I’d Rather Choose To Do the Most Good
Posted: February 14th, 2011 | Author: Peter | Filed under: George Fox, LGBTQ, Seminary, Uncategorized, beauty, choice, church, culture, egalitarian, emergence, evangelical, fundamentalism, inequality, liberal, liberation, love, oppression, theology | 5 Comments »Instead of obsessing over which is the “RIGHT” belief (hopeless, indeed, and an adventure in missing the point of life and religion and being human, I think) I think it’s better to choose the belief or praxis that does the most GOOD.
I first started listening to the Euro-synth duo Erasure in early middle school, and had no idea then that beginning in 1986, lead vocalist Andy Bell was one of the first openly gay music stars in the world. Because of his openness with his sexuality, Erasure’s success with US record labels was severely hampered. The studios still sold their records (they still took their money), but publicity was muted, and noteworthy Erasure music videos featured Andy tragically singing to women. Gentrified for American sensibilities.
There are all sorts of ways that we take people’s money without affirming them. We marginalize them as we profit from them. We do it in our churches. In our universities. I used to attend a church whose denomination claimed to affirm female pastors, but whose large pastoral staff of eight full time ministers were all male, and whose board would not even consider female deacons. I attend a seminary that, for all its virtues as a well-intentioned emerging Evangelical institution (and it’s been very good to me) does not affirm my queer sisters and brothers (even though at LEAST one has paid tuition and she sat in classes next to me – she doesn’t attend anymore. I miss you Adele).
What exactly is at stake? Biblical coherence? A literal six day creation? Women’s subordination to men? A premillenial rapture? I mean, how is this gay thing the linchpin of our whole theological system? How is it the one final holdout, as we peel away slavery and racism and drinking alcohol and working on Sundays (or Saturdays) and believing in evolution and doing away with biblical inerrancy (we did most of these, right?) and empowering women (we try to)? Why is is this gay thing the one thing we just can’t stand for? Why is it different? Why this issue, when all the others have already fallen away?
Takes awhile for this song to get going, but it’s awfully beautiful.
Erasure
“Grace”
Peter,
I know you're trying to make a point, but I think your dichotomy is false. You seem to presume that (a) worrying about right belief is somehow inherently opposed to acting rightly, and that (b) it is possible to consistently act rightly without having thought about what sort of actions are "good."
Worrying about right belief is hopeless and an "adventure in missing the point?" Really? If no one stops to think about what constitutes a "right action," then everyone's just doing whatever seems good to themselves.
As for Christian opposition to homosexuality, do you really believe it's possible to identify this as "the final holdout?" Does the 21st century then finally provide us with the point of view from which we may purge Christian tradition of the accoutrements of mere human influence? Are we now finally in a position to transcend ourselves?
Come on, of course there'll be a next thing and a next thing as the carousel of culture turns and fashion finds a new point of conflict with tradition. Greek and Islamic culture found the Incarnation to be an affront to the dignity of divinity. We find it unbelievable in light of materialistic sensibilities. Perhaps our pietistic emphasis on personal holiness will come to look like arrogance and vanity in light of an impulse toward communal identity. Maybe asceticism will come to seem intrinsically dualistic and thereby dangerous. That actually happened back in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Sorry man, I've a little bit lost track of my own point here… I've had too much caffeine today. I think what I'm saying is that your position strikes me as triumphalistic and lacking in awareness of the limits of self-perception.
peace,
David
Hey, I hope what I wrote above doesn't come off too hostile sounding. Upon rereading it sounds a little more confrontational than I'd wanted.
cheers,
David
David, I'll be in touch to chat, but probably not tonight. In class till late.
If I didn't know you, I might question your motives, but I feel pretty comfortable trusting your intentions. No worries bro – we'll talk soon. As before, I may relocate our discussion into subsequent posts because I like highlighting respectful dialogue when I have the chance.
There's a lot bound up in what you said that I can't address, both because the format isn't conducive and because I simply don't know how. I agree that the American Evangelical perspective on sexuality is badly askew; I don't really know why.
Forgive me then for only dealing with a small part of your post: the choice between believing what is right and doing what seems good. I say "seems" not to implicitly relativize the choice, but because I'm trying to capture what you meant by juxtaposing "doing the most good" with "believing what is right." It seemed to me you meant to imply the decision to do the good thing that is immediately before one to do: that good action that recommends itself directly to one's intuitive moral sensibility. If I've failed to comprehend your meaning then please correct me.
I do not wish to denigrate the vital importance of that intuitive morality; I think that very often it is the one bulwark that stands between us and catastrophic moral failure. More often than not "what seems good" is the immediate voice that prompts moral behavior.
What I wish to say concerning that sensibility is that it is largely habitual, and radically influenced by acculturation. Without completely discounting the possibility of spontaneous divine inspiration, we are usually creatures of moral habit. A cursory inventory of the world's cultures is sufficient to demonstrate that ethical sensibilities vary widely, particularly with regard to normative sexual behavior.
There is a certain subset of the collective moral code that could reasonably be referred to as "near-universal," but I am not among those who would wish to identify that set with some sort of natural moral revelation. I think it likely has more to do with the sort of behavior that is agreeable to functioning societies.
So the intuitive moral sense is (a) the thing that generally recommends action, and (b) largely a habituated instinct. Left unto itself, it says less about what is objectively good than it does about what our individual culture has chosen to value, and how faithful a member of that culture we are.
What I mean to say is that just "doing the most good" is never going to mean more by itself than "being an exceptionally faithful exponent of the culture or subculture with which I identify."
Now—lest I become a relativist—let me say that I do believe God has spoken. And without enumerating the means and methods of that speech, let it suffice to say one may hear the Lord speaking in the midst of life's storms provided one has ears to hear.
The requisite "ear" in this case is a reflective spirit that is not so busy acting and reacting that it never feels to need to stop and ask "is this the way?" Humility and self-doubt create within our being the silence in which the Lord's voice can be heard. What we call intellect is often nothing more than the machinery of reflection drafted into the service of some brute task. People are accustomed to using their gifts of intellect the same way they use most other powers granted them: to gratify their most immediate desires. Undoubtably the modern (postmodern?) world has been beaten nearly to death with the weapons wrought out of greed by sheer intellection, but in our reaction let us not be driven to merely tribal opposition of those that have hurt us.
God's call is to be still, to listen and to reflect. We have been given minds and well as hearts, and it is the task of our minds to shape the impulses of our hearts. We cannot be complete human beings without either. We can never really hope to do the most good if we excuse ourselves from reflecting on what is right.
peace,
David
[...] right, because my friend David wrote a pretty extensive response to my post – I’D RATHER DO THE MOST GOOD – a couple of days ago, I thought the best way to continue dialogue would be to post his [...]