Men and Morals

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we make ourselves happy, but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.--Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason.

     As one grows older and becomes more serious about the problem of how he must order the remainder of his life, he seeks for some expression which will provide for him a guideline, or a point of reference, to which he can refer for measurement of his attitude and accomplishment. Since my own life has been so Biblically oriented, it is not strange that I would select from the sacred pages the motto which hopefully is engraved upon the walls of my inner consciousness.

     I must confess that the choice was not the result of diligent search. Rather, it seemed to capture my mind upon an occasion when I was casually reading the speech of Paul which was made one Saturday to the attendants of a synagogue in Pisidia, He was, as usual, reasoning with them out of the law and the prophets, and having made reference to David, he said, "After he had served his own generation by the will of God, he fell asleep." At once it occurred to me that this best summarized my personal responsibility--to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep to be laid with my ancestors.

     With this philosophy I can never be passive, for service by the will of God makes one an activist. It will also deliver me from that tragic fate into which so many drift as they age, grumbling because they are not served by others, and whining and complaining that they are laid on the shelf. No one is laid on the shelf, but many crawl up on it and call down maledictions upon the heads of others, including their own flesh and blood.

     If I meaningfully serve any generation it must be my own. I cannot serve the generation preceding. My fathers served it, sometimes well and sometimes not. I dare not scrap the values they discovered, nor perpetuate the errors which they made a part of their legacy. It would be a disservice to my generation to do either. Nor can I keep fighting the battles of yesterday as a retreat from the conflicts of the present, for there are new foes to be met.

     I know a veteran of the first World War who delights in recounting every facet of his life in the military in 1917-18. He has told the tales so often and embellished them so gradually that they are vastly more interesting than the facts must have been. But he knows nothing about the war in Vietnam, except that "they don't make soldiers like they use to make them." No doubt he served a past generation of men well, and he is still serving that generation, but it is no longer here.

     A lot of good brethren are still part of a nineteenth century restoration movement. They are storming positions long

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since abandoned and flogging dead horses which will never be revived except in their imagination. As an exercise in futility this might be harmless if it were not for the fact that while they are battering at walls no longer defended a vigorous enemy is pressing in upon us from other quarters.

     I cannot serve the next generation directly, because I will not be here. I am not so foolish as to think I am indispensable, and I am quite content to believe that God will raise up men much more qualified than myself to fulfill his purpose. I will be thrilled if I can pass on to my posterity a sense of freedom in which they can serve without my skeletal hand reaching from the grave to restrain or restrict them. I want them to make their decisions, not in the light of relationship to a fallible progenitor but in the love of God.

     It seems to me that one small contribution which might be made is to face up honestly and unflinchingly to issues being raised in my generation. I am not certain that we rate very high on the scale of integrity when it comes to dealing with contemporary problems. This is especially true when those problems relate to controversial matters. We sometimes indulge in "the easy answer approach" which dismisses a thing without really dealing with it.

     I know preachers who profess to speak learnedly and authoritatively about the subject and have never even read Situation Ethics, by Joseph Fletcher; Christian Morals Today, by John A. T. Robinson; or Ethics in a Christian Context, by Paul Lehmann. University students cannot stand sham or pretence. They can see through fake scholarship like looking through a window-pane. And one who does not know what he is talking about is soon dismissed with contempt by youthful intellectuals.

     Perhaps I am wrong, but I do not believe we can sweep such things under the theological rug much longer. We must meet them eyeball-to-eyeball and on their own ground. I propose to give them some notice because I think we will be forced to do so eventually. I want to have my say before circumstances drive me to the place where I must act under compulsion instead of voluntarily. And I want to be open and above board in my analysis and evaluation. This will not be easy because I confess to a natural bias in the matter.

     There are at least three factors about situation ethics which cause many of those who register a wholesale condemnation of the concept to have an uneasy conscience. I say "many" because it is obvious that a number of brethren who make such an arraignment know nothing at all about the matter. They are simply opposing something because it appears to them to be new and modern, or because they have heard a preacher who knows no more about it than themselves, inveigh against it. Such people are like a jury which prepares its verdict when sworn in and before hearing the evidence. They are guilty of a breach of trust, wholly unethical, and are therefore unqualified to judge any approach to ethics.

