INTRO
In this series we will look into the distant past to see how a famous Religious movement unintentionally helped marginalize God and fragment our contemporary lives.
Over the course of 500 years, we will watch theology and money, power, science, and human creativity drift apart, then go to war with each other.
Not just because tracing this disintegration helps us understand contemporary conflicts.
Not just because of the strange beauty that can be found watching things fall apart.
And definitely not because we think some long-lost glory days held all things in perfect harmony.
We do this to give you permission
to pay attention to the deep intuition telling you the things we seek to understand and use when we do things like science and politics, economics and art, really do want to belong together, to help you see that we cannot know and use these things well if we continue to ignore their desire for belonging.
We do this to fuel an imagination for wholeness.
So for us, this peek into the distant past is not really about the past,
but a future integrated in Christ.
This time - how it became nearly impossible for us to reason together about moral issues ...
STORY
Before the Reformation, when European Christians thought through issues of right and wrong, much turned on the practice of virtue. And they had a specific way of determining just what a virtue was, and how a person could attain it.
The guiding focus was a vision of the common good, or of human flourishing that was much bigger than the individual. This larger vision was inspired by the Kingdom of God as pictured in the Christian Scriptures and idea was actually to work toward this end. A virtue then, was precisely the kinds of dispositions and habits that a person would develop if they devoted themselves to helping their community move toward that goal.
They even had a list of virtues - which was the positive inversion of what is today the more famous list of the 7 Deadly Sins. The 7 Cardinal virtues were temperance, charity, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Anyone who helped society along toward the common good, it was thought, would necessarily become a person characterized by those virtues.
This whole system, called Virtue Ethics, was adapted to a Christian context from the work of the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle.
But, in the 14th and 15th centuries, when virtue was key to the theory of ethics, it seemed many of the clerics were more interested in honing their practical expertise in the vices. And if the practice of virtue was thought to lead toward the common good, what do you think the widespread practice of vice led to for common life?
[MUSIC]
The pain and frustration caused by this moral gap between the theory and teaching of the church, and its actual practice, is precisely what Brad Gregory, in his book -- that we've used as a launching pad for this whole series -- titled, "The Unintended Reformation" argues sets up the radical shifts that would take place over the next 500 years in Western ethics and morality.
But it's not like this gap went unnoticed up until the Reformation. For the Reformation to spread, there had to be more than just frustration about the problem. For the new ideas of Luther and Calvin to gain real traction in the hearts and minds of people, there also had to be widespread frustration about the inability to find a solution to the problem.
Gregory names 3 initial attempted solutions that ultimately failed. One came from Humanists like Erasmus. They believed if people had better resources to the original texts that helped source the Christian faith, these sources would inspire a greater love for what is good. There were also the Canonists, who were experts in Church law. They -- well before Tomas Jefferson -- were the first to conceived of "natural human rights." The Canonists devised this in hopes that endowing people with rights might help protect people against the vices of others, especially those in authority. Then there was Machiavelli, who was a forerunner to those who eventually sought a way forward by attempting to abandon the Faith altogether. He drew from pagan thought in an attempt re-inject a sense of sacredness to the brute exercise of power.
But, as we said, none of these were able to fix the problem.
So the Reformers came on a different tack. They said the gap was not just a result of the failure of virtue, or lack of power or protection, but because of faulty doctrine. In reacting to the Catholic church's abuse of indulgences, which taught that virtuous action can lessen the suffering of others in the afterlife, Reformers like Luther came to view the whole problem as an either/or between works or grace, and began constructing a theology that pit their understanding of grace against the Catholic Churches' teachings on works.
So Luther looked at Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and saw something that was, quote, "Completely opposed to grace" unquote. Others followed his lead and began to argue that, if the ultimate Good is Salvation, then good works, in and of themselves, contribute nothing in helping us toward this goal.
Now, none of the Reformers were intentionally trying to do away with a shared conception of the common good. If fact, their goal was to repair public morality. But what they did, time eventually showed, was unintentionally undercut our ability to work toward a shared conception of the good.
In a way very similar to what happened with their understanding of Sola Scriptura - as we've outlined in earlier episodes - they found that when you leave the questions of just what the common good is and how we might attain it, up to the interpretation of individuals, the interpretations are legion.
So the few options we saw earlier for correcting the moral gap between belief and practice, spidered. Into a plethora. And by the end of the 17th century, no viable alternative moral community that could capture widespread admiration and serve as an example emerged.
And Ethics and religion, like politics and faith, and economics and Jesus' teachings about money, grew further and further apart.
[MUSIC]
Eventually, with all the conflict and religious and political wars, a group of thinkers who came to be part of what was called the Enlightenment said, "Hey, if religion or our allegiance to our kings can't serve as a basis for building a unified society, what if we tried centering it on human rationality?"
It's true, we do all have in common the capacity to reason. But saying, "Hey, let's all use reason" is kind of like saying, "Hey, let's all use hammers." It's not necessarily going to unify us in any important sense.
Reason is like a tool. It does help us do stuff. But it can help us do a lot of stuff. So just like someone can use a hammer to help build a house and another can use it to tear one apart, and a third person might use it as a weapon, without some shared end goal, just the fact that we're all using hammers doesn't mean we're actually working together.
Right now, both Russian and Ukrainian leaders are using reason.
So once we shifted the center of things to human reason, people got really good at chasing all kinds of conflicting goals. So the social splintering continued.
And once Enlightenment reasoning could not come to an agreement on what constitutes human nature or the common good, the one thing we did end up agreeing on was to stop striving for some conception of these things we could agree on.
This led to the altogether abandonment of Virtue Ethics. And the abandonment of the pursuit of a Common Good, unleashed us to produce and chase an infinite number goods.
And the less and less peoples' understanding of the nature of life and the world was shaped by the Christian story, the more divergent our individual goals became.
And the one thing we came to agree on as a moral imperative was that it is necessary to protect the individual's ability to chase whatever they choose. And our most shared ethical maxim became, "Do what makes you happy, so long as nobody gets hurt."
But in the conversation that follow, Julius and I begin to name some of the shortcomings and pain points of our current situation. Then we evaluate in more depth the options that have been presented, and imagine a way forward for Christians.
DISCUSSION
Julius: Thanks for listening to All Things—this is Julius and Wil, and today we're picking up and we're making the claim that during the Reformation, there's a couple of key moves: I think there's the, I think the splitting of the body and the soul, and the splits and the institutionalization of doctrinal disagreements led to a fragmentation that we feel even now, like on a personal level in our inability to truly engage with each other as a community.
Wilson: We are lonely. Thanks, Luther.
