Would Jesus Vaccinate? (eCrozier #249)

On February 6, 2015, in anthropology, culture, morality, sin, by bishopbenhase

I don’t remember much about taking the General Ordination Exams 32 years ago, but I do recall one question that was particularly “good” (read on and you’ll see why that’s in quotes). It had to do with moral theology and specifically with the moral issues that arise when motorcyclists choose not to wear helmets while riding. Some states in 1983 allowed for personal choice on that (maybe some still do). While I can’t remember my entire answer, I remember addressing the recurring moral questions we have when we seek to attend to individual rights as well as communal responsibilities.

If a person chooses not to wear a helmet while on a motorcycle, then one might argue that’s his right. It’s his life. But what if he’s in an accident and receives serious head trauma? He then becomes dependent on the larger society for years of costly health care, not to mention the emotional, spiritual, and financial cost to his family. So do the potential communal costs outweigh the cost of his personal choice not to wear a helmet? We have these choices as a society all the time. Wearing seat belts is another example, as are guns. People have a right to own a gun for their self-protection, but others also have a right not to be shot by that gun. In every case, it’s about whose “good” is being honored and whose “good” is being limited for the sake of the larger “good” of society.

We each tend to fall on one side or the other when it comes to balancing individual and communal “goods.” Conservatives tend to have a higher view of human nature (a higher anthropology, if you will). They lean to the side of people being left alone and if they are, then they’ll choose the “good.” Liberals tend to have a lower anthropology (or a higher doctrine of human sin) believing that people can’t be left alone to choose “the good” because more often than not, given our sinful nature, they won’t. Neither the liberal nor the conservative tendency is always right. It’s more complicated than that because human nature and our communal relationships aren’t simple to navigate. So, each moral question, as it arises, should be weighed recognizing these “goods” are held in tension.

And that brings us to the current debate over childhood vaccinations. Parents choosing not to vaccinate their children against measles and other diseases claim the right to choose what’s done or not done to their child. Others say that’s fine, but what might be the health effects on others if that child contracts a disease that could’ve been prevented by a vaccine? Whose “good” do we honor here: the parent’s right to choose or society’s right to be protected from a preventable disease? As one who tends to be theologically conservative, but socially liberal, I struggle with which “good” should be honored here. Since I have a high doctrine of human sin, I’m wary of trusting people to choose the “good” because so often we won’t (sin being what sin is). So, when I look at the data, it shows vaccines are very safe. Their potential side effects have been shown scientifically to be infinitesimal. In this particular tension between the individual and communal, I think the “good” that vaccines provide trumps the parent’s right to choose. Still, such a position makes me uneasy. Asking: “Would Jesus vaccinate?” won’t produce a very intelligible answer. My hunch is that his teaching on loving our neighbor will better form us on how we deal with this issue.

+Scott

 
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The Moral Bankruptcy of Violence (eCrozier #245)

On January 9, 2015, in evil, Facts, fear, Grief, Justice, media, morality, news, politics, by bishopbenhase

As we all heard the news of the mass shootings at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, it was natural for us to be horrified by such violence, which is so often fueled by perceived political or religious anger and grievance. This news from Paris comes at the same time as the lone surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings begins to have his day in court. In the midst of such violent news, we may lose our perspective, and thus the big picture and the larger trajectory humankind appears to be on, at least based on the real data we have. More on that in a moment.

Mass murder, such as we just witnessed in Paris this week, has almost always been born out of people’s twisted response to their anger and grievance (at least in their own minds) over some great wrong being done to them or to their “tribe” or to their “people.” Timothy McVeigh was motivated by such anger and grievance when he set off a deadly bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the same state 74 years earlier, hundreds of white citizens in Tulsa systematically murdered as many as 300 black residents in a part of town known as the “Black Wall Street,” which at the time was the wealthiest African-American community in the United States. In Wilmington, North Carolina there was the so-called Massacre of 1898, which was actually a coup d’etat of the elected government. No one knows the full extent of the massacre since many of the bodies of the African-Americans killed were dumped in the Cape Fear River and never recovered.

