I find Jason's commentspersonally offensive…What ever happened to Christian civility and charity inthese sorts of discussions? Why do we always have to resort to harsh insultstoward another over issues that are not central to the Christian faith?
I’m struck by professingChristians who have such a shallow, amoral conception of civility and charity.They reduce civility and charity to rhetorical etiquette.
I, for one, have a deeperdefinition of civility and charity. I think aborting babies, or allowinglive-birth babies to perish, is pretty uncivil and uncharitable. I thinkeuthanizing the elderly or the disabled is pretty uncivil and uncharitable. Ithink forcing orphans or foster kids into homosexual “families” is prettyuncivil and uncharitable.
The Bible is deeply concernedwith those who are most vulnerable through no fault of their own. That’s acentral aspect of the Christian faith.
Hypocrisy run amuck. We poundour chest in NC when we say we stopped gay marriage but 90% of evangelicalpastors do nothing when members divorce unbiblically.
He’s very careless (evenslanderous) about how he tosses around the term “hypocrisy.”
i) As a rule, hypocrisyrefers to an individual’s personal misconduct. That’s what he has directcontrol over. If a pastor himself had divorced his wife for illicit reasons,remarried, then lobbied against sodomite marriage, that would be hypocritical.
ii) Many pastors take apastorate at a preexisting church. The former pastor retires or moves on.
The new pastor isn’t startingfrom scratch. He is thrust into the status quo of the preexisting congregation.
Let’s pick a figure out ofthe air. Suppose 40% of the couples in his church divorced and remarried forillicit reasons. That didn’t happen on his watch. What’s he supposed to doafter the fact? Excommunicate 40% of the membership?
Pastors have very limitedpower. The congregation generally pays their salary.
There’s not much a new pastorcan to do fix the past. He can preach against unscriptural divorce. If, whilehe’s the pastor, a member pursues an unscriptural divorce, the pastor canattempt to initiate disciplinary action. Even then, he will need the support ofthe elders and the congregation. And, of course, a wayward member can simplyleave the church. Short of excommunication (which is a unilateral last resort),church discipline requires the errant member to cooperate with the process ofcounseling and repentance.
Should we not outlawfornication and lying and stealing, and cheating and whatever else offends Godand violates His moral code? Why focus on just abortion? Why not go for thewhole ball of wax? Is it not hypocritcal to only fight against gay marriage andnot also fight to outlaw unbiblical divorce? Your logical end is a theocracy, isit not? Where do you draw the line and why there? If you are going to push thisissue, then push it all the way and at least be consistent. Don't stop withjust half the law. Shouldn't you be working to outlaw Sabbath labor?
Actually I am attempting toapply your method to other issues. Abortion is not a crime but you say itshould be because it is murder. Well, civil law does not define it as murderthe same as civil law does not criminalize fornication. Yet you desire tooutlaw abortion because it violates God's moral code but now you seem to givefornication a nod and a wink. The same method applies to sodomite marriage. Howcan you say that I am calling a sin a crime when you want to make abortionwhich is a sin a crime. Why not make fornication, which is a sin, a crime also?You got stoned for murder the same as you did for adultery.
This raises a host of issues:
i) Unless a Christian culturewarrior is personally guilty of theft or fornication or unscriptural divorce,accusing them of hypocrisy for someone else’s theft or fornication orunscriptural divorce is quite a stretch.
ii) But suppose, for the sakeof argument, that it’s hypocritical for Christian culture warriors topick-and-choose what to outlaw. So what?
Let’s take a comparison.Suppose I’m a doctor who makes his living as a full-time “abortion provider.”Suppose, driving home from the abortion clinic, I see a toddler running outinto a busy intersection.
My parental instinct kicksin. I slam on the brakes, get out of the car, rush over to the toddler, andwhisk him out of harm’s way.
Now, you could say, “What ahypocrite! You make your living killing babies. So why do you rescue thischild?”
And, indeed, his actions werehypocritical in this case. So what? What practical conclusion should we derivefrom that fact?
Does it follow that becauseit’s hypocritical for the abortion provider to rescue the toddler, that the heshould be consistent and let the toddler get run over?
Jesus is famous forupbraiding hypocrites in the Gospels, but I can’t think of any instance wherehe unbraids them for doing the right thing.
Selective morality is betterthan systematic immorality. It’s better to be inconsistently virtuous than tobe consistently iniquitous.