Julius: [laughs] Dang really. I know, but it— thanks, Luther. But also I think in this story, we're a little generous to, to… Luther didn't mean for it to get this bad.
Wilson: Definitely was not his intent. And it was definitely much larger than him for sure. But, but…
Julius: Totally.
Wilson: You can't come up with a… you can't tell the full story and be quippy.
Julius: Yeah, it's true. Nevertheless, so we've already kind of covered in our story, talking about stuff like the loneliness epidemic and how we're facing, just like on an unprecedented level, in some ways like just a growing experience of loneliness in our culture, especially during the pandemic, but not exclusive to just this time.
So outside of that, what does this— I guess the way that the Reformation ripples out and inhibits our ability to engage in community— how else does that look and feel like, and maybe ways that don't seem as apparent to us as like this loneliness epidemic thing.
Wilson: Right. Yeah. It's like, if we've, if we've given the bird's eye view or the centuries summary of, of the ripples and the effects.
It's like, okay, maybe… but like, but does that really shape how I live? And I think w- I see it every time we go to Starbucks or any kind of coffee shop, or just about… so we used to, you know, we lived in kind of a neighborhood that, where like the San Diego Union Tribune, and even the LA times named at one of America's best—that’s that's quote “best” their category “hipster” neighborhoods.
Julius: Oh my gosh.
Wilson: And just like that, you could not, you absolutely could not calculate how many stores as part of their marketing used the word “community.”
Julius: Community. Yeah.
Wilson: is. You know, you moved to this neighborhood because you want community with your kind of people. You want, you want, you know, the same sorts of, you know convictions or whatever, and then you'd go, you go shop and you… and you visit these stores because you want community and, and every place it's like, if you just looked at that, at their marketing, you wouldn't know if they sold clothes or handmade journals or organically-sourced dog food— these are actual, these are, these are not random. I have specific places in mind right now.
Julius: I know which ones you're talking about, dude.
Wilson: …or coffee, like you wouldn't know from their marketing. If I were to go in this store, I would find clothes or journals or pet food or a coffee shop because all of them are marketing “community."
W-and this is one of those where I think the way we feel it is we feel this strong need for it, but our, but our structures and our institutions can't provide it. But, but we all know we want it. And because we all know we want it. And this is what consumerism does, is it taps into our desires, right?
And this is a very strong felt, need, and desire is for community. And. tap into that with our marketing, because it gets attention because we want it. And I don't think they’re… I do not think these places are being like intentionally manipulative. I don't think this is a bait-and-switch. They're not sitting here going, “Yeah, I'm really just about profit and dog food, but I know people are going to buy community.”
Now, I do think there are a few corporations that that's absolutely what they're doing… but these, but these places I don't, I don't think are bad people intentionally doing that. I think they really would love to help provide community. But what we don't see is you- as much as we might think conceptually, about the difference between our ideas in our, you know, our thoughts about individual freedom and and our local grocery stores and our local coffee shops— as much as we can conceptually separate our ideas and our institutions, you can't actually separate them.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: What drives so much of what actually happens is how we do things day in and day out. And the structures, the institutions are set up for buying-and-selling and fragmentation and loneliness. And so I don't think people are, are being manipulative with their marketing. I think they're naming a desire.
They want to do something to combat it. As long as we keep doing things day in, day out the way we've done them, it’ll-it'll remain nothing other than, well, at this point, this is maybe with, with Shema in our, on our like business side of the org-organizational side of thing, we've found it super helpful.
We took this from a guy named Patrick Lencioni, who’s a, who's a consultant and a, you know—you’re always have to have a core value, and core values drive who you are, but he was super helpful saying I think, each, each group needs to be really discerning and honest with itself about what's genuinely a core value—meaning this actually shapes what we do and how we do it… this is, this is core and to integrate. How we think and how we act pulling those things together. What we do with our spirits and what we do with our bodies are integrated in genuine core values…
But he says, but you also need to name your aspirational values. Meaning we long for this, we want this, we think it would be good for other people, but we have to be honest, we're not nailing it.
We have to figure out how to believe in this, think about this, and practice it—and that becomes a goal for us to strive for. And I think what we need to name is: across the board, at best, community is an aspirational value. Like we want it, we long for it, but we've got to close the gap between what we long for, how we think about it and how we actually set up our structures and our institutions for day in, day out life.
Because how we do life day in, day out is implicitly, you know, at this point, it's going to undercut any sort of desire or, or longing for actual community.
Julius: Okay. Yeah, that's that's spot on. I think that's, that's exactly one of the things I wrote down in preparation for this was talking about that commu- I mean, you… you just said it verbatim almost, that community, I think, especially in a lot of the way that organizations/companies/brands and stuff, like they’re… they are touching on a very real need and a hunger, especially like on this side of like, a couple of years into this pandemic that just like highlighted our isolation…
I think we're all hungry for community. So I know that that's like a real thing. But yeah, at best it is aspirational, and the— just to name it, these institutions that have formed us, are institutions of like of capitalism and hyper-individualism and leaving too much to the privatized choice… and to connect that straight back to—we kind of hinted at this in the last episode too, is this, on this side during the Reformation, like as a church, we kind of institutionalized these doctrinal differences and kind of forced to look for what does the past tense of forsake, “forsook”? “Forsooketh”?
Wilson: That's that sounds borderline dirty.
Julius: Oh man. Well, it is because… but forsaking, the kind of commitment to work things out together we, we decided to institutionalize: “well, we're gonna, we're gonna draw the line and this is. This is our side. This is like our camp.”And we like habituated fragmenting and splitting-off rather than like trying to work things out and see the harmonies…
And so here we are on this side of that, like centuries after that, and that has become ingrained into the institutions that have shaped us, the cultures that have shaped us. And as much as our desire for community is, like, maybe real and genuine… I think so many of us grew up not knowing how to, how to truly embody what it means to be a community and to be in relationship with people on, on deeper than like these surface levels of… I think at best how we understand community is like, it’s it's only as good as our shared interests.
Like, that we build community insofar as we share the same interests and viewpoints on stuff. And so, as long as things are good on that surface level, it feels like community because it all feels good. But I think that we're missing a step. And part of that gap is, so many of us haven't been shaped in how, what happens when we start to disagree.
What happens when the- the more that you deepen in relationship, that like intimacy calls us to confront these differences. And I think so many of us don't have that training and that formation to know what to do with the disagreements, especially now that we're picking up from a tradition that was like, “Ooh, I don't think we can harmonize these… Let’s just keep splitting off.”
Wilson: Right.Yeah. Community takes virtue.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: Another one of our key ideas— aspirational values— is cultivating virtue, you know, and here at… and community absolutely takes that, community cannot simply be aspirations. You know, aspirations are not virtues. Aspirations might lead to… but, but virtue is the actual ability to carry out.