     But those who have studied what is being said, not merely to discover what is wrong, but simply to discover what it is all about, must face up honestly to the fact that all of us have practiced situationalism in some degree. And to compound the problem most of us somehow feel that it was precisely by doing so that we attained to our kindest and noblest moments in life. We have been confronted with poor unfortunates caught up in a web of exigencies, and we have

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said, "Circumstances alter cases," and instead of cracking the whip which we flourish in the pulpit, we have pleaded for mercy in spite of "our laws." That is really the basis of situation ethics.

     Secondly, we have the uncomfortable feeling, the more we read about Jesus, that he exemplified this attitude, and that he felt that people were more important in the long run (and also in the short run) than legalistic pronouncements or propositions. He seemed to be always in hot water with the lawyers because he emphasized the spirit which was behind the law, instead of the law which conceals the spirit. And this is the foundation of situation ethics.

     Those who deeply immerse themselves in the new covenant scriptures soon come to see that they were never intended to be an inflexible law, wholly unconcerned with backgrounds, tension and pressures, but that they actually grew out of human situations and predicaments and are (as I believe) God's response to such conditions, telling us how Jesus would react under such circumstances. Even then, they not only allow, but actually urge the employment of our best judgment in handling cases which arise. All of this I will document when the time appears proper.

     Why do I raise these issues at all? The answer is quite simple. I am a commando for Christ, and am constantly infiltrating areas of opposition in which I must seek to bring every thought into captivity to my King. I work in the black ghetto where revolt is seething and where, upon one memorable occasion, a young militant got up while I was speaking and yelled out, "Take your damned blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus and get the hell out of here!" I am in dialogue sessions with brilliant Jewish men, eminently successful in business and professions, who publicly question my whole basis for belief in Jesus. And I purposely meet with young revolutionaries on the university campus, shrewd and perceptive, who sometimes demand in language formerly reserved for latrine walls, that we quit feeding them mental fecal matter and "tell it as it is."

     Once upon a time this did not concern me. I "went to church" three times per week, and often much more than that. It was a wonderfully comforting experience, with no danger or excitement. It was soothing to the spirit to be able to assemble with nice clean middle-class white Americans, in such a chummy spirit of glorified camaraderie. Then something happened to upset the spiritual apple-cart which had been hauled so smoothly along the highway of life. And when it occurred the fruit was spilled all over the surrounding landscape.

     Of course what really happened is that I met Jesus. He wasn't hard to recognize. I had been talking about him and describing him to others most of my life. But the strange thing is that when I met him he said "Follow me!" I thought I had been doing that for years, and I conjectured immediately that he meant I must "go to church" more frequently. Instead he turned his head on where I had been going and led me out into the world which I thought I had forsaken for his sake. And there wasn't anything comfortable about it.

     I was on the defensive at once. I had to fight or go under. But I was amazed to find how sharp and keen was the sword which the Spirit had furnished. All of a sudden it came to me that I had never really been in battle before. I had engaged in sparring sessions with brethren in the same company upon such breath-taking issues as to whether it was a sin to plunk on a piano while singing, or as to whether Jesus was going to show up before or after the millennium, but we used the flat side of the weapon to clobber one another. We had never really intended to kill one another, for then we wouldn't have had anyone left to fight, and a majority of our best sermon outlines would have become obsolete.

     But when Jesus called me out of "the

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church" (not the body of which he is head), to go into all the worlds, life took on a wholly new perspective. The things we had been fussing about for years--cups, classes, colleges, etc.-- suddenly became very inconsequential. When pirates are attacking the ship the crew cannot continue to argue over who gets the next move in a checker game. And when someone is bombing the house with incendiaries, there is no time to fuss with your wife about which tie you will wear to meet the fire engine.

     One reason why we have elevated our pusillanimous issues out of all proportion is because we have been lured off the main road and into a nice family picnic ground on a side road. If we get back in the traffic on the turnpike we will not have time to argue about how to pass the bread. There isn't anything wrong with a picnic unless it wastes time that should be used in going somewhere. And we have "miles to go before we sleep," as Robert Frost put it.

     I think that before I go on I had better explain the bit about meeting Jesus. That kind of talk makes our brethren as uncomfortable as a society matron with poison ivy on the evening of the big ball. I am not implying that anything mystical took place. I did not go into a trance or have a vision. There was no speaking in tongues or getting the shakes or weak trembles. My hair did not stand on end and I did not have goose-pimples. I am too pragmatic for that kind of thing. Instead, I contacted Jesus personally in the only way and place that I could meet him--in the consciousness of my own heart. It was like coming home in the evening and turning a key in the lock and opening the door to find an old friend sitting there, as big as life, in the living-room.

