Pensée 3.2 All human life is "intrinsically" valuable.

Building an uber-outline at the bottom.
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1. Human life is valuable. We will debate how and when to define human life, but let us agree that it is universally and intrinsically valuable.

I put intrinsically in quotes because it is not technically true. From a Christian perspective, human life is valuable in a derivative fashion. That is to say, it is valuable because God values it. Genesis 1:27 says that God created humanity -- both male and female -- in his "image" or "likeness." We are a sort of mirror of God. 

Therefore, we are all valuable. In this case, Even if that value derives from God, it is inseparably attached to every human being. We might argue that the image of God in humanity is "marred," but the Bible does not teach that it is ever destroyed. Even the most evil of men is still created in the image of God -- a fundamental dignity remains, however damaged.

2. What shall we say from a non-theist perspective? We might note that Thomas Jefferson, who was a Deist, still penned that humans are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." Admittedly, he still believed in a Creator. And he saw human rights as intrinsic to humanity because of how God had created us. The United States was founded on this belief.

Modern constitutional republics and democracies are founded on this principle as well. It is a distinguishing characteristic. It is part of our social contracts. While the United States still allows for capital punishment, most modern representational democracies do not on the principle that all human life is intrinsically valuable and thus cannot be destroyed except in the most extreme of circumstances such as a just war or self-defense.

It is, admittedly, difficult to prove the intrinsic worth of a human apart from either a religious conviction or an agreed social assumption. Yet arguably, societies that make this assumption thrive on a much higher level than those that do not. A disregard for human life characterizes less developed societies that do not thrive. In these, certain individuals may accrue power and experience great pleasure, but as a whole society does not. If, for example, a nation were to devalue the humanity of any group living in its midst, it would diminish its moral stature. In our case, it would betray both the Constitution and, more importantly, our Creator.

It is in the best interest of the masses to live in a society that values the individual. To the extent that the masses have power, therefore, they should insist on universal, individual rights for their own advantage. Mathematically, such a society brings greater pleasure to a greater number. Although I cannot prove it from a non-theistic perspective, there is a certain common sense to the notion that a greater pleasure in a society makes for a better nation than one where a select few have great pleasure. If might makes right in such a context, the masses should use their power to insist this is the case.

But it is a moot point from a Christian perspective. From God's perspective, all human beings not only have inherent value but equal value.

3. All humans have equal intrinsic value. Humans have differing instrumental values. That is to say, the life of the president of a country in most instances will be more useful than the life of a homeless person. However, they both have the same intrinsic value as human beings. This is an important distinction.

In a just war, it may be justified to kill an enemy for instrumental reasons. But the enemy has the same intrinsic value as a human being. We let the enemy bury their dead. There is a certain dignity to a fallen enemy that comes from their humanity regardless of their actions.

If we have to kill a home invader in self-defense, that may be justified. But the home invader still has a certain dignity as a human being. Their family will have a funeral for them and will mourn their death along with their choices -- a life that could have and should have been more.

What about the most evil of humans? What of the worst serial killer or a dictator ordering genocide? I'll admit that I find these instances difficult because such individuals represent an affront to humanity as humanity. That is to say, their disregard for the value of human life may make their consequences a bigger matter than justice to an individual. They bear the weight of collective justice.

Yet to remain true to principles, it seems we must still treat them as humans. Christian principles suggest that they should be afforded a fundamental dignity even if they bear the weight of collective justice. We lament a human life wasted on evil. If God grieves over all rebellion, even that of Satan, how much more does he mourn the destruction of a human soul.

The fallen human mind would take advantage of any allowance that some humans do not deserve dignity. We see this in play in America at the moment. If you are not here legally, some think that gives permission to disregard certain fundamental rights. This of course is a violation of the Constitution and an offense to God. When leaders of nations disregard human life, they degrade their countries.

4. Galatians 3:28 and the New Testament in general present the radical principle that God values all humans the same regardless of whether they are Jewish or not, slave or free, male or female. If these are "woke" values, then the New Testament is woke and to say differently is to oppose God.

"God does not show favoritism" to Jew over Gentile, Peter says in Acts 10:34-35. Yes, he is talking about those who pursue God, but nowhere in Scripture does it say that he plays favorites among non-believing groups either. Note that this principle applies to the fundamental human value of Israelis and Palestinians. Even if there would be some instrumental reason to prefer Israel politically, as human beings, Palestinian life must be treated as having equal value. To say otherwise is to oppose God. 

(As a sidenote, Romans 9-11 considers those on either side in or out of the people of God depending on their confession of faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is the New Testament criterion for membership in the people of God.)

This principle can be extended to the domain of ethnicity in general. While there may be instrumental value in deporting undocumented immigrants, in God's eyes, each individual detained is of equal value to the person detaining them. To say otherwise is to oppose God.

Similarly, in God's eyes there is no greater value to the master than to the slave. Antebellum America thus opposed God when it devalued the slave. The Jim Crow South opposed God when it devalued the ex-slave. In terms of intrinsic value, the slave was just as worthy of dignity as the slaveownder. 

The person without money is of just as much value to God as the person with money. Indeed, from a New Testament perspective, the person with money is less likely to be favored by God as the poor. Yet both have the same intrinsic value.

Paul applies this principle to male and female as well. While the cultural roles of his day peek out here and there in his writings, the Day of Pentecost indicates the equal dignity and worth of women to men. The Spirit is the great equalizer. Sons and daughters both receive words from the Lord (Acts 2:17). 

5. It is cliche to refer to Nazi Germany, but it remains the most useful illustration in our memory for a society that went awry in its devaluing of certain human beings. Certainly this was the case with regard to its treatment of Jews. The mass graves in places like Lithuania reveal villages that turned on nearly half their population because they were Jewish. Such atrocities were an affront to collective humanity.

We are just as fallen as them. We are just as capable of such atrocities as them. We can rationalize evil just as easily as they did. All have sinned. There is none righteous, no not one. We are fooling ourselves if we think we could never become what they became.

There were also the experiments in the camp. They treated the weak or physically challenged as less valuable. "Defects" in a person were seen as devaluing of their worth, making it permissible to treat them with disdain, contempt, violence, and death. Such treatment of fellow human beings is an affront to God and a sin against humanity.

Fallen human nature finds ways to justify dehumanization. "They don't deserve to be treated with respect because..." This is what the abuser does -- you made me abuse you because you were unworthy. 

But the command of God is to love our enemies, as hard as this is (Matt. 5:44). It goes against every bone in our bodies. We want to think it weak. Milquetoast. Feminine.

Then God is weak. Except he isn't. This is the command of God, and those who violate this principle are enemies of God. And the society that endorses the dehumanization of others is an inferior country. And God will have his Day of strength.

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Epistemology
1.1 1.1 We can be epistemologically certain of almost nothing.
1.2 The world outside me exists.
1.3 I exist.
1.4 Logic and math seem absolutely reliable.
1.5 Assumptions are inevitable in reasoning.
1.6 Reasoning is inevitable in thinking.
1.7 Our senses give us the "dots" of reality, but our minds draw the pictures.
1.8 Our sense of the "dots" of reality is tremendously skewed.
1.10 A critical realism is an optimal epistemology.
1.11 Paradigms are constantly shifting over time.
1.10 Perception is a reality.
1.11 Our situation requires extreme epistemological pragmatism.
1.12 The scientific method is extremely useful.
1.13 The scientific method has clear limits.
1.14 The meaning of words and symbols is a function of how they are used.
1.15 The meaning of actions and events is constructed.
1.15 Texts by their very nature are polyvalent and "autonomous."
1.16 The Bible is an object of knowledge. 

Philosophy of Religion
2.1 Belief in a Creator is reasonable but not provable.

Philosophy of Personhood
3.1 A human is a biological machine.
3.2 A human is potentially self-conscious in a way no other animal is.
3.3 Humans may have a "spiritual" dimension.
3.4 All human life is "intrinsically" valuable.
3.5 When human personhood begins in part is a social construct.

Ethics
4.1 Good is an adjective, not a noun.
4.2 Good is good because God says so.
4.3 God says that love is good.
4.4 Justice is a function of love.

Social, Political, and Economic Philosophy
5.1 Anarchy and communism are unworkable forms of governance.
5.2 Monarchies and theocracies are unreliable. 
5.3 There are two core principles of governance. 
5.4 Checks and balances are crucial in an ideal government.

2.3 Beyond Relativism and Absolutism

1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
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12. As seemingly obvious as the idea of contextualization is, it is messy. Let's say that some ethical norm that is important to you is dismissed or downplayed by someone or somewhere else under the name of "that was just cultural on your part." For example, what if a Christian from some part of the world were to say, "Why don't you American Christians greet each other with a holy kiss? 1 Thessalonians 5:26 clearly says to do so."

Maybe the American Christian responds, "That was a cultural practice of the Mediterranean world. Can't I just give you a handshake?" This isn't an issue of debate for us currently, so it is an answer we can easily accept. 

But what if it's an issue of greater significance? The German Christian says, "Your absolute prohibition on drinking is cultural. Can't I just drink in moderation and not get drunk?" What if someone says, "They didn't understand homosexuality in biblical times. What's wrong is visiting a temple prostitute or having sex with boys or forcing yourself on another person"?

You can begin to see the alarm that arose among some when the concept of contextualization came to the fore in the 1970s. "You just don't want to obey God. You're making excuses." And no doubt the concept of differing context has great potential to undermine moral principles. The fallen human mind has exquisite skills at rationalization, which is where you make excuses for inappropriate action. Rationalization is "reasoning away" your guilt or wrong behavior. We're very good at it.

In fact, humans are quite good at arguing that evil is good and good is evil (Isa. 5:20). The high priest "rents his clothes," rips them in a symbolic gesture, when Jesus acknowledges that he is the Son of God (Mark 14:23). "What further need of witnesses do we have?" It doesn't occur to him that Jesus actually might be the Son of God. He is making the good out to be evil.

13. So there is some legitimate concern about someone using the concept of culture to try to "wiggle out" of obedience to God's will. One might also suggest that the situation is different. Someone might say, "Normally it would be wrong to lie, but in this situation it is appropriate." There is a legitimate concern that the person is making excuses for sinful behavior.

