Created in the image of God

Traveling to school a few weeks ago, I heard on the radio a discussion of the sport of track and field. The person on the radio was speaking of the great benefits of track and field. It is in his description the best sport to be involved in. If you want to be a real athlete you need to run track. Only the real athletes could handle the difficult training regimen that involves the dreaded intervals. These are a series of laps that one has to run. I did run track briefly in high school and I can attest to the odious character of these intervals. In Football one had to do something really bad like forget your helmet to have to run what the track athletes did everyday. I must confess I quit track before the end of the season, but it wasn’t because of the intervals, not that they were something I really liked. For me it was not even the humiliation of running the 100 yard dash as a freshman against what must have been the fastest men in America. The gun went off and my dignity would have been better preserved had I pretended to have been struck by the shot. I felt like I was running backwards, and in fact I probably gave off that impression to the spectators. The competition was not the reason I quite track. It was the shorts. If you have ever worn track shorts you know what I am talking about. They are just so short. I did not compare to the other track athletes. To think of myself as one was to find a quick way to a very low self esteem. There is a common challenge we all face. How do we understand who we are. If we understand ourselves primarily in terms of biology, of life, then our focus will be solely on the length and quality of living. If we focus on psychological understandings of our personhood then our focus will be on having healthy relationships, meaning getting what we want out of others. How you feel. If your focus is on sociology then what will be most important is where you come from, and what you are leaving behind your legacy. If your answer to the question who am I, can only be answered from these perspectives then you will in my opinion live a life of despair. It may be quiet, it may not be quiet despair. But these aspects of our personhood are insufficient to explain the complexity and depth of what it is to be you. Genesis gives a different message. And the Lord said, “let us create man in our image.”

Violence in Defense of Justice

I so enjoyed New Testament 18 with professor Hays that I eagerly purchased a copy of, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. I was shocked and challenged by professor Hays interpretation of the responsibility of the Christian to pacifism. I say shocked because in my Christian formation I had never been taught that Christians should be pacifists, so perhaps you can imagine my surprise when I came across the passage, “ Can a soldier be a Christian? probably so, but my understanding of the gospel requires me to urge that person to renounce the way of violence and to follow Jesus in the way of costly refusal of violence as a means to justice[1].” I came across this quote in another section of the book. Immediately my curiosity peaked I flipped the pages to discover to my shock that not only did Professor Hays contend that the way of the Cross excluded one from military service, but that the church for this reason should be at the margins of society. In my Christian formation I had always learned the opposite. Christians should participate in the life of the polis. The two ideas are in diametrical tension. While I hope to be able to reorient my understanding to the truth of the scripture, I am not quite yet ready to accept all of the professors argument.

I think one of the challenges I have to Dr. Hays’ understanding, is the idea that Christians should not serve the state, if I am understanding him correctly. Having grown up in Washington, DC. I have seen first hand the perversion that power can do to people. I recognize that there are people who can make horrible decisions based on their desire to stay in control. There is a definite ugliness to the political life, but does that have to be? I think the same observation could be made for any authority role. Even in a family an insecure immature parent can through poor judgment become an ogre. The maxim that politics always corrupts is perhaps to quickly accepted. For example, I believe this article does not address the current reality that many of the most well trained able leaders for many countries around the world are Christians. In many places in the world the best education has for many years come from religious schools. My wife comes from Burma, you may know the country as Myanmar, but those who fled the country due to the brutal military regime prefer to remember the country by the old name, in Burma currently a military government rules the country in a horrible way. At family gatherings I hear the older family members reminisce about how much better life was under the colonial authorities. The British for all their problems brought education to the mass of people. There was not corruption at least not at the level that exists today. There was not the trafficking of young girls by the government to brothels around Southeast Asia etc. Is it possible that the participation in good government by Christians could be a witness to the truth and glory of God?

If Christians are to serve in positions of authority then they must use the sword to maintain justice, thus the reason for Dr. Hays contention that Christians should not serve in such a capacity. I believe this is an issue that should be at least considered. If a Christian has the responsibility for administering authority there is always the need to administer consequences for improper actions. As an example on page 7 of Dr. Hays’ syllabus he cautions, “Any student who is found guilty of plagiarism will receive an F in the course and will be referred to the academic dean for possible expulsion.” The warning against plagiarism is recognition that wrong actions have consequences. Can the execution of justice that is necessary for society be compatible with the Christian life? In the Old Testament one finds the people of God in positions of civil authority, and certainly there is the use of force. Dr. Hays argues that the New Testament witness trumps the Old Testament where there is a conflicting message. I agree that one should not take passages of holy war from the Old Testament and apply them to the role of the church, but could one see in the Old Testament an example of people of faith using both justly and unjustly the use of violence for the sake of the society.

