searching out proper ethic principles

"As you know I am an extreme pacifist but if God asked me to do something that ran across that, I would obey God (now, if only I can differentiate God's voice from the other ones in my head) because God is God and I am not."

I'm sure you also have strong feelings on children's welfare. If God told you to horribly abuse a group of preschoolers sexually and physically, would you do it?

Of course you wouldn't -- because you recognize that such an instruction wouldn't be from God. We all feel that we know the voice of God well enough to differentiate what comes from him, and what does not.

Yet without a doubt much of this knowledge and understanding of God's voice has its roots in what our culture or particular subculture says is correct or moral. Few (healthy) people in any Western culture could kill another person without feeling some guilt, even if the act was completely justified; yet there are Christians from other cultures who would find killing in some contexts to be not only morally permissble but morally laudable.

It's precisely those cultural differences that should to some extent us cautious about developing a "biblical mindset"; the ancient Israelites had a decidedly premodern mindset, while Western society is twixt modern and premodern mindsets. We have radically different ideas on slavery, women's rights, the nature of God, and so on from what the authors of the Bible believed. While it doubtless is correct to say that those differences don't necessarily speak well of us, I think it's fair to say that a number of them do, and many of the others merely indicate differences in our social glue, rather than fault or merit in one society or the other.

So God is bigger than us. No question. His ways are higher than ours. Also agreed. But to what extent are those ways reflected in the lives of the ancient Israelites and their culture as recorded in Scripture? The ancients equated obedience to God with wealth and worldly success, but by the time Job was added to the canon, their understanding of God had reached the point where they concluded that such an equation was too facile an understanding of God.

I'm sure I make some people uncomfortable with the questions I'm asking these days, and even with the conclusions I'm starting to find, but I don't think I've strayed into any heresy. Just into uncertain gray areas, but I'm used to living there.

the third option

A good friend of mine in Texas is struggling to define his identity. Born male, he is transgendered and believes he would be happier as a female.

I watch this mess unfold, and honestly, I think we're going about this all the wrong way. Maybe it's not meant to be an either/or choice, a mutually exclusive pair of options. Maybe Sisyphus really did have to struggle and sweat and contend with that damn boulder for all eternity in order to receive the reprieve of the Elysian Fields that the gods had promised him, once he got it to the top of the hill; but maybe there was another option, some other way to get it up there, but he never stopped to consider it because he got it stuck in his head that the only way to get the damn thing to the top of the hill was to fight and struggle against its determination to stay at the bottom of the hill.

I'm not saying that transitioning into life as a woman is necessarily the right thing to do, because it is, I think, silly to believe that the inner gendered self is truer or more important than the outward physical self; if God created the one, then surely he created the other. And perhaps the evangelicals and the fundamentalists would be right to say that gender dysphoria is simply part of the sinful nature and you need to nail it to the Cross every day, along with every other question about sexual identity ... but maybe there's an asset to it that we haven't discovered because we've been taught to see it strictly as a right-or-wrong moral issue.

I don't know what I think, honestly. I have to say that Christ is someone who brings life and freedom from shame, while the Church often delights in putting people under the yoke of expectation. Christianist sharia is such a bitch to live under.

That's not a license to disregard our obligations or to revel in self-indulgence, but surely feeling dead all the time isn't what Christ intends for us, is it? I don't see the freedom and life that Christ brings in choosing to be miserable all our lives, any more than I see it in the choice to destroy our lives in the name of self-expression.

preventing premarital sex

Best way to prevent premarital sex among teens:

• Lower legal marriage age
• The B.F. Skinner approach -- apply painful shocks whenever they think of sex
• Abstinence-only sex education
• Strict segregation of the sexes until adulthood
• Remind kids that their parents have sex, and make it "uncool"

Vote in the poll!

Despite the silliness of the poll answers, it's still a serious question. What is the best way to prevent premarital sex among teens? STD's and unwanted pregnancies seem pretty straightforward -- safer-sex education that teaches about condoms and reliable birth control methods -- but what about getting teens to set the bar higher than losing their virginity on Prom night or when "you've met the one"? That is still a laudable goal, isn't it? I would imagine that breaking up with a sexual partner is going to carry with it a whole new dimension of heartache beyond what already comes with losing a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I have to admit, I'm a little disturbed by the comments I've read by some critics of abstinence-only education. While I can understand and even agree with comments based on the program's failure to make any difference, it seems like some people find the idea of abstinence itself to be fatally flawed and laughable.

And I find that disquieting. Do we really see "friends with benefits" as a good thing? Do we really think that serial monogamy is equal to or better than waiting until marriage and having one partner for life?

I know the abstinence option isn't an easy one to take -- it never has been, as shotgun weddings throughout history will attest -- but it can be done. I'm sure it can even be done these days, even though our society increasingly is saturated with sex. And I have to agree with my friend Rykie, who points out that it's "silly and a touch hyprocritical" to tell young adults to delay marriage until their late 20s and 30s, when their parents probably didn't wait until they had established themselves professionally before getting married.

In any event, while I'm no moralist, I do think the biblical exhortations against premarital sex are there for our good, not just to ruin our lives, or to leave us feeling hot, bothered and frustrated for years on end. And if we want to use the nature argument, it does seem contrary to nature that our culture enforces delayed maturity -- emotionally, psychologically, professionally and educationally -- when our biology is still signalling full maturity by 20 at the latest.

(As a tangent, I note with interest that societies traditionally either try to suppress female sexuality, like Islamicist cultures and some branches of Christianity; or they enthrone and worship it, as our society increasingly is doing. And yet either way, women are denigrated as objects of lust, rather than valued as human beings created in the Divine image. What's up with that?)

So the question is, what can be done that actually will encourage people to wait until marriage for sex? There's always the control option that gets a lot of push from fundamentalist groups and those who are angry at the way society has gone, but I've never felt comfortable with the notion that Christ wants to push us back into an imagined Golden Age, as much as that he wants to lead us forward into a new and real one.

What can be done? Or is it stupid even to try?

moral value

A friend of mine asks, "What is the moral value of someone essentially good, who does evil actions, based on evil/corrupt/confused intentions, and yet have his actions actually be good, despite the intent? (And can you translate that?) I may develop this later into a more cogent essay, but in the meantime, I'm posting my response to him here, mostly so I can remember it and find it later.

Someone essentially good (i.e., loves children) who commits evil actions (broadcasts Barney and Elmo TV specials), based on evil/corrupt/confused intentions (plans to warp children into mindless zombies/hopes to make a fortune through licensing deals/things it might be educational), and yet his his actions actually be good (children develop an appreciation for fine music and literature)?

I would say the moral value of the person lies more in the intentions than in the actions or the results of those actions, since actions are not solely determinative of the effects, and they flow naturally from the intentions, or inward being. To paraphrase a line of Christ's, "Wash the inside of the cup, and then it will be clean." If what's on the inside is corrupt or evil, it will manifest itself on the exterior as well.