About a decade ago, my church expanded its sense of legitimate reasons for divorce to include spousal abuse. It not only included physical abuse but emotional abuse. The idea is that a spouse can be unfaithful in ways that go well beyond sleeping with someone else. In my opinion, this is a good example of an ethical standard that is fully in keeping with the principles of Scripture without it being explicitly ennumerated in the Bible.

The problem is verifying it. "What if someone says they have been abused when they haven't?" I know of a case where a minister divorced his wife in the name of spousal abuse, but there were many who didn't believe him. There was actually an investigation to see if he could keep his ministerial credentials. Legislation was proposed to try to prevent abuse of the abuse clause.

Here we get to a fundamental issue -- if you make exceptions and allowances, someone is going to get away with cheating the allowance. I have heard of middle school teachers and substitutes who simply don't allow their students to use the restroom during class periods. "If you give an inch, they'll take a mile." If you say, "Lying is allowed under certain circumstances," then some people will take advantage of the allowance. If you say, "The prohibition on drinking is cultural," then some Christians are going to take advantage of it. Loopholes can open the door for bad behavior.

When I was an academic Dean, I realized that many policies come into existence because of people who "abuse the system." I remember a couple of faculty members who tried to drive a truck through the fact that there weren't explicit rules against practices that the rest of us followed as a matter of common sense. It was a little funny to me. They were really good at policy-making -- not themselves, but inspiring the rest of us to make policies so they couldn't abuse some aspect of the system.

14. However, in the end, I have a few responses to the fear of people abusing the concept of contextualization. The first is the old saying that "abuse is no excuse." The fact that someone might take advantage of the concept is a different issue than whether the concept is true or not. This is a form of the "fallacy of diversion." It confuses the application of a truth with the truth itself.

As we will see, it is simply the case that moral principles can play out differently in different situations and different contexts. I have a friend who thought he was having a major medical emergency. He had his wife drive him quickly to the hospital in the middle of the night. Later on, telling his young daughter about the incident, she was alarmed to find that her mother had driven through red lights on the way to the hospital. 

In the binary ethical thinking of childhood, a red light is a red light. You don't run it ever. No exceptions. It's an absolute. It wouldn't matter if you were having a baby or dying of a heart attack. A rule's a rule.

Take the question of abortion. It is sometimes argued that, if we prohibit abortion, women will die in unsavory places trying to get one illegally. But this is a bad argument against prohibiting abortion. The objection to the prohibition relates to the application of a moral principle rather than the validity of the principle itself. Possible implications are a motivation to make sure we are right about the core ethic rather than an argument in relation to the ethic itself.

15. A second response is of course that God knows. No one is truly getting away with anything. God knows when we try to make evil good and good evil. In fact, God knows what is really going on inside our hearts even when we don't. We can hide our true motivations from ourselves. But God knows.

I suspect that some of the push back on these concepts is ultimately about control. We want to be able to police those who might abuse allowances. When my wife was in elementary school, a teacher expressed frustration to her father that she was always out of her seat. My father-in-law asked the teacher, "Why don't you tell her to sit down?" His response was full of pathos: "Because she always has a good reason!" Apparently, she had mad skills at coming up with reasonable excuses for undesired behavior.

I once worked with a professor who had elaborate systems to catch students at cheating. It's not that I didn't have my own techniques too, but he seemed to enjoy the quest to catch the cheater maybe a little too much. At some point, we have to remember that God is in control. It's not our job to catch every person whose motives aren't pure. In the end, God is the judge of our intentions (1 Cor. 4:3; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 4:12-13).

16. It is no surprise that as awareness of context became clearer and clearer in the missions circles of the 1970s, opposition to the concept of contextualization rose as well. In the first chapter, I talked about the predictable opposition to difference that arises when a new idea or practice is introduced that shakes or threatens to undermine the status quo. When we have unexamined assumptions about ideas or practices that are important to us, we can react very negatively toward the introduction of other thinking or approaches.

There are rhetorical machines that go to work to maintain the status quo. I've suggested that binary thinking is a predictable response -- the new idea or practice is evil or stupid. Rhetorical machines produce fine-sounding arguments why the new idea or practice is wrong. Some of these arguments can be quite clever. I often use the word ingenious for an incredibly intelligent work-around what seems more or less straightforward.

I had a oneness Pentecostal student once. Oneness Pentecostals don't believe in the Trinity. They are "modalists" who think that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same, one person in different modes during different periods of history. 

This student was incredibly bright. At some point, we got into a discussion of Matthew 28:19, where Jesus tells his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The most obvious reading of this verse, it seems to me, is that three distinct persons are mentioned here.

His response was ingenious. "Notice that the word name is singular. Even though there are three titles given here, they all relate to the one person who ultimately only has one name." Ingenious!

He didn't come up with that argument, of course. It was an argument created by the "machine" of his church to explain away what I would call "naughty verses" for them -- verses that seem to go against their theology. Every theological system has them. Some verses just fit more easily into our theological systems than others. More on paradigms in a later chapter.

17. Other arguments against a new concept are not quite as clever. You might call them "above average" arguments. They sound intelligent enough that, if they are arguing for a position you like, they provide an excuse to keep the ideas and practices you started out with. They work inside the bubble. Social media and legacy media are constantly giving us talking points that allow us to keep the positions we want to keep.

Of course binary thinking doesn't stop with letting me maintain a belief or practice. Rhetorical machines typically go on the offensive. They provide me with smart sounding reasons not only for why I am correct but why the other side is either stupid or evil. This is especially the case with political rhetoric.

In push-back to moves toward contextualization, an above average rhetorical machine went into action. It used the concepts of absolutes and relativism to try to undermine what it called "situational ethics" and "ethical relativism." These concepts became tools in the arsenal of idealological resistance. If you are claiming that Christians in some other place don't have to follow certain norms, we can shut you down by labeling you a relativist. If you are claiming that it's ok to steal if you're hungry, we can shut you down by calling that "situational ethics."

However, upon the simplest of examinations, this rhetoric doesn't actually do what it wants to do. Fundamentally, it tries to put all ethics into two boxes -- people who believe in right and wrong and those who don't. Absolutists are those who believe in right and wrong. Relativists are those who don't. It is an either/or, binary option. In the end, it is the fallacy of false alternative.

For example, an absolute by definition has no exceptions. Now consider the biblical instruction to submit to those in authority over you (Rom. 13:1; Heb. 13:17). Is that an absolute without exceptions? 

Apparently not. Peter tells the Sanhedrin that they will not submit to its authority. "You tell us whether it is right to obey God or you" (Acts 4:19). That is to say, the principle of submitting to authority is a universal principle with exceptions. By definition, this is not an absolute. But it is not relativism either. It is another option on the ethical spectrum -- universal norm with exceptions.

18. Biblically, we find absolutes. But we also find universal norms with exceptions, and we also find instances of relativism. I would argue that the default scope of moral instruction in the Bible is universal with exceptions. Don't work on the Sabbath, but if your ox is in the ditch, make an exception (Matt. 12:11; Luke 14:5).

In this case, Paul goes beyond the Sabbath as a universal norm to more or less consider the Sabbath legislation as a matter of whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. He tells the Gentile Colossians not to let anyone judge them on whether they keep the Jewish Sabbath (Col. 2:16). Paul's teaching on the Jewish particulars of the Law approaches a kind of cultural relativism. I suspect he taught that it's fine for Jews to continue to abstain from pork, but Gentiles are not obligated to keep the food laws (so also Mark 7:19).

Indeed, you could argue that Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conviction in Romans 14:5 -- one person believes they must keep the Sabbath; another doesn't. Let that sink it. Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conscience and conviction. That goes beyond cultural relativism to individual relativism!

19. In short, the absolute-relativism rhetoric in the end doesn't do what it tries to do. Yes, the command to love God and neighbor is absolute -- no exceptions (Matt. 22:36-40). But other biblical commands seem to imply that there can be exceptions. There is the old question of someone hiding Jews during Nazi occupation during World War II. Do you lie when they ask if you are hiding Jews? The story of Rahab in Joshua 2 seems to imply as much. [8]

Upon considering this scenario, I had a student who said, "I guess it's ok to sin under some circumstances." But that is NOT what this argument is saying. We are saying that the right thing to do in some circumstances is to make an exception and that the wrong thing to do in some circumstands is to keep a rule. This student had the frameowork of absolutism so deeply carved on her mind that she couldn't see that it could actually twist morality in some extreme cases. [9]

But if there are potential exceptions, then the rhetoric falls apart. A concept or action cannot be dismissed simply by labeling. Now we have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. We have to identify moral principles that are in tension with each other and figure out which one takes precedence in this context or situation. But if we have to argue that out, then the rhetoric doesn't work as a quick answer to all our ethical questions.

If there are ethical norms that are universal but have exceptions, then I cannot use language of absolutes to shut down conversation. I have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. In the end, what a lot of people mean when they say "there are absolutes" is that "there is definite right and wrong." The problem is that relativists believe this too. They just think it depends on the culture, person, or situation. The rhetoric falls apart.

20. I grew up believing in convictions. Romans 14 is all about them. God may require something of me that he doesn't require of you. The Nazirites of the Old Testament were not allowed to drink or cut their hair. But everyone else could. This is an example of relativism.

There are individuals who were an alcoholic before they became a Christian. I have a friend who, while recognizing that the Bible fully allows the consumption of alcohol, would never drink himself because of his background. Abstinence for him is a personal conviction. This, again, is an example of ethical relativism, and it is biblically sanctioned.

Once again, we see that the "above average" machine of argumentation doesn't accomplish what it set out to do. Rhetoric of absolutes and relativism was meant to shut down any sense that ethics involves contextualization or the consideration of individuals or situation. But Scripture itself shuts the argument down.

Rather than morality being a binary of black and white, it involves a spectrum of possible decisions. There are moral absolutes. We've mentioned loving God and loving neighbor. All other ethical imperatives flow from these two. "Thou shalt not murder." This is an absolute because it does not include war or capital punishment or self-defense. If we worded it, "Thou shalt not kill," it would not be an absolute.

However, most ethical norms, it would seem, are on the level of universal principle with potential exceptions. There is a place in Scripture also for culturally relative norms -- wrong for one culture, allowed for another. And there is a place in Scripture for individual convictions, which are instances of personal relativism.

