Myths used to deny obligation to neighbor

GEORGE TEMPLETON

COMMENTARY

By George Templeton

Gazette Columnist

Wisdom

Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth said, “All men are capable of reason.  That is the fundamental principle of democracy.  Because everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.”

Once again, religion and personal life must become coexistent as they were in the past.  The American loss of the ethos of understood, unwritten rules by which we live is our tragedy.  It is not that one man is right and the other wrong, but that both are guilty of ideological justification.  Through the revival of our earlier culture, we must develop new life and creative activity, remembering that not all of the past is worth preserving. 

Politics

Bonhoeffer wrote:  “Ideologies vent their fury on man and then leave him as a bad dream leaves the waking dreamer.  The memory of them is bitter.  They have not made the man stronger or more mature; they have only made him poorer and more mistrustful.”

When politics becomes religion, ideology takes on arrogant rigidity and pragmatic compromise becomes impossible.  We are not content with our personal world views, believing that others must share them.  Diversity raises doubts, threatens our personal truths, and hardens our certainty in simple explanations.  Infallible doctrine blinds the eyes to inconvenient facts.  Only state ideological neutrality will foster reason, evidence, and politics based on facts instead of deception and manipulation.

Then

It was the time of the Freedom Riders, racial desegregation and the assassinations of Bobby and Martin.  It was the time of a war to contain the Red menace and prevent the dominoes from falling.  It was the time of violent confrontation between anti-war demonstrators and police at the Democratic National Convention.  It was the time when the establishment claimed that the Kent State shootings were deserved.  It was a time when young people wore long hair and trusted no one over 30 years of age.  Then defense factory workers wore black arm bands in vainglory protest against the anti-war movement.

I was the Silicon Valley Man, complete with tie, corduroy jacket, Hush Puppy shoes, and punched hole computer tapes.  My hair was short and I packed a slide rule instead of a gun. Factory workers disliked my omitted arm band and my belief that FDR and Martin Luther King were not Communists.  Students confronted me because I carried a briefcase and looked like the silent majority.  It made me feel moderate.

Triumphant

We thought that God was on our side and America could do no wrong.  To question that was to be un-American.  But does war bring peace?  Once a war is started, it can never be wrong.

    

I experienced mixed feelings of patriotism for defending our country and guilt for participating in the Cold War industry of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that I believed could destroy civilization.  Has war become a more dangerous weapon than the evils it is supposed to defend us from?  Fortunately MAD did not destroy us, but were we lucky?

Killing

Perhaps it is not just a matter of heartfelt feelings.  As C.S. Lewis puts it in his book Mere Christianity, as long as one does not hate the enemy and tarnish one’s soul, it is moral to kill them.  After all, positive law recognizes different degrees of murder distinguished by motivation.  In the time of MAD what did the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill” mean?

Ethical

Is religion constrained to individual, spiritual, inward realities and not intended for the actions of societies and nations?  Is the kingdom of God of this world or for this world?  What is more important, behavior, or belief?  Must we become the change we wish to see in the world?

What method should we choose for defeating evil?  When I am wronged, does that justify me doing wrong?  Is it moral to not turn the other cheek, to demand justice, ignoring consequences?  What about the golden rule?  Is love more important than righteousness?

How does duty to country square with the possibility of having to do duty by the devil?  What about assassination?  Is it possible for the enemy to be innocent?  Does self-defense, democracy, or freedom justify preemptive strikes and occupation of other nations?  When is “collateral damage” justified?

How could the holocaust have been avoided?  Was the genocide of Jews a patriotic noble cause?  Were the lives of the “less than human” Jews not as important as those of Aryans?  Does God refuse to hear the prayers of Jews?  Did they deserve it?

Are there simple, unambiguous, universally applicable, eternal rules that can be relied upon when making ethical decisions?  What would Jesus do?  Were his teachings comprehensive enough to guide us in a modern world of righteous, ideological, and international conflict?

Bonhoeffer

This was the subject of our university discussion group.  Bonhoeffer’s musings, collected in a book called Ethics, provided a twentieth century context.  Our group supported the troops and was not protesting the Vietnam War.

Bonhoeffer was a theologian living in Germany during WW II.   He conspired to assassinate Hitler, was caught and executed.   In addition to inherited religious tradition, his notes emphasized the role of context and individual responsibility in ethical decision making.  Divine revelation does not always absolve us of responsibility, may not be obvious, and does not always declare a clear choice when one has to decide between wrong and wrong.  

