Against indifference

Around Wycliffe when we are discussing various issues such as abortion, the morning-after pill, divorce, IVF and so on, I have heard people say a number of things along the following lines:

It's not up to clergy to tell people what to do in their private lives. We can pray for them and offer them emotional support, even provide them with information, but may not tell them what to do.

These issues are not black and white. They are very complicated and we should therefore be wary of giving black and white answers to people who are in a very vulnerable position.

We do not live in an ideal world. In a fallen world, we must often choose between the lesser of two evils.

I am always a little suspicious of these kinds of expressions because I think that the church should be a little bit more than the local branch of Samaritans - much as I esteem the Samaritans.

We might divide the comments I hear into two main categories: comments about the role of the clergy, and comments about the complexity of the cases.

First let's think about the role of the clergy. At Wycliffe we debate all kinds of extraordinarily complex things. Last week we had a lecture covering some very obscure linguistic and epistemological philosophy in an attempt to discover how to read a book which we had all managed to read already. The lecture came to no clear conclusions and we left with no new practical insights as to how precisely we should read the Bible any differently to the way we were already reading it. We might read all kinds of books about the metaphysics of Trinitarian perichoresis and their implications for the Oxford one-way system. We consider the historicity of the book of Genesis based on the number of humps the camels had in those days and we ponder the mysteries of Octo-Isaiah and how amazing it is that so many people called Isaiah were all able to get together and write one book. We engage in theological reflection about the movie Shrek and we are discuss whether we are hoovering up Jesus when we use a vacuum cleaner after communion. In other words we think about a lot of very complicated things which are extremely unimportant. It seems that it is perfectly ok to expend an enormous amount of energy discussing things which in the long run don't matter a tiny bit but when we get too close to the bone and talk about real-life stuff, we must suddenly back off for fear of telling people what to do with their 'private' lives.

Actually this notion of a private life which is somehow cut off from Christianity is a rather odd one when you think about it. If I understand Jesus correctly, the whole of life matters to God and not just the religious bits. There is no private sphere of life where God takes a back seat and lets you do what you want.

The role of the minister is to proclaim the good news of this very same Jesus Christ: God is interested in your life. And this good news will have certain things to say about 'private' morality. It might tell you not to get remarried. It might tell you that having children is not a right and that certain ways of 'producing' children go outside the way that God has given. It might tell men and women that if you chose to have sex, you also chose to have a baby. And as clergy it will sometimes - perhaps often - be our role to explain this to people. Certainly this does not mean forcing our opinions on people. We have no coercive power to enforce the demands of the gospel. Ours is the authority of the Word, not the Sword. But the authority of the Word might mean reminding them of the costly sacrifice demanded by the gospel. No-one ever said that laying down your entire life in order to follow Jesus would be simple or easy. It means you can't always have what you want.

The second difficulty I mentioned is the complexity of the situations faced. This worries me even more because I detect behind it a pietist refusal to engage in the hard work of actually thinking about stuff. It throws up its hands in horror at how complicated real life is and therefore backs away from the concrete and the real. This is about as obscurantist as young-earth creationism.

I referred above to the extremely complex but essentially unimportant things with which it is socially acceptable to occupy our time at theological college. The complexity of the subject matter does not stop us from reaching certain conclusions about it. I wonder if it might be good to study equally complex but actually important things and coming to conclusions about them too.

However, the idea that they are "very important" is itself up for grabs. I wonder if I detect behind some of these comments the idea that, somehow, it doesn't really matter. In which case, they are actually trying to smuggle in a conclusion about the subject matter without actually engaging in a proper discussion of it.

Take the example of IVF. If a certain view about the status of the embryo is correct, then IVF is quite literally a life and death matter. Innocent human lives will be destroyed in the process of conventional IVF treatment. So to say at the outset that the matter is too complex is not good enough. It suggests either that one must have already reached a conclusion (namely that embryos are not alive and therefore it doesn't matter if they are destroyed) or that one is too unspeakably lazy to bother thinking about whether innocent human life is being destroyed or not.