As you can see, morality is not a binary in this respect. It is a spectrum. We mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that moral nihilism is the approach to ethics that doesn't believe in any right or wrong. Relativism does believe in definite rights and wrongs. It is definitely wrong for my friend to drink, even though he would allow it might not be wrong for others. So it isn't even accurate to say that relativists don't believe in right and wrong.

Former President Biden is apparently a relativist when it comes to the subject of abortion. He believes it is wrong, but he wouldn't say it is wrong for others. The argument against him should not be, "That's relativist." The argument should be, "This is not an issue on which relativism is appropriate."

In the end, the absolutism/relativism argument fails to do what it sets out to do. On various issues, the Bible can be seen to take positions across the spectrum of moral scope. We therefore have to determine what the appropriate moral scope is for each action. We cannot simply dismiss an action by categorizing it. We have to do the hard work of moral reasoning.

We will return to ethics in chapter 8. Our purpose in this chapter has been to start us on the journey. The first step is to realize that we have moral assumptions we didn't know we had. The second step was for us to realize that binary thinking, while a natural response to new ideas, does not ultimately seem to work. There is a spectrum of moral scope. We will try to set a firmer philosophical basis for Christian ethics in chapter 8.

[8] Around 1800, Immanuel Kant coined the phrase "categorical imperative" in ethics. His philosophy was that, if something was wrong, it was always wrong without exceptions -- it was categorically wrong. He tried and tried to reformulate it so that it would make sense, but his difficulty ultimately belies the fact that he was just wrong. 

His particular German culture was absolutist, but he couldn't pull off the argument. He finally said his categorical imperative amounted to the Golden Rule. But an exceptionless moral absolutism inevitably would violate the Golden Rule by applying an absolute standard to situations calling for exception or mercy. It inevitably leads to immoral action under extreme circumstances.

[9] I might add that while I am making my thinking fairly explicit in this series, I function more as a facilitator in teaching. In this case, I did not argue against the student's position, but I wanted her to understand accurately the nature of the argument.

2.2 Contextualization in Missions

In theory, Thursday is my philosophy writing day (I have a schedule that life often doesn't allow). Here is what I have written so far on "Pilgrim's (Philosophical) Progress":

1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
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8. I suspect that some missionaries in the early 1900s were largely unreflective in their understanding of culture. Again, there is the person who is curious about differences. This person presumably makes for a good missionary because they are interested in other people as people and are willing to hear how other people think and operate in the world in a non-condescending and non-judgmental way. We're not talking about compromising on principles or the gospel. We're talking about the forms that Christian faith takes at a particular time and place.

As we have already said, a large number of people are wired to see difference automatically as something that needs to be corrected. "I'm right. You're wrong. And I need to fix you." I have little doubt but that a sizeable number of early missionaries entered other cultures unable to distinguish their Christian faith from their American Christian culture. (As we will see, this dynamic likely applies also to the way many American Christians approach politics.)

Let's say two people go on a missions trip to visit a field where there is already a strong Christian community. One person comes away thinking, "God is really using the church there to lead people to Christ and do good in their context." Another person has only seen how "crazy" they are there. Fun stories of difference seem more about how ignorant and inferior they are in the other place.

The first person is more reflective. The second person may not have taken anything of value away from the trip except that it has confirmed to them how ignorant people in other places are. The ironic fact is, however, that it is much more likely that the second person is ignorant of themselves, and the trip has only hardened them in their ignorance. It has confirmed to them their superiority.

These days, there is often mandatory preparation before mission trips of these sorts. There is absolutely training before you can go to a field for any extended period of time. We've learned over the years. 

But there was a day when visitors were not always particularly helpful to those on the field. The visitor might come with a savior complex, expecting to be provided with American-level standards of comfort and provision, creating a lot of extra work for the missionary or hosts, distracting from their work. Rather than helping, the mission team had to interrupt their work to take care of individuals who were largely oblivious to their own assumptions and needs.

I heard a story in recent years of an important person who went to engage a work in another country. Rather than stay onsite in the facilities of those with whom he was working, he insisted on staying in a location more comfortable for him at some significant remove from the site. Although I think we have gotten much better, I fear this sort of mindset and unwillingness to live as those whom we are allegedly serving was all too common in an earlier day. I believe nationals in other countries would readily confirm this impression, especially in earlier days.

When I was in Africa for a few months in the 90s, I heard stories of missionaries who engaged little with the people they were serving. Everything about them said, "I am superior to you, and you are blessed to have me here to help you." Certainly not all missionaries were that way. As I have said, I think we have become a lot more reflective about these dynamics in the last fifty years. 

Hopefully, we have moved well beyond being "unitary" and "binary" thinkers in our missions work. A unitary thinker doesn't even know they have hidden assumptions. I suspect many of the early missionaries fell in this category. Meanwhile, a binary thinker devalues or demonizes other ways of thinking and other practices. 

Later in the book, we will try to move toward greater self-awareness and a sense that there is often a spectrum of potential perspectives rather than just two options. Hopefully, we can move toward what we might call "incarnational" thinking, which is contextualized thinking. The word incarnation of course alludes to the fact that Jesus came to earth and took on our flesh (John 1:14). He did not share the gospel as a superior angel standing on the outside. He became one of us. He lived among us. He was one of us.

9. The 1970s saw an increasing emphasis on "contextualization" in missions. Contextualization is when you distinguish between the core of the Christian gospel and the form the gospel takes in a particular context. As you would expect, there was significant opposition to the concept. For example, the 1974 Lausanne Conference affirmed contextualization as an important missionary principle amid strong debate.

When we cannot tell the difference between our culture and the gospel, contextualization can feel like moral compromise. We think someone is "taking away" from Scripture when what they are really trying to do is translate it for another context. If women in my Christian culture wear their hair up in buns, then I end up instructing the women in other places to wear their hair up in buns.

In the mid-1900s, my church had a work among Native Americans in South Dakota, an "Indian school." I have no doubt but that the school did much good. However, I also suspect that there was a good deal of confusion about what was the missionary's culture and what was the core gospel. The native American students inevitably ended up looking like the missionaries in how they dressed, buns and all.

In the 1990s, my church decided that these native American believers should decide for themselves what the forms of Christian faith looked like in their context. Unaware of ourselves, we as outsiders were likely to mix our customs with the gospel, unable to tell the difference. The church concluded that the native American leaders were in a much better position to apply or "contextualize" the gospel in their culture.

Imagine the alarm when the native Americans incorporated some native dances into their district conference. Dancing was prohibited in the American Christian culture of the missionaries. From an outsider perspective, some said, "Dancing was part of Indian religion. You are being 'syncretistic' when you dance -- especially in your Christian worship." [5] 

The native American Christians responded. "You didn't understand. Everything was a part of our religion. You didn't understand because, in your culture, religion is compartmentalized. It is one area among many areas of your life. Dancing was not intrinsically part of our former religion any more than anything else. It is a part of our culture that you assumed was distinctively religious."

In the last two decades, Christianity has become more concentrated in the southern hemisphere. [6] The countries of the rest of the world have started to send missionaries to us. The United Methodist Church was not able to change its understanding of marriage largely because of the voice of its members from the global south. The American church largely has not woken up to realize that the shape of future Christianity is less and less in our hands. It is only the fact that we have more money that is maintaining more influence at present. 

One day we may wake up and find that the "inferior" Christians of the rest of the world have become the Christian leaders of the world. The binary thinkers among us will inevitably see them as corrupting the gospel, of mixing their culture with absolute truth. And it is inevitable that they will mix their culture with the gospel. What we should realize is that we have also been doing this all along.

10. This chapter is about moving beyond unitary and binary thinking in ethics. In chapter 8, we will return to this subject and explore more deeply the spectrum of approaches to ethics. I will argue that what is distinctively Christian are the core values and the priorities of ethics. But most ethical approaches have a place somewhere in the constellation of our decisions.

This is what I sometimes call "spectrum" thinking. We move beyond thinking there are only two approaches -- and especially beyond not even knowing we have an approach. We become more fully aware of our assumptions.

The idea that context affects how we apply ethical principles seems beyond question to me. There are those who would say that the idea of "abstracted principles" is Western. So be it. It works as a way of analyzing ethics. We can use the paradigm as a heuristic method without insisting it is the only right one. The end result in how we live and think broadly is the goal.

In chapter 8, we will explore more deeply the fact that the Bible itself gives us incarnated ethics. It is unreflective to read the Bible as words that are in a bubble. Every word of the Bible made sense to its authors and audiences in their worlds. That means these words were incarnated in culture too. It's a game changer of a paradigm shift. We will investigate this concept further soon enough.

For the moment, we are taking the first step toward ethical self-awareness. Is it possible that some of my approach to right and wrong is influenced by the culture around me? I'm not just referring to secular culture but to the Christian culture around me.

11. One issue my own church has debated now for several decades is that of drinking in moderation. In the 1800s and 1900s, there was a denial that the Bible even allowed for drinking fermented alcohol. Jesus was thought to turn the water into grape juice or the wine was thought to be so diluted that it was for all intents and purposes non-alcoholic. Meanwhile, all people who drink were villified. Many still hold these positions.

However, there has been a move toward reflectivity. I would say that, in my church today, most would acknowledge that Jesus drank fermented alcohol (Luke 7:33-34). The very fact that Nazirites were singled out for not drinking alcohol suggests that the vast majority of Israelites did drink.

Accordingly, the debate has largely shifted away from a biblical argument to a contextualization one. In our context, is our best Christian witness one in which we abstain from alcohol or one in which we drink? Having lived in England and Germany for several years, at some point I came to the realization that this is largely a matter of a certain American Christian culture. European Christians drink all the time without getting drunk or hindering their witness. 

But unreflectiveness abounds on every side in this debate. There are still those who seem largely unaware of the assumptions and practices of biblical times. Alarmed by the "moral decline" of the church, they can only see the forces arguing to allow moderate drinking as forces of moral compromise. A number of counter-arguments are given that are only convincing to the already convinced, as we might predict.

Then there is the ethical unreflectiveness of the "other side." They unreflectively assume that if something was allowed in biblical times, then it must be allowed in our times. Indeed, this was a core unreflective assumption of the Protestant Reformation. One of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England reads in part, "Whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man."

Many Protestants take this sentiment to mean that if the Bible doesn't specifically forbid it, we can't forbid it. But this approach is oblivous to the principle of contextualization. "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if the meaning is different today," I have pointed out. [7] The Bible was written to cultures at particular times and places. It is enculturated thinking and practices as well, incarnated principles, if you would.