So. Good, you know, it's something internally good to, to what we're doing. And so community requires of us certain virtues that, you know—so think of it this way. There are certain virtues involved in any skill that we may not—I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of “virtue” and the role that actually plays in how we feel and act that we don’t immediately recognize that virtues are involved in things like playing an instrument or a sport.
Like there there's a virtue to guitar playing, that there's a level of virtue that Julius has that I do not. I aspire to be able to do some of the things on the guitar that Julius can and to, and to do things in a band with a guitar that I can't, because I don't have the virtues… because I don't understand like what holds the band together as far as the music and how to just jump in yet.
And now that's one of the things I'm, I'm remedying by putting myself in an uncomfortable position and saying: here's a really good band… will you guys let me play with you regularly? I can get up to speed with that, but it takes that kind of practice. It takes developing the abilities, same thing with like basketball. It's one thing to aspire to be able to move like LeBron or Jordan. It's another to be able to get on the court and play the game with nine other people on the court.
Julius: Yeah,
Wilson: Once you have nine people on the court with one ball, if everyone's going in, in their own direction, there is no game. Right? And that's actually a pretty good metaphor, right? T-to get together and play a game, takes virtue.
We're just, we're not going to develop those as long as we just keep saying—well, and this is where it gets tricky. Those are virtues and skills that involve your heart, your spirit and your body.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: Right. We talk about music is such an ex- as a, as such a spiritual experience is, but there is no music without physical bodily activity. And, and if the, if the mo- like I've got all the, I've got all the passion and I've got all the inspiration, but I, I do not yet have the ability to express that in music, in a way that others could connect with, because I don't have the virtues yet.
And so, as long as our thinking shapes institutions where the—and this is a tricky word, maybe we'll unpack this the second half of this conversation— where the authority is totally severed, totally… separated between the spirit and the body. Then all we will be left with is certain aspirations, but no value. No virtues that we'll be able to enact them, right.
Just like I've gotta… I’ve gotta be able to involve my body in the virtues of God, I've got to, I've got to learn how to take that and put it in my fingers. Right? And be able to plant myself in a place and, and, and think about how physical it is to just… physically to, to, to poke or, or prick some strings and make them move so that the air moves in a way that's in harmony with six other musicians, and in time with six other musicians, and in a way that will tap into the desires and the hearts of the people listening it's body and spirit.
And as long as we're severing our thoughts are our thinking our practices between the body and spirit, we're going to be left with this sort of like deep longing for, for things that really are good and it matters, but none of the virtues of the abilities to pull it off.
Julius: That’s, that's great. I think that that makes a lot of things click for me of… I think what we're, what we're talking about here is that a disembodied Christianity leads to like, a shallow everything… but especially like community of like… it's like, if, if, if we, if we start to think that Christianity only involves matters of the spirit and the abstract, it’s like— to bring it to the, to the music analogy— it would be like, if we only focused on like theory, but never picked up the instrument, and we don't know what to do with our hands.
And that's what we're left with as the church is that like… we love to talk about the spiritual and abstract “Forgive one another,” like… you're like…
Wilson: “Bear another's burdens…"
Julius: Yeah. Hmm.
Wilson: “Care for the sick and needy.”
Julius: Yeah, on an embodied level, we don't know literally what to do with our hands. And I was, and so I’m—
Wilson: You raise them when the leader tells you to…
Julius: It may be not even that [laughs] oh man, that's a-another, a side thing… but I've been thinking a lot lately, I think last week, praying through the hours I, I found myself midday praying through the Lord's Prayer and was really struck by the “Lord forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
Or, “Forgive us as we forgive our debtors.”
And there was something in praying it that day that made it click that the way that— first of all, the way that, that’s spoken, like kind of the tense of like, forgive us as we also forgive, like it's, it's like assumed that it's a part of… it’s habitual, it's habituated. It's it's a rhythm. It's it assumes that that's something that a community practices regularly…
And At that moment, I realized kind of what you're talking about, how that's such an embodied thing and that forgiveness. I think I'm learning the more that I kind of dive deeper into relationships and friendships and learning how to be vulnerable and pursue like true intimate relationships with people is that I think I always used to receive that line of like, “as we forgive others” as kind of like a really shallow, like… “Just like let it go. It's, it's fine.” Kind of like, I'm ignoring, ignoring the hurt without kind of addressing it kind of forgiveness.
And I'm, I think something in that day, praying through it. Pulled me towards maybe a deeper understanding of like, maybe as we forgive those who trespass against us doesn't mean just like a shallow letting go. But that is sometimes it takes the really hard conversations and having to work it out. It's the stuff that Jesus lays out in the gospels of talking about like, if a brother sins against you and then talks about like embodied steps of like talk to them or like talk to And I think that that's something of like what forgiveness looks like.
And that's a virtue that we, that virtue itself is something that as communities, we don't really know how to engage in that. And that is such a bodily thing. Like for me, I feel emotions super, very strongly, and it's a palpable embodied thing to like, To sit someone down for the sake of like wanting deeper communion with them, like, and moving forward from, after being hurt or after hurting someone that it's an embodied experience to sit with a person, to look them in the eyes, to feel the things.
If you're either, if you're the one who is hurt or if you're the one who did the hurting that… there, it brings up a lot— like your heart races, your palms, sweat, you feel the anxiety in your body, you feel the tension.
Wilson: Body and soul, yup.
Julius: And you have to— we have to embrace that. But I think as our, our understanding of community, I don't think so for so many of us, I don't think it gets down to that deep level of embracing that kind of stuff…
Wilson: Okay, so circling back around and trying to, to pull some of the threads together, we started off by telling a story about a certain abuses of authority leading to, I mean, some sort of necessary action, some sort of necessary reform— but that reform turning into a rebellion. Right. And then pretty quickly the reformers Luther exemplary exemplified in his own secular authority starts to realize, okay, Rebelled against that authority, but also have set the framework for like our own authority and, and actually really all authority ever to be totally undercut, but that we don't, they're not intending to create total anarchy.
So they try to back up and, and create some sort of framework for understanding. Now on the other side of this rebellion how do we still hold some kind of authority? So he sets up these spheres between the body and the soul. So we're talking about like bodies, souls, and authority and, and how this.
Idea of this separation. Right. See how it, how it mirrors, how it, the, the severance and the disintegration is. And then that getting institutionalized is a pattern that is mirrored in every topic that we talk. Right throughout this series, we're going to look at, and there's a lot of overlap here with economics.
