On Morality
Deuteronomy 24:10-22
On Morality
When you hang for all you are worth on the edge of a cliff, you don’t long for your sports car or a boat cruise but for a simple hand reaching out to you. When you are out in the dessert and run out of water, you don’t fantasize about beers and cocktails but long for a simple sip of water. When you are lonely, you don’t dream of fame and crowds but of one friend sitting with you. No, I don’t really know what it is like to hang on to the edge of a cliff, being stuck in the dessert without water or even what it is like to be really lonely but the point I am trying to make is this: In difficult times, simple things means most to us. A difficult time has this hidden gift…that it tends to take us back to the basics.
I dare say we do find ourselves in a difficult time. It is a complicated time. It is a time of great division and fragmentation. Most people still have moral values and want to be good people but like never before in history, people disagree on what should determine what is right and what is wrong. Allow me to give you a brief tour on just how a confusing cacophony of voices there is when it comes to morality.
There is the libertarian view that says what gives individuals the most freedom should determine what is right and what is wrong. Government should intervene as little as possible. Individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. They should be free. But freedom defined in this way tends to be very selfish. It tends to only emphasize freedom from whereas the Bible reminds us that freedom needs to be not only from but also towards something and people. Freedom approach to individualistically is a freedom that tends to steal the freedom of others. Sometimes even the free market we all hail, isn’t really that free for all that try to participate in it. Though there is much to be said for human freedom and its importance this vision of right and wrong lacks.
There is the liberal view. In this view right and wrong is all about fairness. An equal playing field is emphasized, and government intervention is welcomed. But often this emphasis on equal opportunities which is a good thing, leads to a type of tyranny where equal outcomes instead of just equal opportunities are forced on everybody and takes away healthy motivation and competition that help us to reach new heights and breakthroughs.
There is the utilitarian view that states that right and wrong should be determined by what gives most people the greatest amount of happiness. Now, I am sure if we all eat a bottle of Nutella right now we will all be very happy but that doesn’t make it a good or a right thing to devour a whole jar of Nutella, does it? Happiness, momentary happiness wasn’t a constant in a single life lived on earth and certainly not in the most meaningful lives ever lived. It cannot be the sole determinate of what is right and what is wrong.
Then there is a recent, popular one which we can call the post modern one or even the Cultural Marxist one. It holds that right and wrong are solely determined by the privilege of those in power. Therefore, to get to what is a better morality, power structures and groups need to be exposed, attacked and taken down. What goes wrong in this view is that it tends to underestimate the fact that those in power sometimes also use that power for the better. It tends to be blind to the fact that groups not in power is not by that very notion sinless saints. It tends to be unable to see more to a person than his or her group identity and therefore it ends up being just as racist, sexist and cruel as the groups it attacked. In South Africa the ANC was a great liberation movement, strategically bring down the apartheid government but once you brought something down, you need to build something up and now these great liberators show themselves to be as corrupt and racist as unjust ones they dismantled.
So, now that I have you all depressed about how much disagreement there is in our world when it comes to a given such as morality, it is time to offer you something simple but profoundly helpful. I think there is a better way. Al these views I just mentioned, have valid points but all lack. The biblical view states that the only way human beings can know right and wrong, is to know the Creator as a good and loving being and trust His judgement on what is right and wrong. Yes, the details of morality are something we have to work out but the broad direction as to what is right, is something we are guided in. There are five things the Word says are the right kind of things to pursue. These things will in time make you a person filled with joy and peace and your community better if pursued diligently and constantly. As I go through them, please refrain from scoring yourself by for instance, comparing yourself to somebody else. It is not about perfection but about direction. How well we are doing compared to previous and future generations is hard to tell and we shouldn’t be obsessed with that question too much. But whether we are moving in the right direction, whether or not I feel an increasing magnetism toward the things God considers right, is an important indication of my relationship with him and my understanding of my faith. So here they are…
- Community: others have a claim on my wealth so I must give voluntarily
Much of what is written in Deuteronomy is directed at wealthy landowners who in their understanding got their land through God blessing them with it. Now instructions are given to not take everything one possibly could even though it is “your” land. You should leave sheaths for the poor and even olives (which was considered a luxury item). You should give back the pledge of a cloak at nighttime so the person wouldn’t sleep cold. You needed to share your wealth with the community in remembrance of the fact that not to long ago, you were in the very same position as the slave, widow, and refugee.
When I am a Christian my money is never just “my money”. It belongs to God and it follows God’s purposes. In the Christian understanding no property is absolutely “private”, even if I am the tile holder because God graciously let us live on his (private) property and our ways should reflect something of that. Now if you are more socialist leaning you think; “Take that all you greedy capitalists!” but hold your horses. It is striking that these guidelines were serious as they are not enforced from outside. It was expected to be expressed voluntarily by people’s whose hearts were so touched by God’s provision and love that they gladly offered what others needed. Can you see how the Bible goes above and behind the Capitalism vs socialism debate? It has corrections on both!
In every congregation people who serve the Lord teaches you something. One of the things one brother taught me in this congregation is a beautiful thing I will never forget: “You can never out give God”. Give, be generous like the God that is generous to you.