Accordingly, the following principle is also true. We may not be able to do some of the things they were able to do in biblical times because the meaning is different today. It is possible that not drinking is more appropriate for Christians in some cultures even though it is allowed in Scripture. As it turns out, there are individuals on "both sides" of this issue that have unexamined assumptions they have absorbed from their culture. 

Those who see that drinking was allowed in Scripture often do not realize that the Bible was contextual and inevitably must be recontextualized in our times and places. There is no way around it. If we deny it, we will inevitably misapply Scripture.

[5] Syncretism is when you mix elements of other religions into your religion.

[6] Cf. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. 3rd ed. (Oxford University, 2011).

[7] Kenneth Schenck, Jesus Is Lord: An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Slingshot, 2008).

2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics

I have been formulating my personal philosophy as a journey. The first chapter was on "Unexamined Assumptions." Here is that chapter in 2 Parts: part 1 and part 2. Chapter 2 continues the journey into ethics. 
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1. Philosophy is about ultimate things and the answers to ultimate questions. It stands alongside all other fields of inquiry and asks, "What is the scientist really doing?" "What is the historian really doing?" Or the artist or the psychologist. 

Or the minister and priest. This latter "meta" inquiry is of course very sensitive. [1] Should anyone be allowed to ask questions about God? Or does asking questions about God put us in a seat of authority we shouldn't have as mere humans?

The Bible allows questions. We hear them in the prophets. "How long, oh Lord?" (Hab. 1:2). The psalmists ask this question repeatedly. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus cries out from the cross, quoting Psalm 22:1. "Why do the nations rage?" (Ps. 2:1

You can ask questions with different attitudes, though. You can ask questions truly seeking answers. You can ask questions in pursuit of faith. And you can ask questions in pursuit of doubt. You can ask questions about God as if you are in the driver's seat. And you can ask questions about God because you just don't know. 

I have already advocated the long-standing Christian approach known as "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectam). We start with the faith we have and go from there. We do so as genuine seekers because we don't want to get it wrong.

The fact that we inevitably start off with assumptions that are wrong is no offense to God. It is in large part a consequence of the Fall. Seeking the truth is thus ideally a quest for God -- the real God rather than the one of our potentially false assumptions. God believes what is truly true. Our inevitable starting point is to have some beliefs that are not true. Thus, rightly done, philosophy is a quest for the thoughts of God amid the inevitable thoughts of man.

Not everyone of course is equally suited for this task. Some of us are gifted in the area of abstract thought. Others may be more easily led astray in the world of thought. I accept that it may be appropriate for some not to question but to trust those they respect. I would only urge that it be done with humility, as the quest must also be done.

Yet our quest will ultimately lead to humility for those who love the quest, love ideas, and are gifted at such "meta-thinking." If the quest ends in arrogance, we have not done it right. There are many of us who have not done it right.

2. I want to start our quest to move beyond binary thinking with ethics. I'm sure you have heard the word. Let's start with a working definition. Ethics is about what is right and wrong. As we will see, even that definition is unreflective, but it helps us get the ball rolling. It helps us start the journey.

Like all ultimate matters, the question of ethics is sensitive. Our sense of right and wrong is deeply ingrained on our psyche. It's something we generally don't question -- or at least there is a lot of pressure not to question our sense of right and wrong. By the time we reach adulthood, we likely have a host of "mores" or "customs" built in.

There is a machine of control in place to keep us in line, especially if we grow up in a particular religion. In many cultures, the instrument is honor and shame. Deep values are implanted in the heart of a child's mind so that they want to seek honor and avoid shame. In Western culture, we try to instill a desire to avoid guilt. We want that angel on their shoulder (Freud's superego) so that they will resist the devil on the other one (Freud's id).

In evangelical circles, we have Sunday Schools to instill these core values. We want to imprint our way of life into our children at a young age. "Train up a child in the way they should go" (Prov. 22:6). With good intentions, we are trying to "indoctrinate" them. And, I don't think it's crazy to say that the Bible often serves as a tool of control to keep us in line.

The ironic thing, of course, is that the Bible often raises questions about our cultural ethics. My seventh and eighth grade Sunday School class has been working through Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel. The young people ask many difficult ethical questions every week. Why was Jael considered good when she drives a tent peg through a man's head? Was Rahab right to lie? Did Jephthah really sacrifice his daughter?

3. I remember when I realized that the Bible doesn't outright condemn polygamy. Don't get me wrong. I think it is headed in that direction, and I fully affirm monogamous marriage as God's ideal. But this is one area where I had this moment of realization about my own unexamined assumptions about what the Bible means.

Jacob of course has two wives and two concubines. Not a word of condemnation is given. David was a man after God's own heart and yet had many wives. A key moment in my quest to know the Bible was when I realized that Deuteronomy 21:15-17 assumes that a man might have more than one wife. The passage says nothing about the man needing to get his life in order and only have one wife. It assumes that polygamy was a normal practice in Israel.

What about Genesis 2:24 -- a man becomes one flesh with his wife? I had always assumed this was one man and one woman. But a man becomes one flesh with every woman he has sex with (1 Cor. 6:16). He becomes one flesh with a prostitute, for example. (By the way, this is not the same as marriage. Paul would never say that such a man had to marry the prostitute.)

In short, a polygamous man in the Old Testament became one flesh with each of his wives. Imagine my surprise when it occurred to me that Boaz might already have had a wife or two when he married Ruth. Nothing in the story precludes that possibility. It may actually be more likely than not.

Mind blown! I had an unexamined assumption about what the text was saying -- an assumption that I think is right in terms of how we should live and what God's ideal is for us. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't see that I had hidden assumptions. My thinking was "unitary," using a term I coined in the first chapter.

4. What I'm getting at is that the Bible often isn't as entirely the source of what we say is right and wrong as we think. That doesn't mean our values are wrong. It may just mean that we are unreflective about the full basis for those values and where they come from.

When I taught New Testament, I had the students write a final paper in which they took a position on a contemporary issue based on the teaching of the New Testament. But I always warned them. It's best to pick an issue that the New Testament directly addresses. I made this warning because I often would get papers on abortion with lots of statistics and moral sentiments but not a single verse from the Bible.

It seems clear to me that our position on abortion is broadly based on the ethical principle that it is wrong to kill, but there is almost nothing in the Bible itself that directly addresses the topic. Almost every Scripture I have heard quoted involves unexamined assumptions that aren't clearly in the texts coupled with logical fallacies. 

In other words, there is a significant amount of theological glue involved in this position of the highest importance to us. If you set out the logic of our position, there are premises that come from outside the text. That doesn't make our position wrong, but it does show that our position is actually as much or more theology and philosophy as Bible.

We are on a journey of unexamined assumptions because we want to know what God thinks. A key realization on that quest is that some of what we say is the Bible is actually our assumptions rather than the Bible itself. The Bible can become merely symbolic. It can become a white board of culture and a power tool to keep our group under control. It can become a bannerhead, a placard. But if we look inside, sometimes we may not hear what we want to hear if we truly listen.

5. There is a delightful story in the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote in the 400s BC. [2] In the story, king Darius asks two groups of individuals what their practices were in relation to their parents when they die. The Greeks respond that they burn their bodies on a funeral pyre (Star Wars style).

The other group, the Callatians, were horrified. They thought such practices were abhorrent. "What then do you do?" Darius asks. "Why we eat our dead parents of course."

At this point, Herodotus draws a conclusion. "Custom is king over all." In other words, he draws a relativist conclusion and what we now call "cultural relativism." In this view, right and wrong entirely depends on where you grew up. 

Indeed, I was initially puzzled by the fact that the Greek word ethos and the Latin word mos -- from which we get the words ethics and morals -- initially meant "customs" or "habits." This made no sense to me initially because "everyone knows" that morality is about absolutes. It's about what is universally right and wrong everywhere in all times and places.

More on absolutes in a moment. Certainly most people in most cultures do not consider their values to be "cultural." They think they're just plain right. 

In Western culture, Herodotus is sometimes called the "father of history" because he went beyond simply repeating his people's traditions or assuming the Greeks were always in the right. He pursued source material and tried to be more even-handed in his treatment of the evidence. He was not a historian in the modern sense, but he is often seen as a benchmark. 

Indeed, the fact that he didn't privilege the Greeks led Plutarch to call him the "father of lies." Plutarch used his intellect to reinforce Greek cultural assumptions and values. In his own way, Herodotus began to use his intellect to ask the question of what is actually true -- which goes beyond the Greeks. The real truth is what God thinks, and God is bigger than any human tribe.

6. By the end of our journey, I hope to end with a justification of definite rights and wrongs. But because we start off with unexamined assumptions -- blind spots -- we can live with a little disequilbration for a moment. Inevitably, our views on right and wrong do have a lot to do with where we are born. And even as Christians, the morals we see in the biblical texts are deeply influenced by our culture.

In philosophy, I often shared a list of fascinating differences between different cultures. I've mentioned the polygamy of many cultures and the fact that the Callatians ate their dead parents. Obviously, there have been cannabalistic cultures that eat their enemies as well. [3] In certain Inuit cultures, the elderly might self-sacrifice (or be left behind to starve) because of the scarcity of resources... without it being considered wrong.

The ancient Spartans encouraged their young people to learn how to steal as a valuable skill. Some Greeks valued quasi-sexual relationships between male mentors and the young men they mentored. In ancient Egypt, a man's family (including pets) were often buried alive with the dead husband. 

Even into modern times, the practice of suttee in India burned the live widow of a dead husband on the same funeral pyre as him. Female circumcision continues in Africa to this day. In Japan up until recent times, the honorable thing for a woman to do even if she were merely accused of infidelity was to commit suicide. [4]

7. If we start off without even knowing that other cultures have different values (unitary thinking), we are typically repulsed when we encounter these practices of other cultures -- just as they are repulsed by our practices. The Callatians are repulsed by the Greeks, and the Greeks are repulsed by the Callatians. As I mentioned, we will try soon enough to ground ethics on something broader than culture.

But our initial reaction is often binary thinking. My culture's right. Yours is wrong. We bring in the Bible often without reading it. "The Bible tells me so." A whole mechanism of rhetoric developed in evangelical circles in the mid-twentieth century to combat relativism.

