The eCrozier

As leaders in our congregations, we’re often called upon to help people struggle to discern faithful moral choices. So, I offer this reflection. It may help you as you seek to help yourself and others make moral choices.

Bonhoeffer reminded us that moral choices are never a struggle for certainty. They are a struggle for faithfulness. Faith, by its very nature, is about uncertainty otherwise it would not be called faith it would be called certainty. So, moral discernment thus begins with humility recognizing that I’m not God and can never this side of heaven see completely from God’s perspective. So, in humility I ask: What would God have me do in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? His life, death and resurrection define God’s Good News to the world. My moral choices then should conform to his life, death and resurrection. They should exhibit the grace, mercy, and love of God incarnated in Jesus. Once I discern a course of action the Gospel again is my plumb line. My action should reflect what I know about God in the person of Jesus. Put another way, if asked, would other people see Jesus in the action I took?

As a disciple of Jesus, making moral choices is never about what feels good to me or what a particular political or social philosophy would tell me is the right choice. I strive to avoid baptizing what I choose or what some political or social commentator tells me I should choose. That simply confirms what I already want rather than have my action shaped and judged by the Gospel. Moral discernment for me must then contain a strong element of self-examination. I find it helpful to ask: What sort of preconceived notions do I hold about what God must want and how do those notions appear under the light of the Gospel? I can’t see Jesus clearly as long as I demand that God work only in the ways I’ve prescribed. St Paul reminds me that my life and identity has been changed into a new life and identity in Jesus (Romans 12).

The Gospel of Jesus continues to unzip my spiritual straightjacket. I seek to remind myself that Jesus lays down only one criterion for discipleship: The capacity to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow him – even to lay down my life, if need be, for the sake of the Gospel. So, in making moral choices, I find it helpful to imagine what Jesus might say to me following my moral choice. As Jesus is revealed in the Gospel, would he approve both of how I arrived at the choice and the choice itself?

Even with all the above in mind and practice, we will at times fail to act in a way that commends the faith that is in us. That is why the community of disciples known as the Church is such a great and important gift to us. Our struggle to live and act faithfully should not be done in isolation. We need friends for that journey. As Fr Alan Jones has said: I don’t want my friends to just accept me as I am; God Lord I hope they love me more than that.

+Scott