Sunday, February 8, 2009

Morality: Black and White?

Morality is the motivation that drives reasoning of right and wrong.

How many of us believe that to every problem the moral choice is black or white? How many of us believe there are gray areas?

On the phone last night my mother was telling me in an exasperated voice that when she was employed at a military university cafeteria she overheard one student tell another that she should be fine because nothing is ever black and white, it’s always gray. My mother vehemently disagrees. My response to that was to ask her if she thought there could be, not that there is but that there could be, one set of rules that could possibly govern and provide the correct moral answer for every situation. The question came from an essay I had read the night before by Gareth McCaughan on utilitarianism. He states:


Firstly, about rules. There are a lot of rules in the Bible, and many Christian
communities have come up with others (either deduced from the ones in the Bible,
or not). I distrust rules, even when they come from the very most reliable
sources. It seems improbable to me that any finite collection of rules can
really give a perfectly accurate account of what one should and should not
do.

McCaughan is stating this as an introduction to the question of what a satisfactory set of ethics would be. He attempts to pit Christianity against utilitarianism and then, in the same essay, attempts to take Christian ethics and use them as a basis for utilitarianistic thinking.

Now, up until last night I would be perfectly content with my answer to the question posed to my mother (and implied by the last sentence in the quote) as being “no.” It’s very easy to say that many situations are to complicated, complex, and convoluted for any one basic set of rules to be able to truly guide you.

Take, for example, a situation (which I think I recall from my college ethics class) where a man’s wife is dyng. He does not have the money to purchase the medicine that would save her life. The pharmacy refuses to give the man the medicine or allow him to pay for it in installments. The man is contemplating stealing the medicine he needs to save his wife.

Most of us are going to say that this situation is not, cannot be, black and white. On the one hand we know stealing is wrong. And on the other, is it right for the man to allow his wife to die when he can prevent it?

So, after dropping the question on my mother she gives the answer that I knew she would (but I was using the question as a segue to the example above). She said “There is one [set of finite rules].” She, of course, was referring to the Ten Commandments. In response to which I asked her, really more just contemplating that asking, if there is a commandment appropriate to govern every situation in which a person has to make a moral decision. And being an unwavering Christian, she said there is.

Here I began my normal critical analysis out load. I gave my mother the situation I mentioned above and asked her to use the moral code from the bible to deduce the correct resolution. She said stealing is wrong no matter how it is justified. It doesn’t mean that anyone would let their wife die because of it; it just means that stealing is wrong.

However, the commandments also teach us that life is sacred. The man would be choosing one sin over another. There is nothing in the bible, that I am aware of, that gives one sin precedence over another, no instructions on how to reason morally. McCaughan says as much in the same article I mentioned above.



It is tempting to infer from the absence of an ethical system in the Bible that
there is none (beyond the requirement to do the perhaps-opaque will of God); but
there is no justification for this, even if one takes a very high view of the
authority of Scripture. If you are going to rescue someone from drowning, you
just throw them a rope and tell them to grab it; you don't try to give them
swimming lessons.

Here McCaughan is saying that while the commandments are laid out, there is no further instruction for following them, no structured guidance for the situations we will face as humans.

It is true that an easy look at the commandments can leave a person feeling like there is something missing. You begin to ask “well, if this certain situation came up would I really have a choice and would my action really be a sin.”

I often find my self asking other questions like “What about the killing during war? How can Christians volunteer for the military? If you killed someone in self-defense, is it a sin? Is it considered suicide if...” and other such questions. Usually the response is "I don't know. I'm not God."

So, as I have said, before last night my answer was that most situations leave you in shades of gray. But the reality of it is quite simple according to the commandments, and I see it this way now. The actions you take, if they are a sin and no matter the reasons, are black and white. The reasons for choosing to sin are shades of gray…and purple…and red…and aquamarine, etc. Stealing will always be a sin, as will killing, and so on.
However, if God can see the struggles we face his judgment can be sound. We must look at our situations with an honest eye and see if we really put ourselves there. If we are the cause for the reason to sin God may not be as forgiving as if we are not.



As a side note: In regards to the cited essay. I don’t think McCaughan is half as intelligent as he tries to make himself sound. I think he is making excuses for his indecisiveness in knowing himself. Based on his web site I infer that he is a jackass.

3 comments:

  1. Very Thought full, I often am pissed off by hard choices like that. It is very hard to tell what is moral or immoral. I can see where your mom is coming from, stealing is stealing. So in that sense the rule has been broken. But i do not think that in that case it is immoral or a sin to steal. In Sunday school we were told that an easy way to tell if something was a sin or not was to see if anyone was getting hurt in the process. Stealing hurts the store clerk, but letting the wife hurts the husband the woman and the clerk more since he also let her die. The clerk could have given the man the medicine for free. So I think it is not a sin to steal. But the fact that the man was forced to steal is a sin by the clerk for being so greedy he would let someone die.

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  2. We have laws and rules to govern society; otherwise, everyone would do what is right in their own eyes. The issue is not what is right or wrong, it is society not wanting to take responsibility for their action. It is a lot easier for me to forgive someone who admits their errors, then to deal with people who ignore them, as if they did not happen or that it does not matter.

    Thank you for your encouragement and helping me grow.

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  3. I agree with your forgiveness policy. I was just thinking about how Catholics go to confession and Mormons repent. In the hypothetical situation I posted the husband probably would just have to except the sin of stealing because he couldn't truely confess, because he probably wouldn't truly feel bad for saving his wife. That's where God's judgement come in and is all that really matters in the long run.

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