We can look at that here and morality, you know, but looking here in community, just like it used to be, there was this authority that it was, yes, let's be honest. It was imperfect. It needed to be reformed, but still for a long time, it was the thing that kept people in the same room and made them work it out. And so now when, when the actual institutional split happens between Rome and the Protestant churches, what's now been institutionalized there. W-w-what, what is embodied in the practices is the thinking of like two separate words.
Instead of understanding, no, there, there has to be in, there is one. We be, we better learn to live into it. They now institutionalized. No, let's just set up different worlds for us to live in. And you see that move mirrored when Luther realizes, oh shoot, we've got a problem here with authority. What do I do? Well, let's mirror that same move and just set up two different worlds. And that sets the pattern for how we handle conflict.
Let's just set up different worlds, set up different worlds. And so now instead of the virtues of community, we have, you know, this. What's now like just, it's almost in our DNA, right. It's, it's definitely in our institutions. It's definitely in our philosophies and it's in our bones to just this instinctual move now to like, well, let's just set up different worlds and those worlds just keep getting smaller and smaller.
Right? So the piece here, that's the scary thing, but I just think this is, this is what good community does is give us community and some encouragement and a safe and encouraging and challenge. Place to, to face the scary stuff. And what we've got to look at is authority. And in some way, a huge piece, if there's going to be any kind of recovery, if there's going to be a move towards genuine community, we need to find a kind of authority.
That's a healing, good, healthy authority. And what we've set up in other episodes. And again, not that I'm the perfect dad. Definitely not the perfect dad, but one of the places where I look back on something that was scary for me and hard, but I look at it and instead of feeling like, “Heck yeah, look at that. I nailed that as a dad,” I look back on it and it's like… that was really good. And in my reaction is gratitude or there's moments where I'm able to be that presence that keeps my kids together and they actually work the problems out instead of just going to their own rooms, literally, and metaphorically and harboring the resentment for.
Julius: Sure.
Wilson: And so we need some kind of, and that's, that's the picture we're putting up there. And I know it's scary because we've seen bad authority and there is, there are plenty of authorities that it's Right, and good to rebel against to critique. right.
But that, again, they're another part of our aspiration.
Needs to include a healthy kind of authority. The kind that is strong enough, that is healing enough, that it loves, that loves all of us enough to hold us together, to hold the tension, but also create an aspiration for life together. That would be a strong enough desire and love that we would work through the difficulties to develop the virtues, to actually be able to live together.
Right. And So,
I think what we've up to this point and maybe the best thing I can think of. Is no, I don't think the answer is just to go back and, you know, institutionalized religion from the top down it's to name. No, no, I mean, this is, this is what good healthy religion does. And this is what a good healthy authority can do is hold us together.
It creates the conditions for us to be able to become the kinds of people to practice and in practicing to become the, kind of like a musician you can play to become the kind of people that. Participate in community and there's gotta be some authority that pulls me out of my frustration, my anger, my fear, and my immediate desires Right.
now that might work against that.
And so, no, I don't, I don't think we'd go back to just getting the church in the state totally in bed with each other and, and having someone, you know, claiming the authority of God and just telling everybody what to do. But. Maybe maybe a good first step is for those of us who consider ourselves Christians to open up our aspirations and to long for that healthy kind of authority.
And for us to, instead of looking for some external source to be the thing that would enforce it. How about we collectively as a community open up to the idea that, that this authority could be internalized in that. And so from within us, we could submit to it an authority that is, that is big and strong and loving enough to hold us together and teach us to be people that could live together.
Julius: Okay, got two questions.
Wilson: Yeah.
Julius: One of them is kind of just like a clarifying… this authority that you speak of that can hold things together… I have a hunch what that might be, but in my head, I'm like—I think that's, I think that's just, Jesus?
Wilson: That would, I mean, yeah, that would be the ideal. Right. And, and this is, I mean, look at our story again. If claiming to be Christian, it's not a personal kind of piece. Look at our stories. What did Jesus do? W when the expectation was as Messiah, you're going to gather an army and go fight Rome, but he doesn't do that. He gathers together the Jewish community.
That can't be a community together anymore. Instead of going and fighting Rome, he gets people who keep fighting it. And breaking each other apart from the inside and says, all right, first step is you all come around me, the zealot, you that you've stuck a dagger in tax collectors, but because they're collaborators with the empire and the enemy, you and zealot and tax collector, both of you Pharisee and process. right. The one, the one that has been stoned and the one who has thrown the stones, you guys get together and fight. And this is what he does for the first several years of his ministry is just teach the people of God to live together in community centered around him. And if we really have internalized Jesus as our savior, Lord Messiah, I mean, how can we not internalize that kind of authoritative call to learn to live together?
CONVERSATION
Julius: Well [clears throat] okay. [Chuckles] Let me check this audio file… All right. Levels are looking—oh, that was oh, no, it was, the clapping was loud. Okay. We’re—
Wilson: Do you consider yourself an audiophile?
Julius: [Laughs] I’m like, a… whatever, whatever the level below “phile” is.
Wilson: A dilettante.
Julius: There you go, that’s really specific. [laughs] Um, well, thanks for listening to All Things. This is Julius and Wil.
Wilson: Are you listening in Hi-Fi, listener?
Julius: Potentially, potentially “medium-fi”… most likely through iPhone speakers.
Wilson: AirPods?
Julius: Or AirPods. Yeah. So we're well into this series now on the disintegration that comes from the Reformation, and… today we're talking about morality.
And it seems like we're noticing the common thread here is that there are, like, separations and disagreements that become, like, institutionalized and formalized in the relationship between the church and society… and in talking about morality, it seems like… whatever happened with like these little squabbles on how to deal with authority, we ended up in a place where the church is kind of just… relegated to, um. A quote-unquote “moral” sphere and feels disconnected from like an embodied way of life. And the state is then tasked with like, “What, how do we actually live with our bodies?”… what policies govern, like, how we do life… And then the church is relegated to quote unquote “the spiritual,” which is just kind of like what we believe on like a… on like a pietistic level.
Wilson: And can I, I just want to, I want to point out at this, at this juncture—So I think it's the quickest way to do it, and then you can, you can finish your prompt, but. We, we’re at a— to name— we’re at a place where it's like, “in general authority is bad. And so there should be no authority over me, over my body, over my behavior,” but to enable like… to make that possible, you need a very strong authority, on that point. Like, and so the state has the F the, the authority, the power coercion to protect the right for no authority. And so there's this odd kind of like reliance on a very strong authority to make sure that there's not authority.
Julius: Yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. And so I think part of the task today and the conversation is probably just naming that for people of like the whole thing that we talk about. A lot of the naming the waters that we're swimming in. The thing about like when you're swimming in it, you don't know that it's called water.