Even if someone ishypocritical in doing right every so often, that’s hardly a reason for him torefrain from doing right on isolated occasions.
iii) Suppose, for the sake ofargument, that Christian social conservatives are hypocritical for protectingthe lives of babies, the elderly, and the disabled–while they ignore othermoral concerns Even so, their “hypocrisy” is still good for the innocent livesthey save.
iv) But is it hypocritical?God dictated the Mosaic law to Israel. He didn’t put it up for a vote. Israelnever had a choice in the matter. God imposed his law on Israel, and heenforced compliance under pain of severe divine punishment.
That’s completely differentfrom the situation of Christian Americans. We have to work through thedemocratic process. We can only do what’s politically feasible. Ourcircumstances automatically select for what we can try to outlaw.
Enacting law isn’t atheoretical ideal, but a practical possibility. As Bill Vallicella recentlyobserved:
If politics were merelytheoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state shouldbe structured, then implementation would not matter at all. But politics is practical, nottheoretical: it aims at action that implements the view deemed best…You are autopian who fails to understand that politics is about action, not theory, inthe world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined world.
v) On a related note, there’snothing inherently wrong with picking your battles. We don’t have the resourcesto fight every battle. We can’t win every battle. So we have to decide on someissues of overriding importance, then throw our limited time and energy behindthose issues. If you try to do everything, you won’t succeed at anything.
vi) Moreover, some evils aremore socially destructive than others.
vii) Likewise, there’s adifference between punishing mutually consensual misconduct, where the partiesare voluntarily wronging and harming each other, and aggressive, oppressivemisconduct where one party is harming innocent, defenseless victims.
There’s a fundamentaldifference between protecting someone from himself or from mutually consensualharm, and protecting an unwilling victim from an aggressor.
Take the difference between aprivate fight club and mugging. There’s a principled reason why lawmakers mightmake a priority of cracking down on muggers while they allow consenting adultsto form a fight club.
viii) Not all Biblicalobligations are absolute or equally obligatory. For instance, Sabbath-keepingis a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It exists to promote humanflourishing. But there are situations in which wooden adherence toSabbath-keeping would be detrimental to human flourishing. That’s why the Bibleitself makes exceptions for works of mercy and necessity.
xi) Biblical laws are not allof a kind. Some laws were contingent on Israel’s unique cultic holiness.
Other laws involve the kindsof laws (e.g. sex crimes, property crimes, bodily injury) which any law codefor any nation-state would have to cover. Any nation-state will have a penalcode with laws regulating certain kinds of typical human behavior and typicalhuman interactions.
Other laws are adapted to thesocioeconomic situation of the ANE. A tribal society. An agrarian economy.That’s not directly applicable to 21C America.
Yet some of those laws maystill exemplify basic principles which do carry over into NT ethics.
Some biblical laws aregrounded in creational ordinances (e.g. heterosexual marriage).
Some laws are laws of utilityrather than morality.
We need to ask the underlyingrationale for a given law.
xii) The NT indicates degreesof continuity and discontinuity between OT ethics and NT ethics. It isn’talways easy to draw the line because the NT itself doesn’t explicitly draw theline for us. But the NT doesn’t give us the luxury of an easy all-or-nothingposition. No doubt that would simplify things, but that’s not the actualposition of the NT. In the NT, there’s some carryover between OT ethics and NTethics, while other things are rendered obsolete.
xiii) As for some of Ed’sspecific examples, I don’t have a problem with blue laws. However, there’s anexegetical dispute on whether some Pauline passages nullify the Sabbathordinance.
xiv) As for fornication, howdoes the OT handle that? Well, if a guy impregnates a girl, he has to marry herand support the child. If he fathers a child, he must help with raising thechild.
I don’t have a problem withthat. The shotgun wedding was a good institution.
Ed’s other examples are odd.“Stealing”? But theft is a crime, both in modern law and OT law.
“Lying”? Lying, per se,wasn’t an OT crime. Only perjury was a crime.
“Cheating”? Certain types ofcheating are illegal.
xiv) What Ed calls“hypocrisy” is a built-in tension in law. Due to sin, sinners need good laws.But due to sin, sinners resist good laws. The very fallenness which rendersgood laws necessary is the same fallenness which makes it difficult to pass orenforce good laws. The tension is a presupposition of law. Even OT law, whichwas divinely inspired as well as divinely enforced, sets a moral floor ratherthan a moral ceiling.
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