          "Full many a shot at random sent,
               Hits mark its sender never meant;
          As gun when aimed at duck or plover,
               Flies back and knocks the hunter over."

     What is meant by the term "new morality?" It was first employed by the pope of Rome in a document issued on February 2, 1956. It related, in its inception to existential ideas, which were confused with situational ethics by Pius XII on April 18, 1952, and because it was feared that it would be used to defend birth control such an approach to ethics was barred from Catholic seminaries. The tag "new morality" at once became suspect and guaranteed that it would come under attack. Immediately men began to brand it as the old immorality in modern dress, with Lord Shawcross of Great Britain being at the forefront, calling it "the old immorality condoned."

     John A. T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, introduced the subject of situational ethics in his popular volume Honest to God, and thus tied it in with the nature of Deity. This created such a furore that he felt obliged to publish another work called "Christian Morals Today" and consisting of the text of three lectures delivered in Liverpool Cathedral. He expressed a deep concern for mutual understanding and communi-

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cation and urged his detractors to credit him with an equal passion for Christian truth and integrity. He denied that he was "primarily impelled by the pressures of the contemporary situation and by the impossibility of 'selling' the old medicine because it is unpalatable."

     The bishop divides his thesis into three parts, plugging for freedom over fixity, love over law and experience over authority. I have never seen a very careful analysis of his position by any of our brethren. Probably there are two reasons for this. A great many have not read it and those who have do not want to get their heads into a hornet's nest. They have been stung by "brotherly hornets" before and they prefer to let sleeping dogs lie--and lying dogs sleep! But I have yet to meet with a university group of any size whose members have not read the treatise and are anxious to discuss it.

     I doubt that we can much longer continue to brush it aside with a wave of the hand. And to take a haughty, supercilious attitude in which we profess that such a thing is beneath our dignity goes over like a lead balloon. Modern college students are a pretty irreverent lot who delight in pricking pomposity and knocking the wadding out of a "stuffed shirt." If you attempt to soar above them on waxen wings, and look down from lordly heights, they will turn the heat on and melt your pinions.

     It is true, as many contend, that we do not necessarily have to enter into direct confrontation with the intellectuals. We can stay in our own structures and behind our barricades and talk to one another about what they must be like. But there are two things wrong with that. First, we will eventually be beaten by attrition. We live in an intellectual age, and with the rapid expansion of knowledge we must either go into the intellectual world, or there will be no world into which to go. God has just not promised to keep enough people ignorant so the Churches of Christ can survive. Either we capture the intellectual world for Christ or we've had it, so far as our generation is concerned.

     Secondly, we cannot serve our generation according to the will of God, by ignoring either that generation or God's will. One cannot escape the feeling that if Jesus were still here in the flesh he would be "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions." We cannot move the battle to our ground where we can conduct it according to a timetable from prepared positions. We have to go where the action is, and we might have to ride "into the Valley of Death" and "into the jaws of hell" if we are really the Light Brigade!

     Moreover, we face another possibility which has concerned me a good deal lately. Our brethren are still contending for law in a loveless fashion, while blasting away at the hippies for advocating love in a lawless fashion. But it remains that love is the ultimate dynamic of transformation for the simple reason that God is love, and God is absolute. If we continue to "lay down the law" while others start "living up to love" we will be hanged on our own gallows. I am sure it must be humiliating to an eagle to be shot down while soaring in the wild blue yonder, but it must add insult to injury when the arrow which does the job is tipped with his own tail feathers, plucked while he was asleep on the perch.

     Probably it will not make much difference to the Bishop of Woolwich whether I deal with his thinking or ignore it. He will probably never hear of me, and he appears to be a pretty independent kind of chap who does not worry too much about criticism. That is one thing we have in common. It does make a difference to me, however, whether I face up as honestly as I can to the issues being raised. I have learned to live with the castigation of others but I confess that I have not yet found a way to silence my conscience or inner compulsion.

     It seems to me that there are three approaches I can take to the body of thought called "Christian Morals To-

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day." The first I shall call the "coroner-mortuary approach." I can simply pronounce the whole thing dead and decaying and take it out and bury it with my solemn (and relieved) blessing. But what happens when a mortician has duly interred a corpse, and drives back home to find the chap sitting on the back steps of the mortuary whistling, and honing a switchblade knife?

