of seeing life, | 23:21 | |
| the life of Christ as the sum total of right acts committed | 23:26 | |
| less the sum total of sins. | 23:30 | |
| I think Jesus loved a good deal more | 23:33 | |
| than he added and subtracted. | 23:35 | |
| Now you talk about guidelines as necessary | 23:38 | |
| for the Christian ethical life, | 23:42 | |
| yet in another context, a non-Christian could perform | 23:44 | |
| those same acts with mal-intent. | 23:47 | |
| This seems to say that guidelines can never be ultimatized | 23:50 | |
| since there is always a reason | 23:54 | |
| for which one follows a specific guideline, | 23:55 | |
| which may be loving and which may not. | 23:58 | |
| How many times I have seen others maimed emotionally, | 24:01 | |
| because someone just wanted to tell the truth | 24:05 | |
| or because they just wanted to let facts be facts. | 24:09 | |
| The remark you quoted of Dr. Seafords, | 24:14 | |
| are we to believe that it is we who give content to love | 24:16 | |
| by the principles to which we hold? | 24:20 | |
| Your analogy was the football play. | 24:24 | |
| That's a good analogy, but I think it breaks down finally, | 24:26 | |
| for as I understand the Christian game, | 24:29 | |
| no matter how much we might practice up | 24:32 | |
| on our ethical rules, we could never win the game. | 24:34 | |
| God says in Christ, as I understand it, | 24:38 | |
| the game has been won for you by grace. | 24:41 | |
| The important situational comment to be made, I think | 24:46 | |
| is not that there aren't varying situation. | 24:49 | |
| That's obvious, | 24:51 | |
| but that each of us is a unique occurrence, | 24:53 | |
| a unique situation if you will. | 24:55 | |
| Just as a sound is only a sound | 24:58 | |
| until we recognize it as a word and use it as a word | 25:01 | |
| so there is no such thing as an abstract right | 25:06 | |
| or an abstract wrong, but only as we use it. | 25:09 | |
| Let's face it, we are always in a context, | 25:13 | |
| in a situation, whether we like it or not. | 25:16 | |
| We are always so to speak situated. | 25:19 | |
| Right and wrong are acts, they are not entities. | 25:22 | |
| And we must always say what we mean by those acts | 25:27 | |
| when we use those dynamic and functional terms. | 25:30 | |
| We cannot escape the fact that making guidelines ultimate | 25:35 | |
| seems to be the easy way out and the dangerous way out, | 25:37 | |
| and also an idolatrous way out. | 25:41 | |
| Let's stop trying to be logical about the Christian life. | 25:44 | |
| God knows if he'd been logical with me, | 25:48 | |
| there'd have been no grace. | 25:50 | |
| And if I'm logical with you, | 25:53 | |
| there would be none for you either. | 25:54 | |
| Love and grace are not logical, | 25:56 | |
| nor are they illogical, they are beyond logic altogether. | 25:59 | |
| Now you'll be thinking that I'm a total situation ethicist | 26:05 | |
| no far from it. | 26:08 | |
| I spoke of the problems of guidelines first | 26:10 | |
| only because it seems to me to be the more prevalent era | 26:12 | |
| in the Christian community. | 26:15 | |
| However, it is no less faults | 26:17 | |
| for the situation to be ultimate. | 26:20 | |
| While there's simply nothing ultimate about situation | 26:22 | |
| and even less, is there anything ultimate about me? | 26:26 | |
| And there's the real rub of situation ethics as I see it. | 26:29 | |
| Making the situation ultimate is in the last analysis, | 26:33 | |
| making myself ultimate within the situation. | 26:36 | |
| Any affirmation of ethics must always have a reference. | 26:40 | |
| To have that reference be either a set of laws | 26:44 | |
| or guidelines or to have it be simply the situation | 26:47 | |
| is to make a God out of what is not God. | 26:50 | |
| Know the reference can be to neither. | 26:53 | |
| Well, then what can be the reference? | 26:56 | |
| Only the Christ, I think. | 26:59 | |
| The Christ uncontained by the sum of guidelines, | 27:01 | |
| the Christ undetermined by the situation | 27:05 | |
| and indeed infinitely more than the situation. | 27:08 | |
| This may sound precarious. | 27:12 | |
| Indeed it is. | 27:14 | |
| And it must be. | 27:17 | |
| But we are promised that in the Christ alone, | 27:18 | |
| there is freedom. | 27:20 | |
| Then how small of some people to confuse the freedom, | 27:22 | |
| which is in Christ with the license of the hypocrite. | 27:25 | |
| And don't get me wrong, | 27:29 | |
| I'm not talking about many and certainly not myself, | 27:30 | |
| but still I suspect that he who is in the Christ | 27:33 | |
| knows that being in the Christ | 27:37 | |
| is not the sum of the principles which I follow. | 27:40 | |
| It is more than that. | 27:44 | |
| It is the Christ and the Christ alone. | 27:46 | |
| And this is the only just reference for human acts. | 27:49 | |
| However else other references may determine the life | 27:52 | |
| which resembles that of the Christ, it only resembles it. | 27:56 | |
| And to worship a resemblance of the Christ | 28:01 | |
| is I think idolatry. | 28:04 | |
| But you may ask, how can we know we are out of the Christ? | 28:07 | |
| Or how can we know when someone else's acts | 28:11 | |
| are of the Christ? | 28:13 | |
| Well, we just will. | 28:15 | |
| That's all. | 28:17 | |
| We don't know exactly how we know, | 28:19 | |
| but we know that we do. | 28:21 | |
| The freedom of Christ is not licensed anarchy. | 28:24 | |
| It is beyond both these categories. | 28:28 | |
| It is not freedom, though free, and it is not anarchy, | 28:30 | |
| though it is without laws to be worshiped | 28:35 | |
| as absolutes in the place of God. | 28:38 | |
| It is the Christ mostly who loved and who died and who rose, | 28:41 | |
| who sweated, who was in the prostitutes tear, | 28:46 | |
| and the mother's caress of her child. | 28:50 | |
| We must know the Christ, | 28:53 | |
| I think much in the same way Louis Armstrong said, | 28:54 | |
| we had to know jazz when someone asked him. | 28:57 | |
| Louis spoke to us all, and he said, | 29:01 | |
| "Man, if you don't know it when you hear it, | 29:04 | |
| "I can't tell you." | 29:07 | |
| - | Joe, I think you and I have come very close | 29:10 |
| to saying the same thing in two different ways, | 29:12 | |
| but the extent to which we have and how exactly, | 29:16 | |
| we may never know, because our time is up | 29:19 | |
| and we're going to have to leave this open-ended | 29:22 | |
| with the congregation. | 29:24 | |
| Let us pray. | 29:25 | |
| - | Oh, thou God who has loved us | 29:33 |
| in ways we have not yet known nor ever will. | 29:36 | |
| We remember peace and we pray for it. | 29:41 | |
| - | Now may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ | 29:46 |
| be with you all. | 29:49 | |
| Amen. | 29:50 | |
| (bells chiming) | 29:53 | |
| (soft piano music) | 30:02 |