The Beginning of Christian Ethics

If the beginning of revelation is that our speech, our actions, our loves and our causes have a fundamental meaning, purpose and value associated with them that the unyielding reality of death can not ultimately defeat, then what constitutes the program by which we live in the world? What is the beginning of Christian ethics?

Following William Stringfellow I do not believe that anyone can know how God will judge any particular action.

As the Rev. Hugh Flesher once told me, there is a difference between praying to do God's will and to know God's will.

But there is, I believe, a principle that stands behind Christian ethics and, oddly enough, it's a negative one - and one that even might sound a bit goofy to modern ears.

Simply put, don't worship false gods.

That certainly sounds easy enough, doesn't it? :-)

My atheist friends go one further - not only, do they say, will they will resist such temptations as worshiping Baal or Krishna, they'll do me one better and not worship God in Christ :-)

But the simple fact is that, at least in the Bible, there simply is no such thing as atheism. It is taken for granted that everyone worships the gods and a certain incredulity at the Hebrew claim to only worship one of them!

The normal atheist claim to worship no gods would have been considered quite an astonishing assertion.

But when one considers that those the ancients call gods have in a more secular age, been recast as values, ideologies, movements, fads, etc (and the physical and institutional manifestations thereof, such as money in the bank, governments, reputation, etc.), it can be seen that the gods are alive and well.

The source of ethical difficulty is that while many of the gods may be disreputable on their face (sex, drugs and rock and roll, that kind of thing), the most effective gods are quite appealing.

Who doesn't want to be a patriot for one's country?

Who doesn't want an outstanding reputation in the community?

Who doesn't think it important, even in a moral sense, to have money in the bank and to be dependent on no person or state for one's care?

Who wouldn't want to help lead a family and produce children?

These are inarguably all good things.

The problem, from a biblical point of view, is when one wraps one's life around any or all of these to the point that they become (false) means of justifying - to use the Pauline word - one's life or, in other words, to establish the ultimate meaning, value and purpose of one's life in the face of death.

To do for us at great cost and sacrifice (of our own lives and of anyone who stands in our way) what God in Christ claims to do for us as a free gift.

I'd go so far as to say that the most visible difference between the gods and God in Christ is that the gods, even the most respectable, benign looking ones, are ultimately bloodthirsty and demand blood sacrifice.

God in Christ requires no person's sacrifice.

And this is why I believe that while one may hope and pray to be doing God's will in some particular action or program or cause, one must ultimately leave final judgment on such action to God.

Because, to use a historical example, who other than God in Christ can say whether someone's decision to drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese civilian city in hopes of preventing a seaborne invasion that would have been costly in American and Japanese lives was motivated by one's honest obligation to make the best possible decision in the face of one's responsibilities or by an idolatry of one's nation over other nations?

For what it's worth, these are some of the tools that I'll bring to the table in coming discussions of abortion and the utilization of America's nuclear capacity.