Ethics # 1

Yesterday I ended my post by asking several questions about the nature of ethics that each Christian (or any human being for that matter should ask). Questions on whether or not ethics are absolute or situational? What do we do with the places in scripture where ethics appear situational? Are good and evil independent of God, or does God decide what is good and evil? I would like to begin to think through some of these questions. This post will deal with the first two questions.

Are ethics absolute or situational? Either option has heavy baggage attached to it. If ethics are absolute and unchanging, i.e. lying is always wrong, then is it wrong to lie to save a life? If I was hiding Jews from the SS would it be wrong of me to use deception and to lie to save the Jews. On the other hand, if ethics are situational, then how do we condemn the suicide bombers the middle east is rife with? If you ask a Palestinian living in the Gaza strip right now why they are using suicide bombers, he is likely to tell you it is because they have no other way of resisting. To them, their ethics are perfectly justified. Does the existence of God make a difference either way?

As a Christian, I obviously believe in the God of the Bible, YHWH. My first instinct when I come to the question of the absolute value of ethics is that, yes, there is an absolute standard of ethics. Throughout the pages of scripture we see God giving instructions to His people on what the right thing is to do and what the wrong thing is to do. It seems very straightforward until we come to certain parts of the Old Testament where God seems to command the Israelites to do things that are the exact opposite of ethical. When taking the land of Canaan, they are instructed to go into cities and kill every man, woman, and child. That should make all of us squirm. Why? Because we believe God to be perfectly good, and genocide is not good. To further complicate matters, if you are a Christian, then you also believe in the New Testament where we have Jesus, God in human flesh, telling us to turn the other cheek, to work against violence. The Old Testament prescribes capital punishment, Jesus is against it (see the story of the woman caught in adultery). What is going on here?

To give a brief answer to this (books could be wrote on these matters), I shall try to construct a paradigm for how to understand the nature of ethics from a Christian, theistic point of view. I believe the answer could lie in the phrase we Christians so often throw about but don't much consider: "God is good." We say we believe this, but often what I think we mean is, "Good is God." That is, our perception of the nature of goodness is what God is. We seem to think that there is an ideal of good and evil that God Himself must adhere to. What we seem to forget is that all things are created "By Him, through Him, and for Him," and that he "causes the sun to rise on the just and unjust." Nothing, including ethics, exists independently of God. God is the one who decides what is right and what is wrong. To say that good and evil exists independently of God is to make good and evil God. Doing what God says to do, then, is what is ethical. To do what is most akin to God's nature is what good is. This helps to explain the reasons for those hard Old Testament passages. God's nature is such that he cannot tolerate evil, doing things against his nature. When the Israelites enter the land, the Canaanites have been doing things against God's nature for centuries. God, therefore, has the authority to eradicate that which is against His nature (or to tolerate that which is against His nature. In this case he chose to destroy it.). Therefore, acting on the command of God was not unethical. How that makes us Western, post-enlightenment, Americans with long lists of rights squirm in our seats!

God has a right to do this. We do not like to acknowledge the fact that God would kill people, but when we turn to the pages of scripture, we find out He does. However, we do also find out that God's nature is also that of compassion. He makes it clear He "has no pleasure in the death of the wicked." He destroys them not because He enjoys it, but because allowing them to influence others to do things against His nature would cause even greater separation between Himself and humanity. In fact, this part of the nature of God helps to make the incarnation understandable. In Jesus, we see God pouring out the wrath He has against those who are contrary to His nature on Himself. That why Jesus calls us to work for peace among each other and among the nations. God's wrath has been spent. All the sins of every man are forgiven (sorry hyper-Calvinists, but it's what the Bible says). Therefore, doing violence against any man is going contrary to God's nature because He, Himself carries no violence against the world.

So are ethics situational or absolute? I'm afraid all we can say for now is that doing what is ethical is doing what is in accordance with God's will. It seems as though God's will is different at different times. So where does that leave us? The question we need to answer is what is God's will in every situation? If we should do no violence against any man under the New Covenant, then what about defending our family, friends, our country? Should Christians be police officers, soldiers? Could we lie to save the Jews we have hidden in our basement? These are questions for another post.