I prefer this interpretation of the story in Genesis to the more traditional interpretation that Adam and Eve were bad so God put humankind on time-out for the rest of its days, inasmuch as it transforms a prehistoric story of sin and judgment into a story with continued dynamic meaning in everyday life. It transforms the story of the fall of humanity from paradise from a static event cemented to the distant past that lends itself to legalism and binary morality into an obligation to thoughtfully define for ourselves the morality of our actions on a daily basis.
It is this sense of individual thoughtfulness and self-definition that I find most appealing. The Latin and Greek roots for the words "morals" and "ethics" are, respectively: mores, which means the same as the English word "mores," or customs; and ethos, or habit. Accordingly, both morality and ethics are judgments of good and evil, right and wrong, that have been chosen by group consensus. The former is an individual's more specific interpretation of collective values, the latter a more codified and concrete expression of nebulous popular mores. In both instances, because they are values that are created by consensus, individual action and interpretation has the ability to allow them to stagnate, unchanging, push them to a higher state of development, or let them revert to tolerance for the nastier tendencies of human nature.
Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, wrote about the "ethical act of faith," or an action in response to singular instances that violates of transcends a static ethical code but is still an ethical action. Kierkegaard was describing a divinely mandated act which violated codified divine law.
In our current, more flexible sense of the moral and ethical, an ethical act of faith is one which transcends of violates popular ethics, undertaken in good conscience under the presupposition that it is an action that if widely accepted, will better the collective conscience of humanity as a whole. It is a thesis arguing, through action, for a redefinition of good, evil, justice, and similar moral/ethical abstractions. It is my contention that, having gained the ability to situate actions and circumstance in a moral framework, we have the individual responsibility to define that moral framework through our actions.
There are some who will doubtless argue that the Bible is the WORD OF GOD that contains TRUTH and we should follow it blindly, to the letter. This argument is oversimple to the point of gross negligence and general wrongness. First, it is an underhanded attempt to shift power dynamics in the favor of one group by virtue of acceptance of an immutable TRUTH that is fundamentally defined by that self-same group. This tendency necessarily lends it to legalism and the condemnation of other parties. I'll refute this sense of being righteous judges by quoting Romans 2.1: "Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others;for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things."
The other, and largest, fallacy of this WORD OF GOD IS THE TRUTH tendency is that it fails to recognize that its own interpretation of scripture as TRUTH is nothing more than an exaggerated version of the general social fabric. A prime example of this is the "God hates fags," tendency of some of the more rabid varieties of Christianity. The scriptural basis that the cite from Romans comes from 1.24-27:
How is it that homosexuality is a so disgraceful that largely due to popular morality and religiosity the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, a few crazies are picketing funerals because the downfall of America will come due our tolerance for homosexuals, and a significant segment of the population is opposed to homosexuality, but no one cares at all that women are running around with their heads uncovered?
It's because even the BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD AND THE TRUTH folks are acting upon a morality that is grounded in mores rather than immutable TRUTH. As it stands in Christian theology, divine judgment is built on a foundation of omniscience. People, on the other hand, are not omniscient. Accordingly, every act of moral or ethical judgment is, for the religious, the hope that their judgment, through faith, is in accordance with divine judgment.
For the nonreligious, it is an act of faith that their decision is for the common good.
In both cases, however, the wellspring from which the judgment flows is the social fabric of commonly held values.
To this point, the discussion of morals/ethics has been descriptive and to a limited extent analytical, but the question must be asked: why does it matter that each individual moral and ethical act is based upon commonly held values and has the power to change or redirect the consensus?
My answer to this question rests upon the value of thought. Arendt noted that she was struck during the war crimes tribunal for Eichmann by "the banality of evil" and particularly by the thoughtlessness that pervaded ever aspect of Eichmann's life. It was not a thoughtlessness due to stupidity or ignorance, but rather due to a simple lack of thought. He simply did not make the effort to think beyond the level of thought necessary to accomplish his daily tasks.
My point is this: There is a tendency to subsume ourselves in our daily routine, the need to work, eat, sleep, pay bills, run errands, take care of our family, pursue our hobbies. These activities can be accomplished with a relatively low level of thought, with limited need for abstraction, and for little need to think of our place in the order of things, or to spend a while contemplating abstractions or ideals. Lonergan described this as the bias towards common sense, to that level of thought best suited for the accomplishment of limited and practical tasks.
We are not, however, merely the technicians of our own lives, trying to make all the little cogs fit nicely with each other so that our life becomes a smoothly operating machine taking us somewhere. We have an obligation to think about where that machine is taking us. We are human beings, little pinpricks of existence that compose the mass of humanity, and inconsequential though we may seem given the vast scope of humanity, each of our actions define the character of humanity. It is our responsibility to create out of our life a microcosm of the humanity that we would like to exist.
These are my thoughts on Easter Sunday.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves because they exhanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reasons God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women gave exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.It is worth noting that the bit about not judging others is in fact a direct response to this and the following five verses about the general iniquity of nonbelievers. It is also worth noting that Paul appears to imply that having a dick in your ass is enough punishment for homosexuality. Further, in 1 Corinthians 11.5 Paul writes "...any woman who prays of prophesies with her head unveiled it disgraces her head..."
How is it that homosexuality is a so disgraceful that largely due to popular morality and religiosity the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, a few crazies are picketing funerals because the downfall of America will come due our tolerance for homosexuals, and a significant segment of the population is opposed to homosexuality, but no one cares at all that women are running around with their heads uncovered?
It's because even the BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD AND THE TRUTH folks are acting upon a morality that is grounded in mores rather than immutable TRUTH. As it stands in Christian theology, divine judgment is built on a foundation of omniscience. People, on the other hand, are not omniscient. Accordingly, every act of moral or ethical judgment is, for the religious, the hope that their judgment, through faith, is in accordance with divine judgment.
For the nonreligious, it is an act of faith that their decision is for the common good.
In both cases, however, the wellspring from which the judgment flows is the social fabric of commonly held values.
To this point, the discussion of morals/ethics has been descriptive and to a limited extent analytical, but the question must be asked: why does it matter that each individual moral and ethical act is based upon commonly held values and has the power to change or redirect the consensus?
My answer to this question rests upon the value of thought. Arendt noted that she was struck during the war crimes tribunal for Eichmann by "the banality of evil" and particularly by the thoughtlessness that pervaded ever aspect of Eichmann's life. It was not a thoughtlessness due to stupidity or ignorance, but rather due to a simple lack of thought. He simply did not make the effort to think beyond the level of thought necessary to accomplish his daily tasks.
My point is this: There is a tendency to subsume ourselves in our daily routine, the need to work, eat, sleep, pay bills, run errands, take care of our family, pursue our hobbies. These activities can be accomplished with a relatively low level of thought, with limited need for abstraction, and for little need to think of our place in the order of things, or to spend a while contemplating abstractions or ideals. Lonergan described this as the bias towards common sense, to that level of thought best suited for the accomplishment of limited and practical tasks.
We are not, however, merely the technicians of our own lives, trying to make all the little cogs fit nicely with each other so that our life becomes a smoothly operating machine taking us somewhere. We have an obligation to think about where that machine is taking us. We are human beings, little pinpricks of existence that compose the mass of humanity, and inconsequential though we may seem given the vast scope of humanity, each of our actions define the character of humanity. It is our responsibility to create out of our life a microcosm of the humanity that we would like to exist.
These are my thoughts on Easter Sunday.
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