The other extreme is moral nihilism, a complete rejection of right and wrong to begin with. As we will see, this is actually something different from relativism. Relativism actually does believe in right and wrong -- it just believes it's relative. 

Moral nihilism rejects the existence of right and wrong altogether. Think Nietzsche. Think Diogenes, the ancient founder of the Cynics. He pooped and had sex in public to argue that the rules against such things were just made up by society. We will dive into such territory later in the book. For now, we are looking at the movement from unitary to binary thinking.

[1] The word meta in Greek means "after." In this context, we might say it means "alongside of." A "meta" discipline stands alongside that discipline and asks what it is doing, what its assumptions are. Philosophy itself has internal "meta" disciplines. It has "meta" physics and epistemology, which are the meta-disciplines to the meta-disciplines.

We can never escape this loop. Ultimately, all thinking rests on fundamental assumptions that cannot be escaped.

[2] This story is found in Herodotus, Histories 3.38.

[3] The Callatians weren't cannibals, by the way. I wonder if they thought this practice actually preserved their parents' heritage within them.

[4] You can see how much energy human cultures exert trying to control women. This speaks to their great potential power in society. Societies develop rules to control it. Part of the cultural dynamics in America in the moment is to try to put the genie of the empowered woman back into the bottle.

Wesleyan Philosophy 5c -- Gender and Sexual Ethics, Part 2

Last week I attempted to sketch out the general contours of a biblically-based, Wesleyan sense of sexual ethics. This week we dive into even deeper waters. Here are some reflections as part of the ongoing conversation of the church. I am not the church, just a voice in the choir.

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Homosexuality
Truth versus Relationships
I start here where I started the previous post on sexual ethics. There is a distinction between truths regarding LGBTQ questions and our relationships with individuals. This dynamic can cut both ways. 

If something is true, the truth does not change if it troubles someone or even if it causes them problems. I may not like that I am going to go splat when I fall off a tall building, but the concrete doesn't care. There is a distinction between truth and the impact of that truth (no pun intended). Similarly, I can be right on a truth and morally wrong in how I treat others in relation to that truth. It is not Christ-like to berate, beat up, oppress, or mock someone who has a different conclusion than I do or who struggles with something I don't struggle with. There are individuals who love God and the Bible who have sincerely come to differing biblical conclusions. The truth is never an excuse for hate.

The former president of a Wesleyan college used to say that the college "welcomed" gay students while not "affirming" a homosexual lifestyle ("welcoming but not affirming"). Although I believe this is the Wesleyan position, that president understandably got hit from both sides. One side objected to the idea of welcoming sin, while she meant welcoming people. The other side objected to not affirming people, while she meant not affirming sin.

In the end, it is unclear whether most evangelical colleges could actually be welcoming to individuals who are attracted to the same sex. Even if an administration could walk that fine line of welcoming but not affirming, even if you could get all the faculty and staff to walk that fine line, it is unclear that you could get all the students on campus to do so. This is a dilemma for Wesleyan schools. I suspect that we are generally not pleasant environments for Christian young people who are processing these issues at the same time that we presumably want to be.

Activity versus Orientation
We all operate with "paradigms" of which we are generally not aware until we encounter others who operate with different ones. A recent paradigm of "Western" culture is to think of homosexuality in terms of an "orientation." The paradigm divides people into those who are attracted to the same sex ("homosexual") and those who are attracted to the opposite sex ("heterosexual"). I might add that in the 1950s, the psychologist Alfred Kinsey developed a scale from 0 to 6, plotting desire from purely heterosexual to purely homosexual in orientation.

In the last couple of decades, the types have multiplied. A "bisexual" is someone who can experience attraction to both sexes. Then a person may be "transgendered." For example, a biological female may want to identify as a male while being attracted to either males or females. The acronym LGBTQIA+ stands for:

• Lesbian (female attracted to female)
• Gay (older term for someone attracted to the same sex)
• Bisexual (attracted to both sexes)
• Transgender (identifying with a different gender than one's biological sex)
• Queer (generally, different from traditional heterosexual sexuality, not straightforwardly "cisgender" or heterosexual)
• Intersex (someone whose body has both male and female sexual features)
• Asexual (someone who does not really have sexual drives) 
• + (something else)

Suffice it to say, none of these are categories with which the biblical texts operate. Even a hundred years ago, the terms homosexual or gay were not used in these ways in common parlance. A "sodomite" was a pejorative reference to someone who engaged in male homosexual sex. There was really no clear category for a person who was tempted by the same sex but never demonstrated or acted on those desires in any way. 

Similarly, the seven biblical passages that relate directly to homosexual sex seem pretty clearly to be about the act of sex rather than some orientation in the modern sense. Genesis 19 is about an attempted act of rape at Sodom, to which Jude 7 also refers. It would be anachronistic to think of these men as homosexuals in the modern sense. Ancient readers would likely have assumed they had wives and children. They seem like the men of Benjamin in Judges 19 who, after being denied access to do violence to the priest, go on to rape his concubine to death. 

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are about men lying with men as men lie with women. Romans 1:26-27 is about the "use" of the same sex instead of the opposite sex--the only text in the Bible that mentions female homosexual sex. All these passages are about homosexual acts. The "passions" of Romans 1:26 are not temptations but passions expressed in sex acts. James 1:15 indicates that temptation itself in general is not yet sin, which is how Jesus could be tempted without sinning.

The word used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 (arsenokoites) may actually have been coined from Leviticus, although we have no way to know for certain. It appears for the first time in all Greek literature in 1 Corinthians. Its etymology suggests it refers to "male-bedders." The parallel term in 1 Corinthians 6:9 means "soft." A reasonable hypothesis is that arsenokoites refers to the active role in male homosexual sex and malakos to the passive role. This is presumably why the NIV1984 translated malakos as "male prostitute." In the end, we don't really have enough context or background evidence to say for certain what these terms meant exactly. These are educated guesses.

The Bible thus does not condemn someone who would discipline their thoughts by the power of the Holy Spirit (like a heterosexual must) and who would not act on homosexual temptation mentally or physically. It indicts the homosexual act. Matthew 5:28 presumably would apply not only to heterosexual lust but homosexual lust as well. Wesley Hill is a good example of a Bible-believing Christian who is tempted by the same-sex but is committed neither to lust in his heart nor sin with his body. [1]

These seven passages inevitably leave us with many questions of context. Where was homosexual sex practiced in the ancient world? Was prostitution normally involved? Were pagan temples or gods typically involved? Were those who engaged in such sex normally married? These verses took their precise meaning and connotations from a world about which we do not have complete knowledge. [2]

The Core Principle
Some would argue in effect that there are "hidden variables" in the Bible's indictment of same-sex, context that is not clear in the words removed from their background in history. Some argue that these texts are about same-sex rape or perhaps temple prostitution relating to another god. Some argue that these instances of same-sex prohibition assume that adultery was taking place in the act.  

However, if we assume that there is no hidden context, the core underlying principle against homosexual sex in Scripture would seem to be that it is not "the natural use" of men and women's bodies, as Romans 1:26-27 puts it. In effect, human bodies are designed to function in a heterosexual way. The implicit claim would seem to be that humanity is most fulfilled and thrives the most when it acts sexually in accordance with how its bodies were created. Heterosexual sex can fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply. It has provided social stability in history by containing sex within marriage and commiment. Homosexual sex would thus reflect a world out of order with its design.

I believe it is possible to abstract a Levitical, priestly "theology of kinds" from Leviticus. The world of clean and unclean things in Leviticus is a world of certain "boxes." Mary Douglas once analyzed the Levitical food laws along these lines. [3] Why are things in the sea without fins and scales unclean (Lev. 11:9-10)? Why are things that go on their belly on the land unclean? 

Her answer in part was that these things do not fit their kind. As she put it, "Dirt is matter out of place." It's ok in the yard but not on the carpet.

We see this theology in Genesis 1, which has sometimes been seen as a priestly introduction to the Pentateuch. God creates all the entities of Genesis 1 "according to its kind" (e.g., Gen. 1:11, 21, 24). The birds that are prohibited also seem to be of the predatory kind or the kind that eat already dead prey (Lev. 11:13-19). Some features of health may be going on here, but it seems that much more than health is going on. [4]

So when we look at the prohibition against male-male sex in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, it is quite possible that something similar is going on at least in part. In these situations, men are not joining with the right kind. The New Testament seems in continuity with this underlying thought. Jude 7 may have angelic "flesh" in mind when it speaks of going after "different flesh," but it could also mean flesh different from its appropriate kind. Paul says something similar in Romans 1:26-27. Both women and men exchange the "natural use" of the other sex. [5] 

The inner logic of Leviticus thus may in part be analogous to not wearing clothing of mixed thread or sowing more than one kind of seed in the same field or breeding two different kinds of animals (19:19). However, the word abomination in 20:13 suggests an intensity that goes beyond these other practices that made something unclean. Similarly, the punishment is death, much more severe than your run of the mill unclean. Admittedly, we do not have enough context to know the full dynamics of what is going on here.

The sense of a world out of its intention seems clear also in Romans 1. This passage, probably drawing on the book of Wisdom 13-14, gives a sequence where 1) failure to recognize God as God (1:20-21) leads to 2) idolatry, mistaking idols for the real God (1:23), which devolves into 3) sexual immorality (1:24) and eventually 4) all manner of wickedness (1:28-31). Gentile humanity seems especially in view. Because (Gentile) humanity did not glorify God as God, God let go. God "gives them up" (1:24) and the world spirals out of control.

In this sequence, homosexual sex is an illustration of what happens when the world is out of order, beginning with a failure to recognize God as the all-powerful Creator. In the thought flow of Romans, Paul is setting up a sting operation. Some Jews might love his argument here. They might be thinking, "Yeah, God is going to fry those wicked Gentiles." But he turns the tables in Romans 2. Jews have sinned too. They are no better than Gentile sinners. In effect, "all have sinned and are lacking the glory of God" (3:23).

The inner logic again would seem to be that homosexual sex is an illustration of a world that is out of order. Theologically, this is presumably a world where the love of God and neighbor are not optimized individually or societally.

Transgenderism
The last five years have brought to the fore questions of individuals who do not identify with their biological sex. A gay man may still identify as a male. A lesbian female may still identify as a female. What would we do if a biological male identifies as a female but is still attracted to females? What would we do if a biological female identifies as a male but is still attracted to males? 