And so taking a step back to, to realize like, oh, this is the stuff that we're kind of taking for granted. These are the philosophies, the ideologies that are at play that we might not be aware of. Because to me, it seems like we kind of just don't really know what to do with morality. It feels like a taboo subject that is like like on par with like,
Wilson: of one to 10. How nervous were you this week before recording this conversation?
Julius: Currently currently sweating and for fear of being misinterpreted, talking about what to do with our bodies as communities.
Wilson: Yeah.
So, I mean, now that now that that's been named as we're, as we're just naming things, we'll then follow up with the, the point of this conversation is not to pick fights on specific disagreements, but it get to like understanding at deeper root causes what's happening and maybe, maybe presenting something that people would, would willingly choose to share a desire for something to do.
Julius: Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. And I think that it feels like the default is that morality becomes relegated to something that we, man, I think the bummer is like, it almost feels like we relegate it to the same sphere as like. What your favorite. Team is like sports team or like favorite color. Like it's a matter of preference.
And as long as your understanding of morality, isn't imposed on mine, we're fine. Like, we're, we're good. But on the lived level, like there's gotta be something that holds it together to govern, like, what is like acceptable or like what, where do we step in and say, Hey, don't do that. And I think that there are like, there definitely are ideologies and systems at play as to like, what kind of.
Shared conception of the good we're working from, because as much as we can try to do away with like, oh, like the question of what's good is like an irrelevant question. I don't think that we, anyone actually lives that way. So let's, let's let's name. It is my first question. What's going on?
Wilson: we can talk like what is the good beyond particular individual? Subjectivities is irrelevant. We can talk like that, but no, nobody can live that way.
Julius: Yeah.
If, if that is the case that we can't really live that way. Well, how can we put a name to like how we. The different ways that like our culture society, government, like does deal with something like the good and does deal with something like morality and perhaps why that is insufficient as like a shared conception of goodness and morality.
Wilson: And so how's it sound, we, in this story, we, we gave just the outline from you know, just previous to, just prior to the reformation, the reformation down to now how, how we ended up where we did with this, like with this very strong state authority That works to protect the individual rights. And so we've got the the, the feeling or the, the de facto moral agree or agreement on morality is there is no, and not just, there is no agreement on morality.
There should be no. And so the right.
thing is to which. You're making a, a borderline universal claim. When you say the Right.
thing is to have one power that protects the individual rights of anyone to do what they want, what they think makes them happy so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. So we we've traced how we got here.
So maybe what if we start there and work backwards and we could say like let's say. Talk a little bit about the tensions and the problems with that, that thought do whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy and doesn't hurt anybody else back through some of the other moral systems, because there's still like echoes of it.
And some of us, like when push comes to shove, like re when something happens that you are severely unhappy with, right? And you, you try to appeal to. When you go to the authority, right.
That's that you say, I don't like this, it should change. And the authority says, well, why now you have to give an appeal.
Right? And so some of these you'll find echoes of some earlier schools of moral thought that still hold some sort of influence and then come back to what it might look like to, to re-imagine a, a more ancient to, to reappropriate to creatively use a more ancient one. So, so the, the technical. Name designation for the common, th the widespread held assumption that what's right, is for me to do what I want, as long as it didn't hurt anybody else, It's called a motive ism.
And I've, I've lived that because I swim in the same waters. I'm shaped by the same culture. Oh, I've a rebellious, selfish streak. And so I want to do what I want and I don't want somebody else telling me what to do. One of the biggest conflicts I had in the first year of our marriage. Was over money because it was like, I wanted a Gatorade.
What's the big deal. that's what I wanted, you know, but we had these, these other, but these larger common goals, we wanted to be able to get our own place. And we wanted to have as much stability as we could before we brought a child into this world so that we could actually care for that kid. And.
That's a very small instance. Well, actually, maybe it's not that small because there's a recurring theme there. When I get, when I get stressed out one of my go-to moves is.
to buy something. And, and that's pretty, I, I feel like that's one of the reasons and the feelings might be quite different, but that as far as behavior, I think that's kind of the, the one bit of medicine and I'm pretty sure it's a panacea. Yeah. Or no, not panacea. Well, Yeah. we treat it like a panacea, like, oh, this is what will solve everything. But
Julius: Yeah.
It's a placebo. It's, it's not actually dealing with the disease at all is, Hey, buy something, that'll fix it. But that's when, like, when I feel, when I feel tense, when I feel stressed out, when I feel like I'm in a set of circumstances that are unfair, there's part of me that just wants to go buy something.
Wilson: Like I just recently, Julius and I were talking about it. I just recently bought a really expensive guitar pedal. And in the moment I was like, this is rad, that helped. But a week later I'm like, dang it. I, that hurt my family. And and I've, I've just myself seen more and more one as I've matured and, and trusted certain things.
That, honestly, when I was like 18, 19, 30 was really still very hard to trust, but I've trusted it long enough to see that part of what makes life really rich and good and worthwhile is to make big commitments to things that matter. And over and over and over again, the emotive is tendency about what's Right. and wrong has come into conflict with those bigger commitments.
And I realized out of one side of my mouth, I'll say, I care about. And what's good for you is what I care about. But then I'll, I'll do something different and realize that if I just live out of this, like, oh, well, I guess what I'm saying is it's really a lot tougher, so much tougher than, than. I think it is to not hurt somebody else.
Julius: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Wilson: and it's, and when that, when all we have is do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, it puts us in an impossible spot. When you're sitting here going, what's the big deal. And somebody that you really, really do care about is saying, but don't you see how this is hurting me?
Julius: totally.
Yeah. So, I mean, it feels like from that place, The very least that we can do with that. If we're going to operate from that like basis of what to do with goodness and morality is like, that requires a more robust understanding of what it means to hurt somebody. And at a certain point, that's where that, that system just kind of doesn't hold in a sustainable way.
And, and the other thought that I have is like, It feels like such a low baseline to just like, well, just don't hurt anybody that feels like such a low baseline. Whereas like, I feel like maybe what we're called to as the, like, bringing this back to like the implications on the church that the church is called to more than just like, yes, of course let's protect people from harm and like, make sure that we're.
Perpetuating violence and injustice on people. But also beyond that, like what does it look like for us to desire more than the baseline of don't hurt anyone to desiring the flourishing of our communities, the flourishing of the world?
Wilson: And this is we've, we've gone through this with our kids too. I mean, it just, it doesn't give us any real tools to judge about. What's a greater good. And wouldn't it actually be better? Wouldn't it be better for you and the people around you for you to give a better, good, a greater like to, to put some concrete on this?
