One of the benefits and detriments of foraying into philosophy, as I've done only as an amateur but a better-educated-than-the-average amateur, is the degree to which it fosters moral skepticism. You can see two people argue very effectively on an issue that seems clear to you, realizing just how weak are the grounds on which you stand making moral judgments. For just one example, Peter Singer argues for infanticide, which I find abhorrent, but his arguments are not simply fallacies. Listening to Singer argue this issue with another philosopher sickens my stomach, as I see clearly that Singer is wrong. I have little doubt on this. Yet explaining WHY he is wrong is far more difficult. Other moral issues are murkier, and so making pronouncements either way are even harder. Doubt increases as the intuitions get weaker and the grounds become ever harder to clarify.
Something similar happens in the Bible. We are told that compared to God, all human moral striving is 'but filthy rags' and appears as such before Him. If we are at such a moral deficit, on what grounds can any of us claim to know when someone else is doing something truly wrong or sinful? Indeed, one of the primary grounds for forgiveness found in the New Testament is a recognition of my own sinfulness. Not just as a means of avoiding hypocrisy, but as a means of recognizing the limits of my own moral status. I can never claim a God's-Eye-View even when I am reasonably sure that God is living within me.
Yet making moral judgments is unavoidable, and necessary. One must act with conviction even when one acts uncertainly. I am thus stuck speaking confidently about issues with which I have little confidence. These considerations, one philosophical and one theological, should cause me to be more tolerant of those who do not believe or act as I do or think they should. This uncertainty becomes a ground for acceptance of other positions, a willingness to compromise where necessary, and an ability to debate an issue without hating the other side.
However, when this realization becomes paralyzing, when I am no longer able to act with conviction, then this awareness becomes a detriment. It also makes it hard to "caucus" with other like-minded individuals, as they often are possessed of moral certitude for which there is no justification. Indeed, sometimes I am more passionate about the uncertainty in a moral dilemma than defending either side of that dilemma.
Knowing that one is nothing before God can, paradoxically, be a ground for action in that it creates a humility of spirit and an awareness of the needs of the world that lives without Him. But to the degree it becomes a stumbling block, it can be destructive.
Reading this, and the next piece you posted exhausts me to my very marrow. The weariness is this: If I act, I may sin; if I don't act; I may sin; regardless of which I choose there is no way of knowing if I'm choosing rightly.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me just want to throw my hands up and stop bothering with right, wrong, morality and attempting to determine the good. There is no point. I can't ever get it right or be sure I got it right. It is a game that cannot be won.
Whenever I encounter a game I can't win, I don't play. Yet this seems a game I cannot escape.
Being a moral creature becomes a weight, a burden intolerable, a thing to be put aside as quickly as possibleI long for distraction or forgetfulness to remove this drudgery from my conscious mind, if only for a few moments.
It is this burden that robs my hours of joy. Each moment becomes only another opportunity to be wrong, to harm someone, intentionally or not and so become part of the great Problem and not the solution.
Even discussing it saddens me terribly.
This puts a lie to "My yoke is easy and my burden light." If anything the yoke is intolerable and crushing. How does one do all of this and yet feel any joy or happiness connected to it?
Forgiveness. There is no moral answer to the problem of sin, no place for an easy conscience. There is, however, the joy of God's gracious forgiveness of the undeserved sinner. God sees you as you are, and frees you by HIS power. In fact, the very expectation of a moral answer to the problem of sin betrays a lack of faith and truth, by removing the expectation that it is by God's mercy alone that we are saved, that salvation, and freedom is a grace. "Sin boldly, and repent often", to paraphrase Luther. Your response here, in fact, reminds me very much of Luther's and of my own for that matter. I find peace and an easy yoke in the reality of Christ's love and forgiveness. There is no way to be a morally responsible person, a person who is truly aware of the human condition, and to have peace and happiness without God's love, and without Jesus Christ (as the manifestation and revelation of that love) in particular. It is only by relying on the grace of God, on God's mercy, that we have any hope of happiness.
ReplyDeleteI guess that settles that.
ReplyDelete