A Consistent Ethic of Life

We ate at a Chinese buffet restaurant today after church, and my fortune read, "You are vigorous in word and action." I would agree that I often am, and I actually had proved that statement true just a few hours earlier during Sunday School. People at Bethlehem are fairly moderate, so I don't disagree with everything said, but sometimes it seems that only one person responds to a question or comment by the teacher, and their unchallenged statement seems to become law. So, I feel obligated to speak up when I disagree, not so much to prove my point but just to demonstrate that genuine people of faith can disagree about important issues.

Today, we looked at a passage in Matthew 17 about paying the temple tax, and someone asked, "are there times when obeying the law is not moral, or when being moral is illegal?" Somehow, the conversation came to the death penalty (I don't remember exactly how), as someone expressed exasperation at a judge who said that the death penalty by lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The group discussed that for a minute or two, when I felt compelled to interject, "whether or not the injection is painful, isn't the point that the death penalty involves killing a human being?" This launched further debate, and I felt bad for seeming harsh with those who are in favor of the death penalty. As we got up to leave, I assured a few people around me, "I would be just as harsh arguing against abortion!"

It seems like an odd point of which to assure people, I guess, but I didn't want to seem like the crazy liberal in the group, but rather to assert that I hold to a consistent ethic of life, as the Catholic church and some other Christian groups do. I am very much against abortion (even under the circumstances for which most laws make exceptions), and the death penalty (take a look at Genesis 4:14--in response to the first recorded murder in history, God said the killer was not to be harmed), and also against war. This is the especially tough one.

When the class member first asked the question about the conflict between morality and legality, the first thing that came to mind was war--the draft, or this supposed "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's." I feel that it is wrong to kill, under any circumstances, even in war. Since America is currently at war (though not officially), and we now live in a town with a large military base, I did not feel brave enough to bring up that issue in Sunday School. And really, I don't know exactly how I would have argued it. Preserving human life seems to be a pretty basic principle among God-lovers, but so many American Christians make an exception when it comes to "patriotic service to the country." I haven't really studied politics much, but I assume that a military is pretty much an absolute necessity for a nation (how does Switzerland do it?). So, the moral difficulty really seems to come in that Christianity is a popular, majority religion.

For early Christians, the Christ-like commitment to non-violence would have been easier, since they were a small sect, outside of the dominant Roman population. Similarly, Quakers and the Amish today are able to stay faithful to their consistantly pro-life ethic and decline military service. Catholic and Protestant Americans, however, are the religious majority in America. This is no excuse, but rather is another example of how the Emperor Constantine helped create a world in which it is more difficult to be Christ-like, because theoretically everyone is a Christian.

How are we to live, when the dominant culture and our faith overlap as much as they do? As Soren Kierkegaard suggested, in a culture where everyone is a Christian, is anyone a Christian? Who will "defend us" if Christians refused to bear arms? Once again, practicality and morality are at cross-purposes, and the question of how to live as Christian in today's world is a daily dilemma.