What I'm thinking about is with especially with our older kids, my, my daughter, she's just, she's not really into screens or video games. She, she, she wants to run and play and do stuff, but our boys, they can disappear into video games. And when, when there's a string of days where they've done. Like nothing in their free time, but play fortnight. Like we miss out on them at their best,
Julius: Yeah. Yeah,
Wilson: when they do get off, you know, they're tired. They're grumpy. They're not sure.
like as far as like both of my boys in very different ways can be very, very. Right. But even on that, they're, they're not their best. And so when we do get together in the room, they're not sharing their humor.
They're not giving the gift of their insight that makes other people laugh. right?
And when they're there at their best, it gives us, I mean, it makes it that time, such a rich time compared to, I mean, not just that they're, their wits are Dole, but even beyond that, their temporary. Right.
there, patients with other people is less.
And if it's just like, but that's what I wanted to do for that evening. Like I, I get like, it's not necessarily the right thing to be like super heavy handed and totalitarian and like push someone, but also how do we not see, but look, but that is really, really good. And wouldn't it be. Wouldn't it be beneficial for everyone involved to, to move towards that place where we're all living in a way where we're at our best and so can give and receive our best from each other.
Julius: yeah.
Wilson: mean, who, who wouldn't say that that's better than everyone just be in kind of like gray and dull and tired and dimwitted and quick tempered.
Julius: Right. Yeah. And I think what we're illustrating here right, is that is why this whole thing matters. If, why we can't just shirk the conversation on morality. Is that like, is that it has implications on what it means to. Pursue the flourishing of our communities is that we have to talk about it. And even if it comes from like the place of distress of authority of like well, the government should decide, then the church shouldn't decide that either even, even tracing that down, like at the end of the day, if you take it out of the hands of those systems, like somebody has to, like, we still have to figure it out.
We still have to figure out what's good for us. And like, what? So.
Wilson: Yeah.
I mean it, even with that on both counts on what, there, there will be. There will come times where it takes a serious discussion and discernment to figure out what it, what it really means to do. What makes you happy?
Julius: yeah,
Wilson: And what it means to not hurt someone else. And there, there will inevitably come times where one or both of those things is contested.
And the only way to contest it is to make some kind of appeal to a larger shared good. Right. But if we spent no time working on discerning, what a larger, genuine, shared good might be, then all we're going to do is shout at each other. And have, have no, no way to even begin to work together to understand
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: on with that.
Julius: I don't know if this is devil's advocate position, but then moving from there, who determines the shared good. What do we,
Wilson: Well that's, w let's let's leave that at, like, that's exactly the question that we're left with, but we,
have no way to even name or engage that.
Julius: yeah
Wilson: And so maybe by the end, we'll, we'll pick that up, right. Because this is, we'll see, as we move through the system over and over, that's the place we're going to end up with.
Right. And I guess I cat out of the bag. Right. So maybe, maybe start with the end is every, every attempt to come up with some sort of practice, like just here's here's how we'll do it. Right. Or or thinking about what's. About ethics and morality leads us exactly to that point. Right. And this is I'm, I'm just convinced there's no way around naming that question and figuring out how to engage that question together: Who decides, how do we, how do we decide to name what’s, what is the common good?
Wilson: So moving, moving back up, if what those of us, especially in the west, mainly have, is a kind of a emotivism, which is, you know, do what's right. As long as they don't hurt anybody else. Some of the, the, two of the biggest schools of ethical thought that precipitated that and made this possible, and they made it possible by like not working.
So they were like, Hey, that, that this ancient stuff we're gonna, we're gonna leave that. And so now let's try these things and buy these things, you know, getting a little traction and enough people trying it out long enough and then not working enough. That's, that's part of the story of how we ended up where we are, but moving, moving backwards, chronologically to some other schools that used to carry a lot of weight, one's called utilitarian. That this would be one of those, like after the reformation. And then when we're trying to move towards a more secular understood as divorced, you know, attempting to that's part of the argument is we've attempted to, but we never have actually left behind religious convictions and commitments. And the influence of religion on our, on our thinking in our life.
But in any light moment, when we're, we're trying to come up with a quote unquote, holy. Objective and rational way of coming at morality is called utilitarianism. And that's where you, you try to do what's right. Is so that I, sorry, false start on the sentence. So utilitarian is what is right is doing what produces the greatest good for the most amount of people.
Julius: Huh.
Wilson: So as far as like a pithy short little definition, it sounds pretty decent and sounds understanding understandable. And just on that level, I don't think anyone would disagree with with the statement. You know, that what's right is produces the greatest good for the greatest amount of people.
And that's why he got a lot of traction to this sounds good. But when you practice it, some of the flaws started to show like, Well, the most obvious and the biggest, and I think the quickest wall that it hit is near requires you to be able to predict the outcome. And good luck with that.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: Cause I mean, it's, what is the assumption that It's built on is that it's a mechanistic universe and like this leads to this always.
And if you do this, this will happen. Always, just like if you drop a rock, it will fall, you know? But the, but the consequences of human freedom and action are not, like if I let go of this rock, will it fall to the ground? It
Julius: a gamble. It's not as cut and dry.
Wilson: It's, it's not mechanistic. It's not so predictable. And so, so often from the best intentions and the best calculations, okay.
Here's what we're going to do. And this is going to create wealth for more people, and this is going to do this and oh, shoot it precipitated world war one,
Julius: Yeah.
Well, that's well, that's interesting because you said the goal, there was like, oh, this will create wealth for more people. And that is like, that's a statement of. Equating the good being wealth for all people.
Wilson: Yes there. And they're there, you hit the second massive wall that this school hit on. Is it you still, you're going to come up with, so it's attempting utilitarianism is attempting to come up with an objective way, right. For, for determining ethical.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: But that's where there's no way out of the subjective poll
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: about like what, when it comes down to the possible goods, you start to see there, there are all sorts of different ideas about what is the good that should be sought because sometimes there might be two potential goods.
And this group would value this one, but a different group would value this other good, like the same action might or different actions might bring these different goods. And so who determines which good to choose, that's a subjective choice. And even like, what is good? There's a subjective element to that. Right,
So to take it out of the abstract, make it concrete, like you mentioned money, When, when you decide what good you're chasing Like, would you choose money or would you choose happiness? Because what if in the situation you can't have both. right.
And if you're, if you're trying to produce the most good for both people or for the most people, and you can't at the same time in this situation produce both money and happiness, who determines, which is the greater good that you would actually choose. And there would be people that would say, no, we want the money. And other people that say, no, we want the happiness. And so then you're still, you're still left with this objective pole and with utilitarianism instead of actually coming to terms with this and dealing with it, what would. Historically the way the, the, the dominoes have fallen. We just doubled down on just this objective poll.