Loving with one’s heart, soul, and mind must not force abandonment of critical thinking.

Bonhoeffer believed in God’s clear and definite commandment “to” but not “about”.  He felt that the ethical decision cannot be established in advance, and must consider the given human and general conditions and relevant questions of principle.  Situational ethics is a lack of absolute standards, not a definite permanent doctrine for all times and places, not a private idea, self-justification, or matter of individual conscious.  Was Bonhoeffer’s action moral?

A church, threatened by our shades of grey and the lack of rigid absolute moral certainty, tried to destroy what they felt was our sacrilegious, unpatriotic study.  Chosen by the Holy Spirit, and having the only True Way, they did not worry about our first Amendment right to thoughtful debate.  The newspaper described the sensational commotion, claiming that we advocated, “If it feels good do it” and that we were using demon wine for communion.  We were condemned as spoiled, selfish, immoral, and unpatriotic.

Politics was never part of our discussion.  Bonhoeffer’s writings made no judgment of Hitler.  We did not agree on whether Bonhoeffer acted ethically or not.  Our group was condemned by the “silent majority” who were defending the Vietnam War and American triumphalism.  Those who cry about religious persecution and feel that freedom is measured by how they can force their ideas on others do not understand that intolerance works both ways.

Slander

Is it written that you should badmouth the messenger if you don’t like his message?  Glen Beck based an entire program on a five second assertion that liberals slander Bonhoeffer as an atheistic humanist like themselves.  He would be a fundamentalist Tea Party member were he alive today.  An entire hour fanned the fires of liberal hatred built on a ridiculous assertion that no informed person could believe.

Nostalgia

It reminds me of right-wing propaganda about the evils of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  They are no worse than the Tea Party racists and neo-Nazis or the Country Thunder Festival drunks.

The real danger is not creeping socialism.  It is the unregulated free-market secular religion that led to the de-industrialization of America and our trade deficit and that now threatens our technological leadership.  The Hula Hoop was not a fundamental scientific breakthrough nor is the new fad of I-phone Apps that will show us how to change a tire, pack our suitcase or get the latest bargain.  Those consumer innovations encourage spending the wealth that already exists instead of saving or making things to export.

Darwinian capitalism doesn’t work when you compete against foreign state capitalism backed by trillions of dollars that target entire industries for take-over.   Reckless irresponsibility destroyed more than forty percent of the world’s wealth and wiped out the jobs of seven million Americans.  It made our homes worth one third of what they were five years ago.  

There will be impending social consequences resulting from a large number of Baby Boomers that must retire soon.  Many have had their careers downsized and relocated overseas.  They are past 55 years old and subject to age discrimination. They may have been overpaid in relationship to what the future holds for them and have not prepared for the inevitability of physical infirmity that comes with old age.  Worse yet, their innocent children will be denied the necessities of life and the standard of living we have come to expect because of our national debt.

Mythology

Compassion and leniency are weaknesses that promote corruption, sloth, and waste.  It’s your fault if you are poor and you deserve it.  Food stamps are also for the wealthy and are bribes to obtain their votes.  Public unions rob hard working Americans and provide lifetime five figure pensions at age 32, requiring only two years on the job.  They fund the Democratic politicians who make this possible.  The Republicans spent the Clinton budget surplus to prevent Democrats from wasting it on the poor by purchasing their votes. 

These are envious myths used to defend a morality that denies the obligation to our neighbor.

Belief

We thought we were electing representatives who, with the Wisdom of Solomon, would weigh the facts, and consider the views of an informed electorate.  Instead they preach “unfacts.”  They should be held to a higher standard of truth.  For example, Senator Kyl claimed that abortion accounts for well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.  It’s 3 percent and uses no taxpayer dollars.  No one want’s abortion, but the culture of life should also be concerned about health care, poverty, maternity leave, job education, and that the baby who is  born will have a decent life.  It is ironic that Republican shortcomings in dealing with these concrete realities increase abortion and social dysfunction.

Law

You recall the story about Solomon and the two women who each claimed the same baby asking Solomon to decide between them.  As the story goes, Solomon followed the law, ordering the child to be cut in half and divided between the women.  As the sword descended, the real mother cried out “No, let the child be given to my rival!”  Clearly that demonstrated the love of the mother for her child.  Instead, suppose the real mother broke the ninth commandment saying “No, I lied; the child is really hers, not mine.”  Did she do right?