     The second approach I refer to as the "dissecting-room approach." Here the body is assumed to be dead and is placed on a sanitary table, with the tools for taking it apart laid out in proper array. The white-coated attendants gather around prepared to find out the congenital weakness which resulted in early demise. But what is the appropriate reaction if the cadaver suddenly sits up and winks at the doctors? There isn't room under the table for all of them.

     I have decided on using the "diagnostic technique." I recognize the body as being alive and energetic, but I propose to examine it to see why it cannot walk a straight line. As I make a chart on my findings I shall expect to set down with approval what I consider to be normal, as well as to list deviations from the norm. I fully expect to get into heated arguments with the patient over what is normal and whether my line is straight or not. That will not make me nervous, because the whole medical fraternity in which I interned has been fighting over these matters for years. As a matter-of-fact we now have more than two dozen schools of thought, although that may be using the word "thought" a little loosely.

     I would hope that I might be able to state the position of Dr. Robinson in language and terms which he would approve as accurate. If I did otherwise I would be quite unethical. "What doth it profit a man to overcome an approach to ethics, and lose his own ethic?" However, I am not sure I can do so. This is probably one of the most difficult tasks one can assign himself. I shall try to retain my integrity, and will be ready to apologize for any unfairness.

     First off, Dr. Robinson does not believe there is a Christian ethic, pre-determined for all time and static. It is his contention that as times change Christians must change with them, and that such changes do not make us less Christian in spirit, but actually more so. It is argued that the complex technocratic processes to which we are exposed force us to constantly reassess our values and revise our views as to what is moral and non-moral. The changing stance of the theological establishment in our day toward war, capital punishment, homosexuality and suicide is cited as proof of this.

     I am a little reluctant to express my views on some of these things, not because I am afraid to discuss my position with those who accept the "new morality," but simply because I do not care to argue with those of my brethren who do not. I am not at all sure that the popular position taken on any of them represents attainment to a greater sense of moral values.

     This position ignores the fact that God employed war as a judgment upon nations, and even upon Jerusalem (Ezekiel 14:21). Surely he was not immoral. This does not mean that God likes war any more than I like it. I did not punish my children because I derived pleasure from the experience but in order to produce "the fruit of real goodness" in their characters. I am reminded that William Tecumseh Sherman said that "War is hell," and I concur, but I do not forget that God also made hell. And it was made as the result of war.

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     If Michael and his angels had been pacifists, the devil might have taken heaven over, and if this had happened those who went to heaven would have gone to hell. I do not concur with the view that the coming of Christ changed the nature of God and reformed the Father. This would have had to happen if all war is now sinful. Certainly war is an evil, but it is not necessarily a sin. All sin is evil, but not all evil is sin. Obviously not every war is justified, but that is not the question here.

     I will be thrilled when the nations beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. But it will be necessary for all nations to desist from lifting up the sword against each other, for so long as one learns war with a view to the destruction of others, the others will have to defend themselves. We are not living in an ideal social framework, but in a world of sin. And just as individuals may sin against each other, nations may trespass upon and trample down the rights of other nations. God will turn those nations which hate him and his rule into hell. War is the judgment of God upon such sin here and hell is the judgment of God upon such sin hereafter.

     Civil government has been ordained by God and is thrice said to be a minister of God. Civil authority is divinely authorized as God's minister to act as "a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." When I assist in the work of rewarding good or in striking terror into the hearts of evil men, I am aiding God's minister to fulfill a responsibility to God. I cannot take this into my own hands for it has been given into the hands of the civil authority.

     In view of this I do not agree with the idea that we will ever reach the place where we will need to regard war now as being immoral. If nations arrive at the point where this type of judgment is no longer requisite I will rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I trust that they will mature so that war will not be necessary just as we hope that our children will grow up so physical chastisement and restraint are no longer required. But when children attain such stature we need not regard the spankings which we once gave them as having been immoral.

     But it seems to me that those who advocate abolition of all capital punishment ignore three vital factors: (1) The absolute sovereignty of God as the creator and giver of human existence on earth; (2) The malignancy of sin which left unchecked would destroy the universe; (3) The divinely delegated authority to human society to remove from its fabric those who are incorrigibly devoted to the destruction of that fabric by acts of violence against the innocent.

     Our modern problem stems from a denial of all three of these postulates. It is here that the theory of evolution may have injected its most fatal venom. If man is simply an animal which wiggled out of the primordial ooze and clambered clumsily up the ladder of social development with a few missing rungs on the way, there is really no debt or obligation owed to God. There is no real reason for loving or respecting God, for there is no real proof that God loves man or regards him with any different view than he would a tadpole or a reptile. Indeed, if God loved "man" at every stage, this is how he would have had to love him at some stages, if the evolutionist is correct.