Julius: Huh? Well, what's interesting. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. After a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen the Marvel cinematic universe, I guess myself included, but I've been exposed to enough spoilers to know what's going on, but I think it was after the end of, I wanna say it was infinity war.
There was like, I saw someone write an article on. And talking about how a fan knows embody, like what he does with I dunno, I guess the blip or whatever, embodies, like this is what you tell the Tarion Nissam looks like trace to the nth degree.
Wilson: Yeah.
And he says that too. He says that to Gomorrah his, I think when he says it to her, she's not yet his adopted daughter. But she calls him a monster and he's like, no, this is fair. It's cold. It's objective. And in the long run, it's better for more people.
Julius: yeah.
but
Wilson: So, so there you go.
Julius: Yeah,
Wilson: The, I mean, and that's the point is yes, that's an extreme example, but
that's exactly like. And it and trying it out. What we came to find is utilitarianism would give no strong defensible grounds to tell FENOs no, you are wrong.
Julius: yeah.
Okay. So we've talked about emotive ism. We've talked about utilitarianism. What are, I mean, there's gotta be more than that, right. Especially if we trace it down and we're like, oh, this kind of led to a war. What's the next move there. As we're trying to sit with this question, like, where else have, has that taken us
Wilson: Yeah.
Julius: in terms of.
Wilson: The other, the other big one. I mean, we, we mentioned in the story earlier, there's Machiavelli, Machiavelli. That's just like power, right. Separate, separate from ethics and, and you know, that's still at play. Right. But, but what we've done with what we've done with him in our situation is say like, okay, that's kind of true, but only here.
Right? So just with the state, you're the, you have the power and you, you just do that for us. And don't really worry about ethics.
Julius: Yeah,
Wilson: To, to try to any, I mean, you could see if it sounds like, Hey, that's kind of confusing that's because it is there there's like some serious tensions and contradictions in this, when you say, well, Machiavelli was like, we'll just totally sever power from ethics and give, I mean, empowered in politics from ethics and just give the political religious, all the power and then they just do it.
Right. And so we said, sure, but. Use that power to make sure.
we get to do what we want to do. Right. That's that's the ethic. What we now consider, like the ethical move is allow us to make up our own ethics. Yeah
So there there's just there's that, you know, there there's rights, there's utilitarianism, there's Machiavelli, and the way that Machiavelli is still kind of at play in this, but then the one other bigger school that tried to do something different is tied to one of the most famous philosophers ever.
And still super important. It's like, if you, if you want to get into the history of ideas, you're going to encounter this dude at some point, and that's a manual comment. Con the, in his critique of practical reason, which practical reason means like how do you practically discern what's good.
What's, what's the right.
thing to do. So in ethics, he comes up with this this school called de ontology. And what that's trying to do is it's the opposite end of utilitarianism. It's trying to totally sever it from the outcomes. So instead of trying to predict the outcomes, not just because it's impossible to predict the outcomes, but even starts to make the case that it should be totally what's.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: according to con is severed from the outcomes and is just duty and obligation, Right, So like one of the principles that comes out of this is could you make this a universal law, right,
Your action in this, in this situation, could you make it a universal law? right.
And so, and again, in the abstract, it sounds kind of good.
Like don't. All Right.
So in this situation, should I tell the truth? All Right. Don't lie. Would, would don't lie be a universal law? Oh Yeah.
sure. But until you try to practice that out and you come to situations where you're like, well, hold on, like in this situation, If I tell the truth, it could totally destroy this. It could, it could really hurt this person or it could, it could wreck the ability well here in the Bible, there's the story of the prostitute Rahab, right. And she lies to protect God's people. Right. And in that case, she was considered a righteous. And don't lie sounds pretty close to don't bear false witness against your neighbor, but they're not the same thing.
And there's a different kind of relationality to don't bear false witness, right. That what you're doing there is seeking the good of another person, but don't lie. You know, you can, you can tell the truth for a very, very selfish.
Julius: yeah.
Wilson: Or you could withhold a bit of the truth because you know, that that would benefit like lead to a genuine good for somebody else, even if it costs you something.
Right. So, so day ontology is like totally severing it from our outcome. But it gives you very little practical guidance in how, in the complex situations of our day in and day out life, what it means to actually like do what's good for somebody else. It's, it's so abstract that you could go through and cause all kinds of harm and good and feel like, but I did my duty. Right. And the question there is like who or what determines your. All right. So again, what's the rational basis for it. But then in our real world, there are always going to be competing duties. So, so,
Julius: Duties
Wilson: Sorry, I'm getting a little juvenile here in my potential puns, but,
Julius: duties.
Wilson: But you know, so in, in, in my life, I have a duty as a as a ministry leader and as a teacher, but I also have a duty as a dad.
Right. And this is, this is one of the easy ones. And the critiques of certain generations is you, you were flawless in doing your duty for the company, but you were never there for me. Right. And, and the kind of unintentional harm and good but day ontology gives you no basis for judging between those rival goods.
Right. And, and one person might say you were wrong to choose that one. And that's, it's caused so much harm to me as your child. But it gives no common ground or a way to adjudicate between that and the dad that would say, but my conscience is clear. This was my duty. And I did the right thing. Who's to say that your good is better than my good.
It puts you on the same horn, right? In, in this, in this tension between like the objective reality and the subjective values that are at play in any situation.
Julius: yeah.
Well, that, that seems to take us into. This notion that for those complexities, those situations we need to know what to do with the subjective that we need to integrate the two kind of like hearkening back to that whole conversation on knowledge that it's not, it can't be a hard either or, but like the complexity of life requires us to exercise.
In an integrated way that doesn't preference one over the other. And that whole thing that you're talking about of like, how do I how do I figure out, like contextually what Julie is the good in the face of these competing goods? It sounds kind of like what, we're, what we're asking towards, or like what we're moving towards as Christians, when we like talk about discernment and the gift of discernment and seeking discernment from the spirit.
So in that vein, what does it look like? To what is a Christian way of imagining a way forward that that holds those things together and to, to pursue a common shared good, or a shared morality that holds all of these complexities together in the ways that these systems that we as just like human civilization have tried, but have failed at.
Wilson: Could, could we, could we do it is like what would be a healthy religious way and then talk about the specific. But in that, because, because that's one of the things about what has made virtue ethics. So appealing to me, what's convinced me of it. Right? So there's some heavyweight people like Brad Gregory and like Alister MacIntyre.
