Morality: How Does A Christian Decide

Exodus 20.1-17
Micah 6.6-8
Matthew 20. 1-7
John 15.11-13
Galatians 5.1; 13-15

“He has showed you, O Mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

So, you want me to care. You want me to pay attention to an issue that does not directly affect me. You want me to listen to what you have to say. And, you want me to respond, with sensitivity. You want me to do something. You ask me to get involved, to make a difference, to make a hard choice. You want me to care. Then, you had better get me on a good day--and I can't tell you when I'm going to be having one of them!

Many days are filled with exhaustion and anxiety. Relationships are stressed. The budget is already stretched so thin that if it were the sole of a shoe the Salvation Army would give it back. Time is short. Hey, short is too tall--there is no time at all. Emotions are haggard. Spirit is depleted. And you want me to care, to get involved, to decide, and to act. Try me again tomorrow.

Morality--How Does a Christian Decide? There is a prior question. Why would a Christian want to decide? Life is heavy enough without loading it down with the consideration of weighty moral issues--especially when some of that consideration may require of me a reevaluation of my own life, my morality, my values, my priorities, and my lifestyle. Good grief! God may even have in mind something for me to do. Why bother?

I had considered beginning today just by listing the wide range of moral issues that confront us and about which we are forced to make decisions, even if they are decisions by default. Without even trying, I came up with a list of 56 moral issues I could preach on, from Abortion to Arms Race; Child Abuse to Capital Punishment; Gluttony to Greed, pornography to peace.

But I am going to spare you the total list because it feels like sinking the ship before it is launched. Instead I want to ask the question, "Why bother with any of them? Why add these burdens to our lives?

Even as I wrote those questions, I had an answer in mind, a Biblical answer found in Deuteronomy 30.19-20:

"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..."

The question: Why bother with burdensome and painful choices?

The answer: So that you and your children may live.

Our lives and the lives of our children depend on our choices. I hope it is so obvious that it does not need to be said; but just in case I will say it. The Word of the Lord in Deuteronomy has never been more true than it is today. How we chose on issues as wide ranging as aids, ecology and peace will determine not only the quality of life but the very survival of life on our planet. No generation in human history has possessed as much power as we possess to choose death, or to choose life. Decisions are being made right now, even as we worship, to abort the life of an unborn child and to abort the entire human adventure. What will we decide?

That was my initial answer to the question, "Why bother?" But sermons are living entities. The Lord speaks a new word and the preacher sees the whole matter in a new light. That new word for today is found in the entire 16th chapter of Luke and in Matthew 25.31-46. I would summarize these texts by saying that "Apathy, in the face of relievable human misery, is radical evil." (See, "The Jesus Journal", # 32, Charles McCarthy, p. 2)

Why bother? Because apathy in the face of relievable human misery is radical evil. If you could do something abut it and do nothing, either because you have shut your eyes so you can not see or because you choose to ignore what you do see, then you are taking your stand with radical evil, and the consequence of that stand is death, spiritual death, damnation, or as Jesus puts it in both Matthew and Luke, hell.

No matter how you understand hell, as present or future reality or as both, the consequence of apathy is, Jesus teaches, hell. The world is filled with forces of death, darkness and evil; drugs, violence, environmental destruction, lust. All are allies of death, darkness and evil. When in apathy we do nothing to oppose those forces, we stand with them and become part of the anti-life force that has as its goal the extinction of all light, life and love, thus hell. Or, as you have heard it said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for "good men" to do nothing."

Sometimes we are too tired to do anything. And there are some things we will be able to do nothing about. But to, always, do nothing about everything is to stand on the side of radical evil. To be apathetic is to choose hell.

But the sermon did not stop growing with the addition of this insight. Why bother? I have already given two answers, first, so that you and your children will live and, second, because apathy is radical evil. A third answer was given during my devotional time on Tuesday Morning. It is not only the most positive answer, it is also the most important.

Most of the major moral issues of our times have one thing in common, they are immensely complicated. They are both to big to figure out and too complex to do anything about. There is an air of hopelessness about the abortion dilemma, alcoholism and drug addictions, the nuclear arms race, the violence of the Middle East, poverty and homelessness and world hunger. Confronting them literally makes us feel powerless. Despair sinks in. We are sorely tempted to quit. Why bother? Why not retreat into some splendid isolation?