It is true that sometimes matters will be too complicated to decide. But the only way one can say with integrity that the matter is too complicated is by thinking about it first, rather than deciding it is too complicated in advance and short-circuiting the discussion.

So maybe when we are talking about ethics, it's ok, in the words of Mrs Merton, to "have a heated debate."

Comments

[michael jensen]

My goodness, you are RIGHT.

We aren't here in the business of learning how to mop brows and hold hands.

There is NO excuse for this indifference I am afraid, and NO excuse for teaching in such away as to confirm the complete irrelevance of the Scriptures.

[Custard.]

Yep - agreed.

[Saju]

Agreed but, I might add that we are also not in the business of being rude to people. I wonder if the sensitive approach people are subscribing to is a reaction to an attitude of "I am a Christian and I have all the answers to your problems" kind of outlook with much "humility deficiency" (I came up with the phrase- I am sure you are impressed, Sean :0).

I am suspicious of Christians who claim to have "Gospel Truths" sorted out... This is not because I don't have confidence in the 'Gospel' or the very nature of 'Truth'. This is also not to mean that we as Christians shouldn't engage with the questions and pains of contemporary culture. What I am challenging is perhaps the arrogant nature of our "Biblical answers". Very often what I proclaim as a "Biblical answer" is simply my opinion- nothing more. The Gospel does confront human condition both explicitly and implicitly. But I wonder if this could be the case, minus my superciliousness.

[Sean]

Thanks Saju and others. I completely agree that we need to be courteous - or even more so, we are commanded to be gentle and to speak the truth IN LOVE. There is also a time to be silent.

I guess my point though is that we should not confuse our pastoral wisdom with our careful search for the truth. So we must try and work out what is true but that doesn't mean we then ram it down everyone's throats - obviously.

I do think that there are biblical-ethical 'gospel truths' which are basically ignored in the church and which we need to recover for the sake of those who cannot speak up for themselves - e.g. abortion, IVF etc are a justice issue analagous to campaigning for social justice.

[Jonathan Mobey]

Right on, Sean.
The stakes are so high that we simply cannot disengage.

[Tiffer]

It's interesting how much Christians are biased on moral issues as a result of what has become acceptable within Christian culture. Until quite recently independant Christian bookshops rarely accepted credit cards, because of course debt is bad and evil and wrong. Now that it has been observed Christians can have credit cards and not be in debt (the monthly full direct debit for example which used to be fairly rare) now credit cards are fine - although often Christians do get into debt and we just don't ask.

Mortgages are another example. The same evangelicals who cite biblical references against borrowing or being in debt don't seem to even notice mortgages. Why? Because most Christians now take them out, regardless of their views on debt.

On Dawkins program the Root of all Evil he interviewed an American pastor who defended another pastor who shot a doctor to prevent him from carrying out abortion surgery. Said American pastor claimed that it wasn't murder - it was defense - who wouldn't defend innocent lives from being murdered, whether it was legal or not? I think there are some holes in this argument, and whether a Christian should ever kill even in defense is a big question, but it struck me as an important question - if we really believe abortion is murder - what are we doing about it? And it is alarming the number of people who are pro life but who don't realise the consequences of IVF (unless they are planning to bear all the fertilised eggs)

[Doug]

Sean (found this via facebook..), of course we should discuss these things. Surely the point is not the complicatedness of the issues (and they are complicated), but that they are complicated because the life of the person concerned is impacted hugely by the results of these decisons.

Having a debate about the ethics of abortion/IVF/random hotbutton issue is very different from talking to a 15 year old girl who's been knocked up and is terrified her parents wll find out.

Also to get all relativist here, you may be wrong. If you give someone in a vulnerable situation explicit advice (and I do think even stating an opinion can count as doing this in some contexts - especially if you are an authority figure), you are in some way responsible for the result. You may be right, you may be wrong, but sometimes an approach that involves supporting people while they find the strength to make their own decisions is the wisest choice.