Beyond the issue of how a Christian is to live within the state at the theoretical level there is also the practical question of how we are to live in a society of violence. Before coming to Duke I worked in a crime ridden neighborhood. One day I was working with children outside on the streets and a fight broke out across from where we were practicing baseball. One man chased another with a pistol. How according to Dr. Hays’ paradigm is a Christian to respond? Is one to call the police? If one is to call the police, how can one say that a Christian cannot serve as a police officer, but one can call on their services if needed? Or is one supposed to just keep playing baseball?

In Durham, probably while I type this letter there are drunken men beating their girlfriends. Priests sodomize children. Hundreds of parents refuse to pay child support. I could go on but I am sure one would concede that there is much that is unjust in the world. I am not a liberationist (perhaps I should be) I simply think that if a woman was being raped across the street it would be immoral not to stop the violence even if it necessitated the use of force. If you would concede this than it follows that if there is a rape in China that we could some how stop we would have the moral authority indeed the moral obligation to intercede. I willingly recognize that my thoughts on this matter are formed in large measure by the community that raised me, but this was a community shaped by the message of Christ. The passage in Matthew Dr. Hays cites from the Sermon on the Mount that followers of Christ are to turn the other cheek is a difficult passage. There are many passages in the New Testament that challenge one’s sense of fairness (the Old Testament too for that matter). At the same time is there not a difference between letting oneself be wronged, and letting someone else be wronged especially when it comes to people who we choose not to help? The parable of the Samaritan is applicable in principle (I think). Pacifism seems to be like the Levite who does not want to get defiled by the bloody corpse. No doubt the sword has been misused in the history of the church all the more reason to request that Christians engage how to measure the use of force.

Kate Campbell wrote a song that perhaps sums up my thoughts, “The devil’s got a line for you and ten thousand lures.” The devil can be misguiding the church in what is perceived as Biblical pacifism just as the devil deceives the Church in Serbia to bless murder.

Ethics in the Public Square

I am not sure that it is possible to have a coherent exchange of ideas with regards to ethical matters in a pluralistic setting. I suppose it is possible to express one’s owns viewpoint, however I think that even such a proposal is more difficult than believers realize. There is an assumption that people can through rational reflection consider the merits of a matter and then form a conclusion. Unfortunately too often there is little if any discussion of what constitutes the merits. As an undergraduate I took a course on environmental decision making. We considered several different complex formulas for evaluating policy decisions. These models attempted to capture the complexity of different policy decisions. The different potential impacts of some decision on a particular ecosystem. Such models do serve to illustrate the various impacts that one might not immediately recognize, however they ultimately do not help to build a consensus. The evaluators must ascribe different levels of significance to concerns. In one particular model the evaluators were asked to place a numerical value between 1 and 10 of the importance of separate impacts. These would then be placed in a complex equation to determine the best decision. The obvious limitation of the equation rested on the subjectivity of the measurements. What might be a ten for one person might be a one for someone else. Our political discussion of stem cell research seems to take a similar approach. Depending on what the values one places on the various “factors” shape the outcome of one’s position. Ethical debates simply become political maneuvering to ensure that one’s own point system is in place.

Customized embryonic stem cells offer the potential to provide scientist more information about the development of diseased cells. By learning the derivation of specific diseases scientist would then have the opportunity to explore ways of preventing or treating the diseased cells. Researchers could potentially identify ways to treat cancer and genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, juvenile diabetes etc. Most people do not need to go far from their immediate circle of acquaintances to know people who are affected by these diseases. It seems that such research should be supported. Of course this new field of research has generated a number ethical concerns. I think that most people would agree that a utilitarian approach to the problem is not satisfactory, but why is it a problem? Such reasoning affects not only the subject i.e. the embryos but also those making the decisions to support such research i.e. potentially me. Consider the dilemma in the Russian Novel Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov the protagonist in Doestoyevski’s story is convinced that an old miserly woman who runs a pawn shop could be killed, so he can use the money to help the poor. I do not mean to draw a direct parrallel with embryonic stem cells. However the consequences of Raskolnikov's actions are interesting. As the story unfolds the very act leads to his own destruction. The destruction in his life is not simply the punishment from the law, but the punishment that comes from the reasoning that led to the act. The book has a great happy ending that I do not want to spoil if you haven’t read the work. The story provides an interesting reflection on utilitarian reasoning. No ethical decisions are made in a vacuum. I am concerned that such research will have unforeseen consequences for the way we ascribe worth to individuals. The concern that I fear is not simply the protection of the “unborn”, but the way such ascription of worth will affect the way potential supporters of the research (again me) view themselves.

Just a Test

This is my first post, just testing to see if it works