It is when we are confronted by such feelings of hopelessness that we begin to discover what our Christian faith is all about. We do not know the answers. But God does. We do not have the power, but God can work great things through us. Confronted by the radical evil of the world, and our own temptation to apathy, we are forced to resort to--prayer. Despair drives us to our knees. We cry out for help. And we experience that help like we have never know it before. Why bother? Because, paying attention to the most difficult moral issues of our day forces us to pay attention to God. Working to make a difference in the world draws us closer to God. In spirituality lingo this is often called the "Via Transformativa", the spiritual path of transforming love. Loving others draws us into a deeper relationship of love and dependence on God. There are a variety of ways that we learn to love God, but none of them work if we are not working for God.

Having answered the question, "Why bother?" we return to the original question, "How Does a Christian Decide?" Part of the difficulty of making a moral choice lies in the fact that life and death, good and evil, are like characters attending a costume party. You have to be very perceptive to see the reality beneath the costume. Advertisers try to create for cigarettes a costume of glamour. Drug pushers try to create for their deadly poisons the costume of pleasure and harmless escape from pain. Governments dress up the most evil of weapons and call them "peacemakers", and one terrorist is called a "fanatical maniac" and the next terrorist a "freedom fighter". How do we decide in a world where the good guys do not always wear white hats.

We turn to the Bible. You don't, by the way, have to turn to the Bible. In particular, you do not have to follow the teachings of Jesus. Human beings are free to follow any way they choose--until they choose for Jesus. As Christians we surrender that particular freedom and are now obligated to follow the Biblical way--not the way of any particular culture or country, not the way of self-interest and security--but the way of Jesus. We have a standard, an authority that stands as judge over our culture just as it stands judge over our lives.

The Bible--we begin at the beginning, where God began to reveal God's moral will. From the beginning, men and women got off on the wrong track. Rather than living in harmony with one another, and in unity with their Creator, humans rebelled. They lied, they murdered, they abused their bodies and abused each other. They robbed from the poor to give to the rich. They worshipped false Gods. Life was generally a mess, a moral disaster.

So what was God to do? That's right. God tried the "wipe 'em out" theory of moral reformation. But, God found out all too soon, destructive violence was not an effective strategy in the pursuit of good. As soon as the flood ended, both Noah's family and sin began to multiply. And immorality and rebellion and separation from God continued to be the order of life. That ought to give pause to anyone who thinks that the convenient answer to immorality is more punishment. That didn't even work for God!

What was God's next move? Well, to make a very long story short, God gave to the people the Law, an abundance of rules and regulations, to guide their lives, to bring the people in line with God's will. Of these 612 moral laws laid out in the Old Testament we know best the laws given by God through Moses, the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20.1-17.

Are these 612 laws, especially The Ten Commandments, the answer to the question, "How does a Christian decide?"

Well, they did not work very well. The law did not bring an end to immorality, for now the people of God knew clearly what was expected of them and they still chose to disobey. Neither salvation nor morality could come through obedience to the law. Instead of getting moral righteousness from the Law, all the Israelites got was "legalism", getting so absorbed with every jot and tittle of a moral code that compassion and justice were lost. Laws can be useful in providing guidance but they cannot be our final standard of morality.

What else is there? In the Old Testament we begin to find answers, as in Micah 6.6-8:

"God has showed you, O Man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you? To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God."

Here we are given principles, values, concepts, religious ideals that are to be the standard of human conduct. What does God expect of us, morally speaking? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Each of these concepts has rich meanings if you study the Hebrew words in depth. For example, "Mishpat"--translated as "Justice"--is among the most important words in the Bible. Mishpat--to do what is just.

One of the first places Mishpat is used in the Old Testament is Genesis 18.25. "Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?"

Mishpat is God's standard of right conduct, the way God would act. It is sometimes defined by laws, but no law can fully encompass it. Mishpat is the moral will of God. God applies Mishpat, God's justice, to the cause of the afflicted and needy, as in Psalm 140.12. "I know that the Lord maintains the cause of the afflicted, and executes justice for the needy."

And God expects us to apply the same standard of Mishpat in our moral decisions, as declared in Isaiah 1.17: "Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow."

Mishpat, as the Biblical principle of justice, is an ideal we are all expected to apply to all moral decisions. It is not easy to make the applications, but by careful study of scripture and prayerful dependence on God we can all be faithful doers of God's justice.