     But if (as I believe) God made man uniquely in his own image, then to brutally assault man is to attack and seek to destroy the image of God. Any theory

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of the origin of species which makes man merely an animal, regardless of how superior an animal he may be, can only postulate ultimate chaos and return to a jungle existence governed by fang and claw. Certainly the fangs will be polished and sanitized, and the claws be sheathed in silver and gold, but one who is disemboweled by a "cat" in an asphalt jungle shaded by skyscrapers instead of palm trees, will not know the difference.

     Men prey upon one another when they have animals for ancestors, but they pray for one another when they recognize God as a common Father. I do not regard it quite so important that man was made a great deal higher than the animals as that he was made a little lower than God. In Psalm 8:5, an answer is given to the question, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" In the Authorized Version, the rendering is "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," but the word translated angels is elohim, and that is the word used for God in Genesis 1:1.

     It is not the distance from animals but the proximity to God which makes man unique. So the next verse (Psalm 8:6) says "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet." Man abdicates his responsibility when he gets on the animal level or when he seeks to dethrone God. The first shows a disrespect for himself, the second an irreverence for the creator. And he does both when he becomes a wilful and malicious murderer. He attempts to be under what he is over and aspires to be over what he is under.

     And it is here that God decrees that man forfeits his right to continue to live with those who remain within the status for which man was made. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man" (Genesis 9:6). Now there are two broad classes of sociologists who oppose capital punishment in our day--those who deny the existence of God and regard the Bible as a compilation of folklore, and those who accept the existence of God and the concept of revelation, but who think that God has changed or that conditions have altered to such an extent that the original decree has been outmoded or repealed.

     Among the non-sociological scripturists will be found varying degrees of knowledge (and ignorance) which do not especially require our attention. Some who are affected by simplistic symptoms, think that the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," settles the question by forbidding judicial execution. This is ridiculous because only twenty-seven verses after this command was first recorded, God said, "If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die" (Exodus 21:14). God has always distinguished between murder and killing by judicial decree. All murder is killing but not all killing is murder.

     Again, there are those who think that the decree made in the first book of the Bible has been abrogated, yet we read the same thing in the final volume. "He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword" (Revelation 13:10). And it is Paul who points out that the civil power is God's appointed agent to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil, and he does not bear the sword in vain.

     It is argued that capital punishment as currently administered is discriminative, with the poor and ignorant the victims, while the well-to-do and shrewd escape. This is probably the case as statistics indicate, but it does not concern the morality of capital punishment. It concerns the morality of administration. The same thing can be said about the political administration of affairs in other areas, but the fact that the tax burden falls heaviest on the poor only indicates that the situation should be cleared up, and not that the tax structure should be abandoned as immoral.

     It is also objected that the action is so final and irretrievable, but it is not any more so than the death of a victim shot in the heart by a robber, or the death of

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a woman choked or bludgeoned to death in her own home by a rapist. Why is it that modern "morality" seems always to be on the side of the criminal aggressor without taking account of the rights of the innocent victim?

     The sociologists debate among themselves as to whether capital punishment is a deterrent, but on this basis all punishment will have to be eliminated. It is obvious that prison and parole systems provide no effective deterrent for many criminals commit the same crimes again on the day of their release, thus compounding the offense. It could be that laxity of enforcement and long delays in bringing anti-social characters to justice is the real trouble. Solomon said, "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8: 11).

     But our argument is that capital punishment for murder is not to be exacted simply because of its effect upon others, but because it is the divine judgment to keep the land from being drenched in innocent blood. The effect is secondary. The forfeiture of one's right to continue in the realm of the living is conditioned upon his blatant disrespect for the person of one made in the image of God. Certainly we agree that there are variant degrees of responsibility and there are mitigating circumstances. We already recognize these in our categories of first, second and third degree murder and manslaughter. This is for the proper agents of civil authority to determine, but this has nothing to do with the morality of capital punishment.

     It is our proposal to deal concretely with some of the questions raised by Dr. Robinson in Christian Morals Today, and to this end we trust that you will read our next issue. Please remember that it is not necessary for you to concur with my ideas and views to be loved and respected as my brother or sister. I do trust that you will credit me with an earnest desire and a sincere intention to face up honestly to the current conflict as a true commando of my Lord.