At this point we have entered waters that seem almost completely foreign to anything substantially addressed in Scripture. There is a verse, Deuteronomy 22:5--"The articles of a man will not be upon a woman and a man will not wear the garment of a woman, for an abomination to the LORD your God is everyone doing these things." When I was a boy, people used this verse to say that women should not wear anything but dresses and skirts--no slacks or pants because these things "pertained to a man."

Verses like these are obscure one day, then they become focal. This is a function of paradigm shifts. This verse was very significant in my worldview when I was 17. Should I should date a girl that wore jeans? I almost broke up with a girl for my conscience's sake until she removed the issue by only wearing skirts and dresses. Let's just say she eventually (and wisely) broke up with me.

Then the church largely ignored this verse in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, almost making fun of the old holiness people who made a big deal out of an obscure verse in the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. Now it is once again a central verse in our paradigm because of the issue of transgenderism. We should be self-reflective of how easily we make these shifts without a thought. This is how paradigms work. [6]

In my brief memory, there have always been individuals on the edges of the church who have seemed "not to identify" with their biological sex. I remember in particular from time to time a biological male or two who would come to church or camp meeting in woman's clothing. My sense is that people treated them kindly, not quite knowing what to do. I suspect the fact that they were out of the norm was quite obvious to them.

Someone once confided in me that they did not feel comfortable as a man. Their impulse was to begin dressing and living as a woman. The problem is that this person was married and had children. My advice to him was that his love and commitment to his family was more important than what might make him feel most natural, that it would be selfish for him to throw them away for his own sense of self-satisfaction. After all, he was not a bad husband or father.

I do not claim to be inerrant on that advice, although it makes sense to me within my overall sense of love of neighbor over love of self. I frankly do not understand the psychology of transgender individuals. 

"Intersexuality" seems to have an anatomical component. Such individuals would have likely been considered unclean in the Old Testament (cf. Deut. 23:1), but Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch presumably declares them full participants of the church. Modern science has made possible procedures to remove anatomical ambiguity. "Let each be fully convinced in their own mind" (Rom. 14:5). 

When one's anatomy is not ambiguous, the question of using modern science to change one's sex seems much more serious. I'll confess that this impulse does not seem healthy to me at all. The Wesleyan Church does not consider such procedures appropriate.

If Scripture did more explicitly address these issues, I suspect it would maintain the same train of thought it seems to have in relation to homosexual sex. I suspect it would argue from the "kinds" that correspond to our biological sex. When Scripture is not explicit, our normal instruction is for us to "work out y'alls salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12). The Wesleyan Church has worked out its salvation by deeming transgenderism contrary to God's ideal for human identity and relationships. This position seems to be consistent with our stance on homosexual practice.

God will do what is right. God will sort out the "oughts." My commitment is to love individuals I do not understand. The idea of declaring pronouns is unfamiliar to me. I am simply resolved to be kind to others. God has it all figured out.

[1] Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015).

[2] Some historians have concluded that King James may have engaged in such relationships with two men at his court, even though he had a wife and children.

[3] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge, 1966).

[4] We naturally seize on a possible health dimension because it fits our modern worldview better.

[5] Paul makes this argument from what seems "natural" in 1 Corinthians 11:14 when he indicates that nature teaches that a man should not have short hair. There thus seems to be a blurring in his language between what we think of as natural and what is also a matter of what may have cultural elements.

[6] On the issue of women in leadership and ministry, 1 Timothy 2:12 is a verse that is actually quite obscure, and yet it is huge in the word cloud of current debates, out of proportion to its place in the whole counsel of Scripture.

10. Christian Ethics

10.1 Rule of Faith

• Matthew 22:3-40 sums up the entire ethic of Scripture--Love God and love neighbor. 
• The love command is an absolute. There are no exceptions.
• The love of neighbor never contradicts love of God. That is to say, there are never exceptions made to the love of neighbor in order to love God. Love of neighbor is the primary way in which love of God manifests itself.
• To "love neighbor as self" implies a healthy self-respect as someone made in the image of God.
• Biblical ethics, like biblical theology, is a function of the Bible as a whole, not of individual verses. Individual verses are contextual, more likely to be ambiguous, and stand in a flow of revelation getting more and more precise. Biblical theology and ethics look to the overall voice of Scripture.

10.2 Love God

• God is the ultimate telos of all things. "The chief end of man is to glorify God and serve him forever" (Westminster Confession). "For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever!" (Rom. 11:36).
• 1 Cor.  10:31 - Do everything to the glory of God.
• Col. 3:17 - Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.
• Rom. 14:7-8 - Whether we live or die... we are the Lord's
• We must have no other gods before him (1st commandment - Deut. 5:6-8, 11)
• We must not make any idols, any substitutes for him, any competition with him, any inferior conception of him (such as mistaking the Bible which gives witness to him for him).
• We show the love of God by loving one another (1 John 5:3; John 15:12).
• Are there areas of loving God beyond love of neighbor? Perhaps - love of God's creation, for example.
• Are there "cause God said so" commands, without any purpose other than to test our obedience? Structures of the family? Sexual expressions? It would seem more likely that any expectation of God along these lines is a manifestation in some way of his love for his people and his creation.
• Justice does not contradict God's love. Justice is 1) redemptive and restorative, 2) protective of his people or the world, or 3) a final abandonment of that which is no longer redeemable.
• Note that the New Testament does not retain the Sabbath command for Gentiles (Rom. 14:5; Col. 2:16). 

10.3 Love Neighbor

• The love command is the pervasive ethic of the New Testament. It is the sum of the Law in the Gospels (Matt. 22:39-40; Mark 12:29-31; Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8; 1 John 4:7-8).
• Matt. 5 indicates how the love command is the filter for all the other laws of the Old Testament. The authority of Scripture flows through this command. Some commands become deeper as a result--hatred becomes murder, lust becomes adultery, divorce becomes adultery. Others become irrelevant--truth-telling doesn't need vows. Still others fall away--don't "eye for an eye."
• Parable of Good Samaritan--we are to love those we most want to hate. Matt. 5:43-48 - love your enemy.
• Love is not a feeling. It is not liking someone. Is long term, not just short term. Sometimes "must be tough." Should be corporate and structural as much as we can bring it about, not merely individual.
• Do not kill... in fact do not hate (Matt. 5:21-22; 1 John 3:15-17)
• What about war? capital punishment? self-defense? euthanasia? suicide? abortion?
• Do not commit adultery... in fact don't fantasize (Matt. 5:27-30). Divorce is legal adultery (Matt. 5:31-32).
• Sexual issues - pre-marital sex (undermines stability of family/society?), homosexual sex (undermines the stability of the family/society?), post-marital sex (undermines the stability of the family/society?) - Matt. 19:5-6
• Do not steal... Exod. 22:1; Eph. 4:28 -- stealing undermines trust, threatens survival and thriving. This is however far from an endorsement of unregulated capitalism.
• The value of work - Gen. 1:28; 2 Thess. 3:10-12
• Everything belongs to the Lord - Ps. 50:12; Hag. 2:8; Mal. 3:8-10
• When we have excess - 2 Cor. 8:9, 13-14; 9:6-7; against hording Luke 12:15-21; Acts 2:44-45; James 1, 2, 4, 5
• Be a truth-teller - don't lie in court (9th commandment), Eph. 4:25; Matt. 5:33-37

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel
Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ
Chapter 6: Salvation
Chapter 7: The Holy Spirit
Chapter 8: The Church
Chapter 9: Eschatology

Seminary PL14: Leadership Pitfalls

Before I move to Church Management, I should fill in a gap in the "Leadership in General" section (see at the bottom): Leadership Pitfalls.

I've been doing a series called "Seminary in a Nutshell" for about seven months now. First I did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the fourteenth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader, including an eleven post stretch on strategic planning (see at the bottom).
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A number of weaknesses can tank a leader, if a leader cannot manage or eliminate them. I've divided them into two categories: 1) moral problems and 2) personality weaknesses.

Moral Issues
1. Although some of what I am calling personality issues are also moral issues, I want to treat in this section questions of morality that might not necessarily come on the radar of a secular leader.

For example, having an affair is not necessarily considered a leadership failure in the secular world, but it clearly is a leadership failure in the church. Some balk at the idea that a pastor should be a moral example, but the apostle Paul didn't. In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Philippians 3:17, and 2 Thessalonians 3:7, Paul tells three different congregations to follow his example. 1 Timothy 4:12 tells Timothy to set an example for his church "in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity."

True, God expects all Christians to live up to these standards, but that is no excuse for the pastor to consider him or herself off the hook. The standard is the same for pastor and congregation, but the consequences of moral failure are multiplied when the pastor fails. And when the pastor succeeds at being a moral example, the positive impact is greater as well.

Can a pastor be "successful" in ministry and yet secretly be a moral failure? Certainly a pastor's ministry can seem to succeed outwardly for a time, perhaps even for a long time. What I mean is that many people can become believers, the number of people in the congregation can increase dramatically, peoples lives can be changed for the better. God's mission can multiply greatly even under a leader who secretly is morally bankrupt.
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Usually there is a crash. It may not happen immediately. Perhaps there are some who have gone their whole ministry without it coming out. But usually the moral bankruptcy eventually leads to a crash, and what a great crash it often is.

2. But in God's eyes, the leader was always a failure. A person can get a lot of earthly credit and yet be a stranger to God. Fame means nothing to God. Worldly power means nothing to God. Money means nothing to God. The earthly markers of success mean nothing to God. A person can seem to be a great success from a human vantage point and yet be a complete failure in God's eyes. And a person can seem like a failure in human eyes and yet be greatly blessed in the kingdom of God.

As pastors, we must be moral successes for God's sake, regardless of earthly consequence. More than anything else, this means making God's mission the primary mission, not our own mission, not our own success. It means not treating people as a means to an end but treating every individual as Jesus Christ, as someone created in the image of God.

It means being careful in our marital and sexual relationships, being faithful in reality and giving no cause for gossip in perception either. Although it is not what the verse meant, we avoid the very "appearance of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22, KJV) by not creating situations where there might be doubt or misperception. We are faithful in our financial dealings and don't "steal" from the congregation. We are faithful in our truth-telling, for those who love others will be truthful to them.

