At the Heart of It All

The scriptures referred to are Mark 6:14-29.

One of the lecture series I'm listening to through The Great Courses is “Moral Decision Making: How to Approach Everyday Ethics.” The second lecture is called, “Is it Ever Permissible to Lie?” And Dr. Clancy Martin uses a story that heightens the stakes. You answer your door to frantic knocking and see that it is an old man bleeding heavily. He says he is being chased by a woman who is trying to kill him. You let him inside but before you can call 911 you hear more knocking. This time it is a woman carrying a bloody ax. She asks if there is a bleeding old man in your house. Because, she says, she intends to kill him. Do you lie to her?

Almost everyone would say “Yes!” And most of the philosophers Dr. Martin discusses would see lying justified in this case. But I was surprised to find that a couple of philosophers, including Immanuel Kant, felt that you must never lie. Truth is too important a value and, besides, you are depriving the woman of information she needs to make a valid moral choice!

This situation may sound absurd but it happens in real life. Corrie Ten Boom's entire family hid Jews from the Nazis during World War 2. Corrie deceived the authorities, forged ration cards and otherwise circumvented the law. Her brother and his wife also hid Jews at their house. But when the S.S. came and asked if there were Jews in the house, Corrie's sister-in-law did not think it was Christian to lie. So she told them, “Yes, they are under the table.” The Nazis lifted the tablecloth and saw no one and Corrie's sister-in-law began to laugh. They dismissed her as crazy and left. But the woman had told the truth. There were Jews hidden under the table. Under the rug under the table. Under the trapdoor in the floor covered by the rug. The hidden Hebrews were lucky the authorities weren't more imaginative or more precise in their questioning.

Nobody should break laws willy-nilly or discard rules whenever it suits them. Rules and laws are, or should be, attempts to make the world more just and fair. But we all know of instances where following the letter of the law can lead to injustice. We all remember how in 2012 a lifeguard on Hallandale Beach was fired for saving a man's life. Tomas Lopez left his station and saved a man who was drowning outside his designated zone. He was fired, his supervisor said, due to liability issues! Apparently a lifeguard watching passively while a man dies is legally more acceptable.

Jesus encountered this often whenever he was attacked for healing people on the Sabbath. Evidently the Pharisees considered it work, though Jesus never used his building tools in healing, never constructed anything in the process nor did he ever get paid for his healings. Jesus pointed out that, first, he was doing good on the Sabbath, not evil (Luke 6:9), secondly, God was at work on the Sabbath (John 5:16-17) and, thirdly, the Sabbath was made for man's benefit, not vice versa (Mark 2:27). But more importantly, he pointed out that his critics would technically violate the Sabbath should one of their livestock fall down a well. (Matthew 12:11-12) In other words, saving a life and restoring a living being to health outweighed the other moral considerations. And indeed, modern Orthodox Judaism recognizes this principle. In fact, an observant Jew can violate any of the 613 commandments found in the Torah, except idolatry and murder, if it is necessary to save a life. So, for instance, rabbis do not condemn those Jews hidden from the Nazis for eating the non-Kosher food provided by their Gentile rescuers.

In most ethical systems there is a hierarchy of values. While ideally, you observe all the rules of the moral code, wise thinkers realize that sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances where two moral values clash. In that case, the rule you follow is the one which has primacy. In healthcare, we follow the principle laid down in the 3^rd century B.C. by the Greek physician Hippocrates, summarized later as “First, do no harm.” In other words, there are times where there is great risk of harming a patient by following a certain course of treatment but relatively little chance of it doing good. In such cases, the doctor is to restrain himself rather than make the patient worse.

And I like that Hippocrates distinguished between harm and hurt. Sometimes to make a patient better you may have to cause them pain. Say someone broke his leg hiking and was found after 2 days and the doctor sees that the bones have begun to reknit themselves but out of alignment. He may have to re-break the leg to get everything back in position so it will heal properly and the person will be able to walk again. Any pain he is causing the patient is outweighed by the function he is restoring to the person's leg. Again preventing and alleviating pain is a value we in healthcare strive to uphold, especially unnecessary pain, and of course the doctor would use something to kill the pain before re-breaking the leg, but if there is a conflict between preventing pain and preventing harm, the latter consideration is more vital.

The Jews of the first century A.D. also realized there must be a hierarchy of values even in an ethical system given by God through Moses and asked Jesus for his opinion about which of the 613 commandments was the greatest. (Matthew 22:36-39) Jesus said the command to love God with all we are and have was the prime commandment. But then, unasked, he threw in the second most important one: to love one's neighbor as one loved oneself. Jesus said all the other commandments are derived from these two (Matthew 22:40) and that no other commandment could usurp these from their positions at the apex of the moral hierarchy. (Mark 12:31)

And yet there are people who call themselves Christian who forget this. They think that breaking any one of the rules in the Bible, like, say, women not covering their hair, or worse yet, rules that aren't actually in the Bible, like any prohibition concerning birth control, are just as important as the commandment to love everyone, if not more so. That's tantamount to confusing a misdemeanor with a felony.

Recently a megachurch censured a group of women for announcing to the media the sexual misconduct of their superstar preacher. The elders said the women should have let the discipline be handled in-house. But they had gone to the elders and nothing was being done. These things had been going on for years and various people in the church had tried to get the matters dealt with to no avail. The elders told the women that for them to go public would be “unbiblical.” And when the allegation surfaced the elders said the women were lying and the superstar preacher was innocent. However as more allegations came out, eventually the elders reversed themselves. But in all of this, they were more concerned about the preacher's reputation (and the church's) than the well-being of the women he had sexually assaulted.

