Upcoming Sunday Worship Services
“On What Basis, Right from Wrong?”
One of the hardest tasks when writing a sermon is knowing where to begin. I usually start my preparation with several hours background of reading. With a broad subject like morality starting with a simple definition can be surprisingly helpful. It can narrow a topic and offer a sense of direction. Morality, it turns out, is “a code or set of principles by which men [and women] live.” - A set of principles - Fine. But how do we narrow that down? which set of principles? And why?
One logical place to turn is Plato. He, in fact has an opinion. Plato believes that the good life should be the foundational vision for any well-reasoned system. He believed, furthermore that humankind would automatically act in such a way as to achieve the good life. But fellow compatriot, Aristotle, disagreed. Aristotle proposed happiness as the raison d’etre of a moral system.
But then again, the Christian approach disagrees completely with both of these esteemed Greeks. Christianity’s moral code isn’t concerned with the good life or happiness. Morality is defined as whatever expresses God’s will.
But, in truth, we haven’t exhausted even a fraction of the options if we stop here. There’s utilitarianism which says that whatever produces the most happiness for the most people is the place to start. But why stop there? Spinoza , Kant , Hegel, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Skinner – have all weighed in… their answers are all over the place – are we to be good for God? For ourselves? For the sake of convenience, for the sake of our mental health?
And you know what? My instincts tell me that unpacking any of these formulas will result in something academic, dry and not especially useful when the rubber hits the road in daily living. We can’t solve any of this today. In fact, as Unitarian Universalists it won’t be possible to get us all on one page about what morality is or ought to be no matter how desirable a firm answer might be.
Even so, my thought is that you care a great deal about morality – about knowing right from wrong – and with that in mind I’d like to share with you , “a gut check” in the form of a multiple choice quiz: So the question is:
What Is "Morality"?
I’ll read the
answers in Multiple choice format – I invite you to listen carefully and decide
which description of morality is closest to your point of view:
A) Morality is the opposite of "fun".
B) It’s living in accordance with real faith.
C) It is something that inherently implies judging other people… and judging other people is immoral… so therefore, morality is… immoral.
D) A set of rules given by a higher authority; if you conform to them, you will be rewarded; if you don't conform to them, you will be punished.
E) It's a natural way of acting for those who understand the principles of psychological health.
F) It's an absolute law that just happened to originate somewhere near your hometown.
G) It is whatever or whoever we "would" be, if we could ever just summon up enough willpower.
H) It doesn't matter what it is, because we're all going to do whatever we feel like anyway.
I) Morality is just jealousy with a halo, as H.G. Wells once said."
J) It's essentially a kind of cosmic economic model, a.k.a., Blockbuster Morality: you're free to keep the movie an extra day or two, but you have to pay the late fee. (Blockbuster is now trying to get rid of the late fee – we’ll talk about what that means a little later.)
K) Morality is the enforcement of conduct through a type of coercive agency or police force, whether that force is physical and external or is a force inside oneself.
L) I agree with Ernest Hemingway who said: "I only know that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
M) It is living in such a way that you are in harmony with your "conscience," and are free from inner conflict.
N) All of the above.
O) None of the above
I cribbed those answers from a Gen X’er web site called LiveReal, which has many earnest and high quality chat rooms that explore the meaning of life, including morality. Their website says, “The whole question of morality nowadays often conjures up images of prudes, Puritans, do-gooders, preachers, phonies, intolerant hypocrites and just uncool folks who don’t have fun… But… there’s nothing uncool about wasting your life, sleepwalking through it or being a general dolt when it comes to living it. Being smart about how you live your life is always better than not.”
Well said. TheLiveReal quiz (from where I stole the idea) offered eight-one possible multiple-choice answers! At the end of the quiz was this tongue-in-cheek comment.:
(Please note: This is a quiz that, in a way, you’re already really taking,
we’re just putting it down on paper here;
You will probably be graded, but may not be;
We’re not sure when or even if you’ll find out your grade,
And we might know who will or won’t be grading your papers,
But then again, we may be wrong.)
In a cheeky way a good point is being made – we make moral decisions every day – Life itself is the test. And we may or may not be being graded by you-know-who!