Justice is not the final Biblical word on morality, however. For that word we must turn to the New Testament to find what Jesus says about a standard of right and good. We read from Matthew 22.34-40:

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Jesus declares here what I believe to be the ultimate standard of morality for Christians--the love of God and neighbor. The Apostle Paul supports the centrality of Love in Romans 13.8-10:

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A Christian, with 1) laws as guidelines and 2) the Holy Spirit for guidance and 3) the Christian community for support and correction needs no other final standard of right conduct than the teachings of Jesus on love. The "Love/Justice Ethic" has to be applied by each Christian in each context. The New Testament is filled with stories where the good verses the evil is determined by the context. A rich young ruler comes to Jesus wanting to know what he must do to find abundant life. Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give it to the poor. But Jesus does not suggest that action for everyone. It depends on your context. It depends on what is keeping you from full faith in God. (Parenthetically speaking, I might add that in our context as middle class Americans, wasteful consumers in a world of great want, money is exactly the issue that keeps many of us from full faith in God.)

"Who is my neighbor?" the Jewish lawyer asked. Jesus did not answer that question with a general statement about morality but with a particular context, a story that called for the application of love. The Biblical principle of LOVE/JUSTICE can only be applied by a Christian when you come face to face with a neighbor in need, with a specific moral dilemma that requires a decision. Paul makes the same point when he talks, in I Corinthians 10, about the morality of eating and drinking being determined by the persons you are with at the moment, the context in which you find yourself.

A couple of examples:

The Roman Catholic Church has taught its people that birth control is always immoral, but Protestants have understood that in an overpopulated and hungry world, each person must act responsibly, as an expression of Neighbor love, and do family planning. I believe that the Love/Justice ethic, in a world such as ours, declares the position of the Catholic Church on family planning to be immoral.

In the 19th century, before the Civil War, there were laws in our country against helping escaped slaves. But many Christians believed that they owed their loyalty to a higher power than the law of the land. They ran the underground railroad to freedom. The principle of Love/Justice guided Mahatma Gandhi in India as he grew the concept of non-violent civil disobedience. Martin Luther King Jr. applied this concept to the American Civil Rights Movement. And this principle is still being applied today by Christians who provide sanctuary to Central American Political Refugees.

In pre-World War II Germany, a few, and to the everlasting shame of Christians around the world, a very few, Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed the rise to power of Adolph Hitler. They violated laws, they resisted authority, but they followed the New Testament standard of love for God and neighbor. Many paid for their love with their lives. The application of the Love/Justice ethic is not an option for the Christian. It is an obligation. Jesus continues his instruction to us in John 15.12-13:

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Neighbor love can be more sharply defined as sacrificial love, love that is willing to suffer on behalf of the beloved. As Paul puts it:

"Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor."

The root of much immorality is that apathy and greed have created within our society an entirely contrary ethic of "look our for number 1". The truth is that we live in a connected world. Everything that I do has repercussions everywhere else. One person dies of hunger, in part, because another person is squandering the abundance God has given. Our environment continues to deteriorate because we refuse to look towards the world our children will inherit. We will pass on to our children the off the scale national debt and the crippling cost of the S & L bailout, because we have wanted to live beyond our means and have been consumed by greed. We know that anything important in life requires sacrifice, effort and often a change in our priorities. But somehow, as if we are completely morally blind, we continue to think we can choose life without having to change our lives.

I was reading an article recently that totally exploded my moral complacency. It was entitled, "The Great Lie".

"The great lie is this: relief for the poor and the suffering will come without any risks or efforts on my part. The great lie is that the wretched of the earth will somehow be better off without my encountering any risk or danger....Somehow the hungry will be fed, the sick healed, the homeless housed, the criminal rehabilitated, the oppressed no longer exploited and tortured, while I sit at home watching TV, while I polish my cars and boats, while I pour money into junk food, the latest gadgets, and new clothes. It's a lie. It can't happen."

As Jesus says it, apathy, shutting eyes to the needs of the world, closing our ears to the cries of the oppressed, refusing to touch and be touched by the hungry and the dying, apathy in all of its forms is radical evil--it aligns us with the forces for death--and ultimately means thee will be hell to pay.

On the other hand, struggling with tough issues, trying to make a difference in the world for God, practicing the Love/Justice ethic, all are ways to experience the power and presence and love of God in our lives. In serving we build the Kingdom of God for others, and we find it given to ourselves. For the salvation of our lives, and the salvation of the world, listen again to the words of Jesus. They tell us how a Christian decides:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as your self."

So be it. Amen.