We see this in our society, where some people have said they see no problem with separating foreign children from their parents, though being in this country illegally is only a misdemeanor. Should we start taking kids away from their parents if they get a parking ticket? No. Because usually we believe the punishment should fit, not exceed, the seriousness of the crime.

I once had an otherwise friendly home healthcare patient rail at me one day because my church has a headquarters! I don't know where she got this, though I knew her church met in her home. But this was a big issue to her apparently. Finally I said to her, “Myrtle, my salvation doesn't depend on whether my church has a headquarters or not. It depends on Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and what my response to him is.” And, thankfully, she was well-informed enough in theology that she knew it was true. My church headquarters never came up again.

If your moral code (or belief system) is made up of things that are all of equal importance then it will have the same weakness as a chain. Break one link and you've broken the whole thing. Often when people leave their faith it is because they were raised with and taught such a undifferentiated conception of morality or beliefs. And when they face an ethical conflict that goes against just one thing, such as their sibling or child comes out as gay, or they themselves break a rule, the whole thing comes apart and their faith is shattered.

You've probably heard me compare our faith to a bicycle wheel. There are things which are essential. They are part of the hub and must be central for the thing to work properly. Then there are things which are important but not essential. They are like the spokes. You can't get anywhere without some spokes but the number can vary and on rare occasions you may have to change a spoke. And finally there are things that are neither essential nor important. They are like the tire, which not only can be changed but periodically has to be.

When it comes to Christian ethics, Jesus has told us that at the center of our behavior must be our love of God and our love of other people, including our enemies. There are also very important expressions of that love which should radiate from it: doing God's will, taking up your cross, not putting things like money above God, not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing, not slandering, not being greedy or arrogant, praying for those who persecute you, giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, welcoming the alien, visiting the prisoner, taking care of your parents, etc. Other things fall to the periphery: exactly how we worship, precisely how we organize a church (like where we put its headquarters or if we have one), our particular way of dressing for worship, specifically how we respond to new technology or to cultural changes, and so on.

Now how does this relate to our lectionary reading? In our gospel we read of the dismaying circumstances of the death of John the Baptist. And it is at least partially because Herod does not seem to understand the hierarchy of moral values. He makes a rash promise and then when his step-daughter makes an outrageous request, he finds himself in a dilemma. She wants John's head. Herod doesn't want John dead. He liked to listen to the prophet. We are told, “The king was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oath and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.” (Mark 6:26) There are some Near-Eastern customs involved here. Herod has given his word. Your word is your bond. It is an honor/shame culture. He doesn't want to break his word or lose face before his guests. And those are very strong factors in that culture. On the other hand, a man's life is at stake. In the end, we see what is more important to Herod.

In Catholic ethics they talk of disordered loves. It's not so much that the loves are wrong but that we often put them in the wrong order in our personal hierarchy of values. For instance when you betray secrets which a friend confided in you so that you may have some gossip to share with others, you show that you value your love of popularity over your love of your friend. Now we can't say that John was Herod's friend but obviously Herod valved how he looked to his guests, and possibly staying on the good side of his wife, over the life of John.

We often see that leaders in this world value other things over human life: money, power, their image as a tough guy, the privilege of one group, racial purity, and/or campaign promises. And believe it or not, elected officials hate breaking those promises. According to the statistics and analysis site, fivethirtyeight.com, studying the years between 1944 and 1999, presidents have kept on average 67% of their promises. The site said that when they didn't, it was usually because of changing circumstances. And that's true of all of us. “Sorry, kids. We know we promised you a trip to Disneyland but Dad got laid off. We have to change our plans.” Jesus talked about the king who counts the cost, realizes he can't defeat a superior army and negotiates a peace instead. But that's because he can't win. You never hear of a leader refraining from a war because people will get killed. Especially if they figure most of the people killed will be enemies.

But John, in his prison, could do little to harm Herod. The ruler had all the power. And he could have said to his step-daughter, “No! That's grotesque! I am not ending a man's life on your whim. Pick something else.” But he didn't want to break his promise even to save a life. Herod's moral priorities were all wrong.

In this life we will find ourselves facing moral dilemmas, situations in which 2 ethical values clash. Our friends, to whom we want to say “yes,” may want to do something that is dangerous, to which we should say “no.” Our company, to which we owe loyalty and from which we and our coworkers derive our living, may be secretly doing wrong, which we should either stop or else blow the whistle on. We may discover one friend cheating on his or her spouse, who is also a friend. One day we may face having a loved one in the end stages of a terminal disease, and the choice will be whether to keep them alive longer by heroic and probably uncomfortable measures or to end their suffering by letting the person we love go. These are difficult decisions. And if we don't have a hierarchy of values to start from, these choices will be even more painful.

Jesus gave us a beginning and a foundation: love God first and love people next. Put them above our feelings for stuff like money, power, and material things. We need to put God and people ahead of things like popularity, revenge, being seen as right, and seeing others as tools for us to manipulate for our own ends. We must love persons and not things. And we must not treat people as if they were things. In all we do, we need to put the love of God and the well-being of people foremost. We must treat all people with love and not just those we like or who are like us.

Even if we build on what Jesus laid down for us, it won't make all moral dilemmas go away. After all, at the heart of our faith is God dealing with a huge dilemma: what to do with a world of people he loves who keep harming each other, themselves and their relationship with him. He made the excruciating decision to absorb the brunt on the harm himself through the person of his Son and then the gracious decision to spread spiritual healing through his Spirit dwelling in those who respond to the gospel.

We live in a complex and fallen world. There is no “one size fits all” solution to all our problems, not even our moral problems. But love goes a long way. As it says in 1 Peter 4:8, "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins." Not all but a multitude. So based on what Jesus said and did, here's a rule of thumb: When in doubt, do the most loving thing.