In each of these instances, as we will probably discover with the one this week in Paris, the deranged actors all justified their murderous act or rampage on settling some score or righting some wrong. In their own warped sense of logic (engaging in an evil for an alleged evil), they were right to do what they did. The actions of others, they claim, led them to do what they did. That leads inevitably to the old “ends justifies the means” argument, which is always morally bankrupt.

But we should also know, even as the horrendous act in Paris sinks in, that such actions are actually fewer in number and less frequent than at other times in human history. It may be hard for us to believe because of the media available today, but war and other forms of political violence (like the examples above) are declining. As Steven Pinker illustrates in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, deaths related to such political violence are falling. This coincides with a steady decline worldwide of extreme poverty, child mortality, and hunger as well as the continued growth, since the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, of the number of countries that are democracies.

Of course, such perspective doesn’t help those who mourn now for their murdered loved ones and fellow citizens. For now, we should just grieve with them and share their outrage and sadness, while also reminding ourselves about the historical moral bankruptcy of responding to evil with more evil. But I do hope it helps us all take a step back and see the arc of history better. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1967, Jr. (paraphrasing the words of the Reverend Theodore Parker a century before): “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.

+Scott

 
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Evolutionary Tribalism & Following Jesus: The Only Truth That Saves US (eCrozier #196)

On November 1, 2013, in discipleship, morality, by bishopbenhase

Much scholarly work has been written in the last few years delving into the source of human morality. Those who come at the issue from an evolutionary stance seek to explain morality as a result of natural selection. To wit: Good morality grows over time because our forbearers learned that cooperating with one another created safer, more thriving communities. Of course, that raises the obvious question: Why do we still have so much violence and war? Joshua Greene in his book, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, answers that question by arguing humans evolved in tribal groups, so our morality evolved in a way that naturally distrusts people outside one’s tribe. This was less problematic when tribes lived far apart and weren’t connected by modern technology, but now tribes are geographically and technologically close, thus conflict increases. His proposed remedy is a shared global morality that would settle arguments among competing moral tribes. But as Alisdair MacIntyre argued years ago (1988) in his book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, whose morality gets chosen? Greene, as one could expect, offers his own, a version of classic utilitarianism.

The problem is as Walt Kelly’s Pogo the Possum said in the Okefenokee Swamp: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” What evolutionary psychologists have proffered makes sense. We tend to have a high opinion of our own tribe’s virtue while having a much lower opinion of another tribe’s virtues. We then each amplify our resentments toward one another based on our tribal opinions. It seems we (that is, our brains) don’t clearly recognize our own sins all the while having 20/20 vision on the sins of other tribes. Once one tribe is convinced that another tribe’s values, practices, etc. are sinful and that other tribe actually has contempt for one’s own practices and values, then conflict is pretty much assured. For example, we can look at the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Both actually share similar values, one being retributive justice, namely, that if attacked, you’re justified if you retaliate. So they do, again and again. It becomes a playground argument of who first started the fight. Since they share the tribal value of retributive justice, they have to amplify the sins of the other tribe to retain the moral high ground. Their tribal brains just work that way, if one accepts Greene’s hypothesis (also true for the Republican and the Democratic tribes).

While I find all this fascinating, in some ways it doesn’t matter whether we evolved into this particular form of tribal morality or, as I believe, God has revealed to us morality. Either way, we have to deal with this brutal tribalism, both in the world and among our most nigh neighbors. Jesus knew all this. That’s why his teaching on forgiveness and loving one’s enemies is so vitally relevant today. But it’s also, if Greene and others are to be believed, not how our brains have evolved to work. It’s counter-intuitive to our brains to forgive and love our enemies. That probably explains why it’s such hard work for us and why such love and forgiveness aren’t regularly practiced virtues by many Christians. Yet, it’s the only way Jesus has given his disciples for living in this world. So even if one doesn’t accept the truth of the Gospel, it seems that following Jesus is the only way we can further evolve our brains so that tribalism won’t destroy what God has so beautifully created. Start with the tribe next door.

+Scott

 
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