And there's a a woman writing now on, especially on the virtues named Sharon valor that has taken like the, the stream of virtue, ethics and shown, I think totally persuasively how this is the one existing school of. thought that can actually help us engage the super pressing technological issues that that we're facing right now. and, and she points out that this is not just medieval, Chrissy. Catholic thought, but that this is this is a school of ethics that you can find a lot of commonalities in other highly developed religious systems, like, like Buddhism and Hinduism. So that's where I say, like, this is, this is why virtue ethics to me with w you know, having engaged the work of these kinds of scholars is because is showing itself to be a very, very worthwhile. Thing to, to at.
least attempt to creatively reappropriate for our time. And, and one of the big pieces of that is virtue ethics. So, so, so much of the problems have come from our modern assumption that you have to have this hard distinction between, or not even just a hard distinct distinction. The helpful in your brain, right?
In your, in your thing. To, to create a distinction between the subjective and the objective, but it's only really helpful in your. And that's actually the only place you can actually make a hard divorce between the subjective and the objective outside of our own head and our thinking in the real world, when we engage, what we call, what we think of as a subjective and what we think of as the objective are always working together, they're always flowing like the.
Outside of our head. If there is a boundary, it is a porous boundary between the subjective and the objective. And that's one of the things that virtue ethics holds is so much of like the things like deontology utilitarianism. Emotive is the stuff that has come in. Its wake has created this hard divorce between the subjective or the objective and tended to tip the balance of the scales towards one pole or the other.
But what virtue ethics does is try to create a harmony between. T to find a communion between those things. And that to me, is the foundational move. That's so important and seems potentially so fruitful. And even this I'm couching it because like, if, I mean, really I'm convinced that that's right. I'm convinced that that is a necessary foundational move. And I'm convinced that. As a religious person seeking harmony and unity, and specifically as a Christian, because of the principle of the unity of the divine and the human Jesus of Nazareth. And that Jesus's work is to reconcile all things to God. And we named our podcast, all things. And so in the realm of ethics, this, this seeking a reconciliation of all things that, that seems like the right foundational move and virtue ethics is the only thing I've encountered.
That does that. And it has centuries of traction, centuries of practice. So we're not starting from nowhere. We've got lots of stuff we could draw from that we can, we can creatively appropriate and use to help us along the way. So and w w what that would mean and bringing in, in seeking to harmonize the subjective and the objective and giving us a way to together.
Harmonize those things and discern the common good, because there's no way around it. You're always going to end up having to make some kind of appeal and to, to provide a way for us to do that. That isn't just, well, This is what's right. And the powerful have determined it. So suck it up and deal with the consequences that are terrible for you or no, I'm convinced us.
Right. But you're not going to listen to me. So I'm just going to shout you down or become violent to enforce my will on. Right. It's what it looks like in virtue, ethics to actually seek this kind of harmony is you, you have both, you have rules and virtual. And you have a lot of thought about how to seek the integration of these two things.
So the example here would be someone like Peter Lombard's sentences in one of his chapters, he talks a lot about not just the rules, but also the virtues and a key part in this virtue ethics thing is yes, you need to know the rules, but you also need to develop. And especially in this case, when it comes to ethics, you need to, everybody needs to be.
To develop the virtue of prudence, because sometimes you're going to find yourself in a really difficult situation where the greatest common good, and the best outcomes you predict are this, but duty says this, right.
And you're stuck on the pole or being a truthful person seems like a very important thing, but not telling the truth might make this possible, you know, not necessarily lying, but with. right.
Or even in some instances, in some extreme cases, like think of what people in extreme cases think of what people in like the in the Soviet union, in the middle of the 20th century had to face when it came to do I tell the authorities the truth or do I protect my neighbor? Right. Or in a, I hesitate to go here because it's like, everybody always goes to Nazis, but, but, But.
there's also a reason why this keeps coming up because they've shown us that this kind of, this kind.
Like depravity is possible
Actual human beings have found themselves in this kind of situation where the right thing to do was to lie to falsify papers, right? Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of the, one of the most like outspoken proponents of Christian pacifism found himself in Nazi Germany in a situation where he thought the best thing for him to do was try to kill her.
You know and so in these kinds of radical situations, you you've got, yes, you need the rules and those guide you, and those are bigger than just your thought, but you also need prudence. You've got the subjective and the objective and you need the wisdom and the discernment to, to end those kinds of situations, determine what would be the best case and, and to even have to wrestle with it might not be clear cut.
Julius: Yeah.
MEDITATION
The false promise of earlier systems of ethics that led to our current cultural disillusionment, was certainty. In this world, the circumstances that lead us to need to make our most important moral decisions will almost always also make us think, "I hope this is the right thing to do."
But if previous schools have failed to deliver rational certainty, giving up on principled reasoning about ethical choices isn't the only other option.
This meditation is designed to help you experience how Virtue Ethics provides a different way to navigate toward the good without having to know everything about exactly what this is, or having to guarantee the external outcomes of our decisions beforehand.
In short, it helps us practice discernment. And promises that the practice of discernment will, over time, make us prudent people.
And prudent people are those who can navigate their way through a broken and confusing world toward the common good.
So, think of a time you made an ethical decision that, with some hindsight, did not lead to the greater good, either for you, or for those around you.
In choosing, did you lean more on some emotion or feeling, and overlook some objective principle or circumstances that might have been helpful? Or, did you draw more from some rule or standard in a way that missed how something we'd label "subjective," like compassion or charity, could help you to understand the situation and name your options?
Now, a key element of Virtue Ethics, is what is called the telos, or end goal. It is a larger common good that is bigger than the aim of our personal agendas. It helps us begin to harmonize the objective and the subjective because it simply is good, but because of its goodness, it also taps into our desires and uses them to draw us in.
And in a Christian context, the Kingdom of God is what shapes how we'd visualize and understand this common good.
So, in relation to the situation and moral decision from your past that you've been evaluating, name an aspect of the Kingdom of God that it was possible to experience, but was missed out on because of a lack of prudence.
Now, in light of your growing practice in wisdom, go back, and visualize yourself reliving the situation.
And if the objective and subjective are pulled together through prudence and into the Kingdom of God, how do you choose and act differently?
In seeing yourself living this way, where do you feel inadequate or afraid and shrink back? Or possibly hesitate because of pride or because your subjective tastes were offended?
Just notice where you would struggle to enact the good, think about why, and without judging it, or condemning it, or correcting it at this point, just talk with God about your reactions.
And ask for the grace that you need to enact the good.
Now, trusting that God simply is good, no matter our feelings, but also takes pleasure in giving good things, so is both faithful to give you the grace you asked for and takes delight in doing so, go into into your life, and practice the virtues that will let the Kingdom of God touch our confusing and unjust world through you.