Just this week Larry and I were in New York City and Larry lost his cell phone, apparently while scouting around looking for a parking space. So I held down the fort at the car and called his cell while he retraced his steps down a couple of streets, hoping to hear it ring. It didn’t even occur to me that someone else would respond to the ringing phone. But sure enough, “Allo?” said a man’s voice. The disembodied voice stayed on the phone with me until he spotted Larry. As Larry approached he gestured to him with the phone, “Your wife?” and we lived happily ever after.
I contrast this with an episode a few months ago. I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car waiting for my son who was momentarily inside a real estate office picking up a key for his newly rented apartment. I noticed someone walking the sidewalk, stoop next to our car pause, pick up something that seemed to be a wallet. He didn’t go through it or act surprised, so I assumed it was his own. But five minutes later my son came out of the real estate office looking frantically for his wallet. I dashed down the street looking for the stranger, but he was long gone with my son’s wallet in hand, which contained his first and last month’s deposit in cash.
If you were to ask me which behavior surprised me most I have to admit that it was the generosity of the gentleman in New York, and that’s sad.
I grew up in a house probably like the one you grew up in – I was told to do some things because they were right, and not to do other things because they were wrong. A couple of Sundays ago one of our youngsters found $5 at the back of the sanctuary and all by herself she stood up at announcements and asked if anyone had lost it and for the owner to come forward. (For your information no one did.) Anyway, my thought at the time – and still is – that there’s a child that’s being raised right.
But as I thought about it further it occurred to me that we may have been reacting in part to her goodness and in part with pleasure to the innocence of childhood. Call me a cynic, but I wondered if one of our senior youths had found it what they would have done… or if one of our adults had found it. Would they have gone to the trouble? It occurred to me that it’s easier to obey right and wrong for their own sakes when you think that’s what everybody else does. And that’s the view of childhood. Things get gray fast as we grow up.
I can still remember when I was just a little bit older than our youngster in question grappling with my dawning realization that people often do things because they are right, and convenient. People often do things when they are right and there is a reward attached, or to avoid a punishment. But right in the absence of convenience or reward or when you have something to lose is a weaker draw than it should be.
I read recently about a man who never paid the toll when driving on the highway because he felt there was corruption in the government and the roads were terrible. In the same way there are people who cheat on their taxes because they say the code isn’t fair enough. If someone is willing to oppose an injustice in the light of day then they are engaged in civil disobedience. If not, then they are rationalizing and society is hurt by their actions.
People say you can’t legislate morality, but surely we want laws which forbid what is wrong and command what is right, even if they cannot and do not forbid everything that is wrong or command everything thing that is right.
And in fact there are many moral arguments being played out in our public square today. Religious and social liberals protect contraception and would allow gay marriage; they’re legislatively aggressive in protecting the environment against business and try to be vigilant that the government does not favor one religion above others in the public square. Religious and social conservatives would outlaw abortion, and gay marriage. Some would outlaw contraception and the teaching of evolution. And then there’s the perennial issue of prayer in the schools. The use of steroids in sports is another question that’s before us right now.
We are fortunate that we live in a democracy where the answers to these questions are subject to the will of the people.
No one really disputes that being good is good for society or that we should do what is right. Whether we do what is right because the Bible says so or because we want to cultivate a clear conscience or because then there’s no worry of being caught isn’t particularly important. What is important is that we take the imperative to be good seriously. Goodness is hard because we often have something to lose.
The question of how to identify what’s right is another area where the trouble lies. We Unitarian Universalists don’t hand our children a catechism with all memorizable answers and we don’t have the coercive pressure of heaven and hell bearing down on us. We have an aversion to the idea of a cosmic authority. Our faith is difficult in that each of us must seek the light of goodness on our own. We do have our seven principles to guide us and the world’s scriptures available as resources. Sometimes I think this can be construed as too much freedom and too many resources.
Being good can be hard, it can be unpopular, it can require sacrifice – it’s a struggle we live with – we are being tested every day. If this is an area you’d like to explore more closely with others – if you’d like to make an examination of your own reflexes and beliefs, the opportunity is coming up in the form of Peter’s course entitled, “Being Good for Nothing” which will run on Wednesdays in April. See the sign up sheet on the Parlor table.
I close this morning with something called The Paradoxical Commandments, written by Kent Keith in 1968:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you might win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today it may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men
And women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.