3. In the Parable of the Soils, there is seed on the path that birds snatch immediately. Hopefully there are few pastors who are complete frauds, hucksters who go into ministry thinking they can make money or gather crowds to feed their egos. No doubt there have been and are some who are in it for the fame and fortune, but surely this is a very small number.

Some seed falls on rocky soil and is scorched because it doesn't have root. Again, there are probably some who wash out of ministry fairly quickly because they do not have the "root" to endure what is often a quite scorching heat of ministry.

But a major concern is the minister who is good seed in good enough soil, but the cares of life choke their ministry. Here I am especially thinking of the minister who is, for example, a "starving baker." He or she makes plenty of bread for the congregation, but they have no bread for themselves.

Time is a major issue here. A pastor needs a sabbath just like everyone else, and it can't be Sunday. Pastors need vacations just like everyone else. There is a certain pastoral personality that may think him or herself noble for overworking, the type A personality. They do not take vacation. They work every day of the week. This is not healthy and will almost certainly lead eventually to a break-down or a moral failure.

A pastor needs spiritual retreat. A pastor needs time with family. It is a far worse calamity for a family to fail than for a small stretch of a church's life to fail. Family is for life. Pastors come and go from churches. God may be first in our lives, but our family's long term health takes precedent over this week in a local church.

Personality Issues
4. Many personality issues are moral issues too, but here we get into characteristics that the secular leadership community would also recognize as potentially destructive to an organization.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins describes five levels of leadership. [1] Each level suggests a potential leadership pitfall in its contrary. The five levels are:

• Highly capable individual - demonstrates capacity
• Contributing team member - can work with others productively
• Competent manager - can organize people and resources toward a goal
• Effective leader - can inspire a vision and increase performance
• Level 5 -- combination of professional will and personal humility

So we see leadership pitfalls at every step that can translate into ministry problems. There are no doubt some individuals in ministry who simply are not equipped to be a pastor. You sometimes find them placed in tiny, dying churches where there isn't much expectation and leaders are expecting eventual death anyway.

On the other hand, autocratic leaders who do not play well with others sometimes do manage to climb into leadership positions either because no one else is willing or no one else is strong enough to oppose them or they are competent in other skills needed. There is a time for an autocrat, perhaps especially in certain times of crisis.

But in general, leaders who cannot play well with others are not good leaders. They will inevitably lack the trust of their "team," will face passive resistance and or secret conspiring. When the opportunity comes, the extent of dissatisfaction will become clear and they may be "deposed."

5. Competent management skill must be part of a growing church. Otherwise, it will peak and decline. In this day of large churches especially, management becomes more and more important. One of the most common ways to push through a phase of management crisis brought on by growth is to have a leadership team that consists of someone who is more of a leader (vision caster) and someone who is more of a manager. The "executive pastor" handles the administrative and managerial aspects of the church, freeing up the leader to create enthusiasm and movement toward goals, as well as to communicate the word in powerful ways.

But Collins' fifth level of leadership suggests that "humility" is often a characteristic of leaders who take a good institution and make them great. For one thing, people often have a negative reaction to arrogant leaders. As one Japanese proverb puts it, "The nail that stands above the rest is the first to get hit." Collins suggests that Level 5 leaders have a "compelling modesty" (27).

One possible reason modesty is a strength is because it suggests a perspective that is looking out for the organization as a whole rather than a leader who is just out for their own agenda and ambition. It suggests a leader who is counting on others to reach the goal with him or her, not just a leader who thinks he or she can reach the goal alone.

A second personality strength Collins mentions in this book is institutional will. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." There are leaders who have the will to plow through a difficult spot. They work extra, they invest extra. This is no guarantee of success. You can plow into a wall. There is again the leadership pitfall of the one who plows where no one--including their bosses--don't want them to plow. Will is not enough.

But will is a lot. There is a leadership pitfall that doesn't have the will. Where there is no will, there is no way.

6. In Collins' other books, he hints at ways in which leaders can fail under specific types of circumstances. In How the Mighty Fall, he looks at companies that were once great but then disintegrated moving forward Again, he describes five stages in their decline:

• Hubris born of success
• Undisciplined pursuit of more
• Denial of risk and peril
• Grasping for salvation
• Capitulation to irrelevance or death

Although these are institutional pitfalls and go beyond personality issues to blindspots, there is much overlap with personality issues. So over-confidence is a personality issue, as is arrogance. Institutions can become overconfident and arrogant too. Beware when you as a church or organization have experienced some success. There is no "divine right" or 'manifest destiny" when it comes to church health and thriving. You cannot rest on your past laurels.

External success can lead a church or organization to think it can do no wrong, that people will always give or want to come, that no new venture can possibly fail. The truth is rather that a "successful" church or organization may be tempted to over-reach, to over-stretch itself. Then when the winds shift, it may find itself so stretched that it plummets.

Denial is a persistent human problem. We do not like critique or push-back. We find the data that tells us what we want to hear. We assume that because our values are good, our human organization doesn't need to pay attention to material or on-the-ground realities.

7. In Great by Choice, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen look at companies that survive in chaotic and uncertain times. They give three key characteristics: a) fanatic discipline, b) productive paranoia, and c) empirical creativity, driven by what they call "Level 5 Ambition."

Level 5 ambition relates to Collins' Level 5 leadership in that it reflects a leader who is more interested in the success of the church or organization than he or she is in their own advancement. But Collins mentions the sheer strength of passion and will when it comes to getting through troubled and unexpected times. This will accompanied by fanatic discipline gets the church or organization through a tough spell.

By "empirical creativity" they mean someone who is innovative and willing to take risks, but with the data on his or her side. So it is not wild risk taking in a time of chaos, but risk-taking with more than blind intuition behind it. Indeed, it is a paranoid risk-taking. It doesn't assume everything will turn out right but is constantly looking for dangers while moving forward. It's not debilitating paranoia but "productive" paranoia.

Many of these business principles may seem foreign to the church. "Leave room for the Holy Spirit," not while dancing, but when planning. God can do more than our plans or our weaknesses.

8. I leave this section with twenty bad habits in leadership. These are personality pitfalls that will hinder your ministries and personal interrelationships. These are taken from What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.

• having to win at all costs
• always having to get your two cents worth in
• always rating others
• unending sarcasm and cutting remarks
• overuse of "but," "however," and "no"
• telling people how smart you are
• speaking when you're angry 
• unending negativity
• withholding information as a power move
• failing to give proper recognition
• taking credit you don't deserve
• making excuses
• blaming the past
• playing favorites
• not taking responsibility for your actions
• not listening
• failing to express gratitude
• punishing the messenger
• passing the buck
• that's just who I am

Come to think of it, these are problems for husbands, wives, children, friends... for all relationships, including our relationship with God.

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 15: Managing the Church

[1] His list is different from John Maxwell's, Five Levels of Leadership. Maxwell is not thinking in terms of leadership outcome (i.e., how well a company performs) but in terms of value (i.e., what virtuous leadership looks like). Maxwell's Level 5, for example, is a leader that mentors other leaders.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Gen Eds P8: How should we live as individuals?

This is my seventh philosophy post in a series called, "General Education in a Nutshell." Philosophy is the first of ten subjects to overview in this series. These are the subjects a person normally takes in college (or high school) as part of a general education (most of them also make up what is sometimes called the "liberal arts").

The first seven philosophy posts were:

• Philosophy Overview
• Philosophy of Religion
• Epistemology
• Critical Thinking
• Philosophy of Science
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of the Person

1. Ethics, along with metaphysics (what is real) and epistemology (what is truth), is one of the three ancient branches of philosophy. Its core question has to do with living in this world. How should we then live or, perhaps, what constitutes the "good life"?

Ancient philosophers focused more on what virtue itself is than on the question of what makes an individual act right or wrong, "virtue based ethics" rather than "act based ethics." They assumed there was a "highest good," a summum bonum, and that a person should orient his or her life accordingly. So the focus was more on "being" than doing. How I should act is a secondary question. What kind of person I should be is the most important.

Aristotle suggested that happiness (eudaimonia) was the greatest good because every other good was good because it ultimately led to happiness. So pleasure is good, but we like pleasure because it leads to happiness. Participating in society is good, but it is good because it leads to happiness. Contemplation of truth is good, but it is good because it leads to happiness. Of the three paths, though, Aristotle considered contemplation the highest of the paths to happiness. Aristotle also spoke of the Golden Mean, "moderation in all things."

Plato and others spoke of "four cardinal virtues," which were intrinsically good for humans to cultivate. They are wisdom (which pertains to the head), courage (which pertains to the chest), self-discipline (which pertains to the abdomen, aka temperance), and justice (which pertains to all three working in proper balance and relationship.

As good pre-moderns, Aristotle, Plato, and others used reasoning to talk about these virtues and ethics, but they didn't really offer any strong basis for each one. Wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice are values that most cultures have affirmed, and happiness seems intrinsically desirable. In the late twentieth century, Alistair MacIntyre wrote a scathing critique of modern ethical thinking, wanting to go back to the age of virtue. [1] However, he provided no real basis in argument for doing so, in effect rejecting argument as a basis for ethics.

2. Jesus' ethic and New Testament ethics in general are also virtue based. In Mark 7, Jesus says that it is not external action that stands at the center of good and evil. Rather "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts" (7:21, NASB).

Accordingly, the New Testament summarizes God's expectation for humanity in only two commands: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40).

It seems difficult for people to leave God's expectations so general. Of course we must ask, "What does it mean specifically to love one's neighbor and enemy?" The New Testament plays out these general principles in a number of different contexts. But it is impossible to anticipate every circumstance before it happens. In every generation, communities of faith must reapply these principles again to new situations. Even then, no set of rules can anticipate every possible situation (which is arguably what the Pharisees tried to do).

3. Nor can we hide behind labels like "absolutism" and "relativism." The Bible frequently points to exceptional situations. Thus while we are to submit to those in authority (Rom. 13), there are clearly instances when we must disobey the government (Acts 4). Therefore, not every moral principle was meant to be "absolute," which by definition means without exception.

Similarly, there are instances where God's will is "relative." In Romans 14 Paul says that what makes eating meat offered to idols wrong is not intrinsic to the eating, but whether an individual's conscience is clear to eat it. Personal convictions are thus instances of God-approved relativism.