2. Equality: Everyone must be treated equally and with dignity
Leviticus 24: 22 says that there should be the same law for native born and foreign residents. Jesus treated leper and prostitute alike the same way He treated governors and rich people. God wants us to treat people equally because in His eyes…they are. Leveling playing fields, refusing bribes is a God honoring act. And yes, equal opportunities doesn’t have to mean equal outcomes. But strive to see and treat all people as equals. Even Maple Leaf fans. They are not lesser being, just misguided by blind loyalty.
3. Corporate responsibility: I am sometimes responsible for and involved in other people’s sins.
If you took a poor man’s cloak and he is cold and night time and he curses God…you are held responsible according to Deuteronomy 24 but not only you but also others that contributed indirectly to that man’s suffering and sin. In Daniel 9, Daniel repents for the sins of his ancestors. He takes responsibility for corporate sin. In 2 Samuel 21 God holds people accountable for injustices against a people’s group under the reign of Saul even thou Saul is not alive anymore. We are sometimes held responsible as a group for the sins of somebody because we participated in and benefitted from an unjust system that led a person into thinking he had no other option but to sin.
This must be the hardest one to swallow in an overly individualistic culture such as ours. In some African tribes, when a person breaks a law, he is sat down with the community and each then state how they love that person and how they think they might have supported him better. What makes corporate responsibility so difficult is that even though it is possible to admit and confess, it is very difficult and sometimes even impossible to pay restitution. Like a black man in Africa once told a friend of mine referring to Apartheid: “it is like your dad stole a bicycle form my dad. You came and said it was wrong and that you are sorry and I believe you but I still have no bicycle and you have many!” Corporate responsibility does however get easier the more people cooperate. That is why ignoring the claims of for instance, the black lives matter movement won’t make it go away. Quite the contrary! Acknowledging it and realizing how you might have benefitted from and participated in it, will actually bring greater calm and less violence. Because you cannot repay someone for what he suffered, it doesn’t mean that you at least acknowledging his pain wouldn’t be helpful in his healing. Last Sunday Neil shared with us his own painful memories of racism. If I go up to Neil and say: “Neil, here is 50 Cad, I hope you feel better now”, he will probably feel insulted even more. But I am sure if I go up to him and say that I am deeply saddened by the fact that he was ridiculed and harmed just because of his race, that might help him in his healing.
4. Individual Responsibility; I am ultimately responsible for all my sins but not all outcomes are because of sin
For the most part sin is treated as something you should take responsibility for as an individual. We should admit our mistakes and live with the consequences of it if we need to. Nowadays people tend to think that whenever they failed or did something wrong, it is the fault of others and the burden should be carried by everybody but themselves. That is nonsense. We all make mistakes and suffer consequences. Black people and First Nation People are overly represented in the prison system. Injustice might have played a role in them being incarcerated in such huge numbers but that does not mean that every single black man in jail is there solely because of his skin colour and discrimination. To own up to one’s own part is empowering. It is a crucial step in moving from a victim to a victor.
That being said when it comes to other people, one should be not to hasty to link an outcome with a personal failure or character flaw. There are really talented and hardworking businessmen and women that goes bankrupt because of economic circumstances more so than from mistakes of their own making. There are people who eat healthy and take good care of their bodies and still get really sick because of genetics or Covid. We are not only broken people through sin, we also live in a broken-by-sin-world that sometimes causes outcomes that is barely our fault.
Advocacy: A Special Concern for the poor and the marginalized
It is not only a thread running through Deuteronomy 24 but through the whole Bible and the ministry of Jesus. It is like people that live close to God have a file opened in their minds for the poor and the marginalized that they never close. It is one of those things a Christian just never stop doing-keeping an eye out and a place in your heart for people who have much less than you. Jesus even said He hides and meets us in such people. I have experienced it to many times to doubt it anymore by now!
This week Elizabeth Warren said a very clever thing. She said those who do not have a seat at the table are usually on the menu. Do we give people the world puts on its greedy menu a place at the table? Do we listen to those struggling to be heard?
Close
Individual freedom within bounds is important, so is equality. Happiness is surely something to seek out and power does corrupt and needs to be challenged. But to put one’s hope in humankind’s ability to perfectly judge what freedom is or in one’s ability to construct a absolutely equal society. To lose all hope as soon as happiness is not the result of an action or to put all one’s hope in your own group and their virtue, is to be set up for disillusionment.
It is said that when the famous painter, Picasso was a small boy, a fire broke out in the city where his family lived. His father strapped him to his chest and ran with him through the flames and chaos to safety. Picasso became known for art that depict chaos strikingly but from a vantage point of safety. The simple and yet crucial thing his father offered him, had a life long positive impact on his art.
To set our eyes on Jesus, is what carried many Christians through the most unspeakable horrors and difficult times safely. The first Christians did not call themselves Christians. The called themselves people of the way…the way that Jesus showed. The way that got us to a place where violence against women, malnutrition, child deaths and so many other things are way less or better than they were just recently. It is also this way that will get us to a place where we are less divided and confused. None of us walk it perfectly, we lose the way daily but Jesus knows it and calls us back, even puts us back graciously when we lose it.
There is Hope. Jesus is the Way, the truth and the Life.
Amen