In other words, while crying "absolutism" and "relativism" may seem to make Christian ethics simple, it does nothing of the sort. First you must know whether God considers a particular issue absolute or relative in the first place. For this reason, these labels are little more than slogans. They do not answer the real question, which is what the love of God and neighbor looks like in a particular situation.

4. The drive to reduce ethics to do's and don't's seems pervasive. Popular Christian ethics often reduces God's expectations for humanity to whether or not we measure up to some perfectionistic standard. Take the (incorrect) NLT translation of Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fallen short of God's glorious standard," as if God is concerned about whether we are absolutely perfect or not. [2] In popular thought, mistakes are considered a form of sin, even if they do no harm to anyone.

But the New Testament almost exclusively speaks of sin acts in terms of intentional acts. That is to say, there is almost no mention of unintentional wrongdoing in the New Testament. [3] Theologically, Christians rightly believe that there is such a thing as unintended sin, wrongs done to others unintentionally, but "unintentional sin" plays no role in New Testament theology.

Similarly, the idea that Christ had to suffer the penalty of every last sin in an almost mathematical way, a theory of atonement known as "penal substitution," is more a medieval and modern development than a biblical concept. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father graciously forgives his sinful son without anyone having to pay back his debt at all. The idea that Jesus had to suffer hell for at least a moment to satisfy some legalistic justice equation finds no support in Scripture.

So we see that less mature ethical understandings have made their way even into many Christian conceptions of God and atonement. [4] God's love comes to be something that fits within the overall context of his justice rather than his justice fitting within the overall context of his love. Sin comes to be conceptualized primarily as the violation of a perfect standard than as a matter of intention or one's "heart." [5]

Rather, God is love. His justice is usually redemptive or protective rather than punitive, and final justice is not unloving. Atonement satisfies the order of things, not least our intrinsic human sense of justice. But atonement is a matter of God's choosing, not some higher standard to which he was obligated.

5. The desire to express human ethics in terms that can be specified in detail with certainty has thus often lead to an inferior "act-based" rather than a "heart-based" ethic. There are two basic act-based approaches to ethics: duty-based ethics and consequence-based ethics.

Duty-based or deontological ethics is a right and wrong based ethics. In modern times, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is the best representative of this approach. His "categorical imperative" was an attempt to set out a rational way to decide whether an action was right or wrong. Choose as absolutely right any course of action that you rationally can argue should be a moral law. If doing the opposite in every situation would lead to disaster or contradiction, then you must not do that action in any situation.

This is embarrassingly ridiculous thinking, as most ethical thinking inevitably involves exceptions. By Kant's reckoning, all "must do" actions are absolute without exception. If something is right or wrong, then it is right or wrong categorically. His sense of how reasoning might work in such cases was so unconvincing that he tried to re-express the idea more than once. But the flaw was not in his communication of the idea. It was in the coherency of the idea.

"It basically is the Golden Rule," he finally said. The Golden Rule is to do to others what you would have them do to you. The Golden Rule is of course biblical (Matt. 7:12) and an excellent expression of God's command to love our neighbors and enemies. However, it does not seem to say anything close to what Kant was trying to say.

6. Consequentialist ethics evaluate action in terms of its consequences. What effect will this action have? We can question whether this approach should be the ultimate approach, but there is no question that a great deal of our ethical thinking does center around the consequences of our actions.

Egoist ethics is arguably a lower form of consequentialist ethics. It basically says that you should take that course of action that will most benefit you as an individual. Ayn Rand (1905-82) raised this approach to the highest level, considering self-centered action to stand at the center of moral thinking. To act altruistically--helping others at personal sacrifice--she considered immoral and evil.

More attractive is ultilitarianism, which asks what action will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is often considered the father of modern utilitarianism. In an attempt to change a world where being born into a certain family meant you were more important than others, he proposed that decisions of the state be made in accordance with what would bring the greatest pleasure to the greatest number.

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) would make some modifications to his approach. Some pleasures were more important than others. Further, there were other considerations to be made. Some courses of action should not be taken even if they bring a great deal of happiness to the majority (e.g., genocide).

We are generally taught that "the end doesn't justify the means." From a Christian perspective, that is certainly true in many cases. I cannot murder an innocent person even if they stand in the way of something that is really, really good. However, in everyday life, there is usually more than one way to reach a goal and most of them are equally ethical. This statement only applies to violating genuinely moral values to reach a goal.

And our values exist more in a hierarchy rather than all values being of equal priority. For example, being truthful is a universal moral value, but it is not likely as high a value as saving life. When Corrie Ten Boom's family lied to the Nazis about hiding Jews in their house, they did no wrong. They simply chose to keep a higher value (saving life) over a value that was slightly lower in the hierarchy (telling the truth). Or to put it in terms of virtue--they loved their neighbor rather than harming their neighbor.

7. As the existence of God and special revelation came into question during the Enlightenment, it became increasingly hard to find a natural basis for morality. David Hume (1711-76) suggested that morality was nothing more than sentiment. There was a "fact-value problem." Hume argued that it was impossible to base our values in facts.  In the twentieth century, J. L. Mackie spoke of us "inventing" right and wrong.

In the late 1800s, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) saw morality as something that "supermen" invented and then convinced broader culture to go along with. There really was no actual right or wrong. Christianity, to him, was a "slave morality," invented by the weak to stop the strong from persecuting them. It was like the person who tries to convince someone else not to punch them because you just don't hit someone with glasses.

Nietzsche thought it dangerous that the common person come to realize that "God is dead," even though Nietzsche firmly did not believe in God. But a world without God, he predicted, would be a world where the worst of atrocities would take place, because they would not fear the consequences of their actions. [6] In that regard he is sometimes considered a prophet of Hitler and the Holocaust.

8. Recently, Jonathan Haidt has categorized the moral impulses of people around the world. [7] He comes at the topic from an evolutionary and atheistic perspective, but his categories for human moral thinking nevertheless seem to capture some significant truths.

Let me rephrase the six moral categories he thinks describe human values (not prescribe, but describe):

• care for others, don't harm
• act fairly, don't cheat
• be loyal, don't betray
• respect authority, don't subvert
• honor the holy, don't defile
• fight for freedom, overthrow the tyrant.

The negatives seem to hold more power over us as moral thinkers than the positives. This is why, he would say, conservatives tend to have more political power than progressives. For example, Hillary Clinton's, "stronger together," is a fairly weak motivator next to "take America back."

Westerners today often do not have a well-developed sense of holiness and defilement. Even Christians often have different intuitions on certain moral issues because one person has a stronger sense of the sacred while another does not. Should you dress up for church? Are some sins "defiling" and thus worse than other sins?

Two people can even hold the same moral position and yet arrive at it from a different moral direction. One person believes that gay marriage is not God's plan for marriage but sees his or her presence at a gay wedding as the loving, Christian thing to do. Another person places homosexuality in the category of defilement and would see his or her presence at such a wedding as an endorsement and participation in sin. Even though both have the same position on the morality of gay marriage, they are approaching it from within differing moral categories.

9. Perhaps one of the most important insights of Haidt is that while most of us appear to use reasoning in our moral discussions, the basis for our moral impulses are usually not very rational at all. He likens our moral reasoning to a rider on an elephant, where the elephant represents our moral intuitions and the rider is our rational arguments and explanations.

The elephant generally goes where it wants to go, often in the company of other elephants. The rider can steer it a little, but not much. And the rider generally can only see in the same general direction that the elephant is already headed.

So it is with religion and politics. People pretty much believe what they want to believe. Few people actually change their minds about such things on the basis of argument or reasoning. For most people, it never mattered who the Republican or Democratic nominees for president would be. Their "elephant" was always going to vote for their party's candidate. [8] Their "rider's" job is to come up with any argument it can to support the elephant's foregone conclusion.

There is thus little of reason in religion or politics. We just play a game with ourselves to pretend like there is. [9]

Relationships stand a much better chance of changing the direction of elephants. This is why apologetics as a matter of rational argument mostly just makes the elephants who already believe feel better. Few people come to Christ through rational arguments.

Telling the "riders" of teenagers that they shouldn't have sex or teaching a set of orthodox ideas in a catechism will have little effect on someone faced with elephant-oriented forces. Ideas are the weakest of human motivators. Only the ideas that engage us on an elephant level have true power.

10. As Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit can transform our elephants. "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16, NASB). The law of the Spirit can set us free from the law of Sin and death (Rom. 8:2). "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Cor. 5:17).

Next Week: Philosophy 9: How should we live together?

Classic Reading

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
• Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
• David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
• Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
• Alistair MacIntyre, After Virtue

[1] Alistair MacIntyre, After Virtue

[2] A better paraphrase would be, "All have sinned and are lacking the glory that God intended them to have within the creation."

[3] Only Hebrews 9:7, referring to the old covenant. James 3:2 alludes to the extreme difficulty of being perfect in our use of the tongue, but it does not use the word sin in relation to this wrongdoing.

[4] Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87) set out stages of moral development, which probably should be seriously critiqued for their overly rational focus. However, as far as the rational side of moral thinking is concerned, there still seems some merit in his proposal. Stage 1 relates to moral thinking that is focused on either punishment or self-interest. This is the lowest kind of moral thinking. Stage 2 relates to a society based thinking--what pleases my group or what is the law. He then considered Stage 3 the most advanced morality--thinking in terms of a rational social contract with broader society and finally, being true to my principles (he assumed there were universal moral principles).

[5] Wesley reflects a more mature moral understanding when he defines sin "properly so called" as an action that intentionally goes against what someone knows God's expectation is. "A willful transgression of a known law of God." Of course this definition is still very "act-based."

[6] Nietzsche thus agreed with Fyodor Dostoevsky's sense that, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible." Nietzsche agreed, but unlike Dostoevsky did not believe in God.

[7] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.

[8] Ironically, the Republican "elephant" does vote for an elephant, while the Democratic "elephant" votes for a donkey. :-)

[9] One of the most powerful forces in American politics is media that feeds its elephants what its wants to hear with one sided propaganda. The older approach, which at least aimed at objectivity and a fair presentation of all sides (the "fairness doctrine"), has faced serious financial difficulties in recent times.

One of the more ingenious "rider" rationalizations is to villainize rationality itself. Experts become subversive traitors. Media that presents contrasting points of view becomes the subversive "liberal media" (ignoring that the media decrying the liberal media is usually the far more powerful media).