Sunday, September 25, 2011

How do we decide?



Take an issue, any issue facing your church's neighborhood and community. Homelessness? Unemployment? Undocumented workers? Unsupervised children after school?

How do you approach the problem? How do you decide a course of action? What factors into your decision-making process and implementation?

Is it one individual with an idea? Is a bureaucratic process that takes months or more to get approvals and funding? Is it a small group fueled by passion then desperate pleas for help when the passion is exhausted? Is it a combination of the above?

Many times our faith communities take a problem and don't know what to do about it. We have homeless individuals and others going hungry in the area around our church. What should be do about it? Should we do anything?

Maybe we should just give money to established charities already working with these individuals? They already have the resources and processes set up. If we take a utilitarian approach, maybe we give so much money to these charities that we can no longer pay for ministries that only serve our congregation.

Maybe we ask our members to give generously to these charities, or directly to the individuals effected to create more financial equality. Another option if we believe “justice is fairness” is to lobby political officials and organizations to drastically change tax laws and provide greater assistance to those suffering severe poverty. Following John Rawls' ethical approach we might support large scale efforts to improve the situation of those who are least fortune in society, even if it means taking some from those at the top.1

Maybe our community values the virtues of generosity, love, justice, and compassion. If so, we may choose to donate space in our building for a soup kitchen and support other groups offering assistance to those in need around us. We could try and teach those we served the importance of specific virtues, such as temperance and hope, and moral law for themselves.

Maybe we see ourselves in a community with those outside our church walls and seek to be in conversation with them. The homeless and hungry have placed a call on our lives which we must respond to, for we are the answer to the problem, if only we take responsibility. The answer we give to this call is constantly changing as we interact with individuals. We start a soup kitchen that feeds 150 people once a week. We respond by opening for a second day a week. Individuals are in need of warm coats for the winter. We respond by collecting and distributing winter clothing. Neibuhr's ethics of responsibility then calls us to be part of an ongoing dialogue with those who experience injustice.

Sometimes it is so easy for faith communities to become overwhelmed by the places of need and the questions that require a response. As a result, so many times we are silent. People of faith ask so many questions: Does God support the death penalty? What about homosexuality? Am I supposed to do something about the situation in Darfur? And we do a disservice when we do not give them a framework to evaluate these questions for themselves.

It is the service we do within our communities that teach those who are watching how to wrestle with the ethical questions they are struggling with. Do we ignore the people sleeping in the woods beside our church or do we reach out to them and show them where they can get help? Do we take care of the children in our midst or do we shush them and send them away? Do we welcome with open arms the people who walk in Sunday morning and don't look like us or do we change pews and look at them with disgust? It is these seemingly small things that model an ethical approach.

Our goal should be to model scripture, build on experience (personal and historical), and reason out effective methods given the particulars. For me, Jesus' life and teachings provide much insight into what an appropriate Christian response to the world should be. We should care for the least among us. We should not judge others. We should see as our neighbor the ones society tells us to hate. And we should love. Love with a fierceness that breaks through boundaries and makes the impossible possible. And with that love, we enter into dialogues that prioritize the stories and experiences of the disadvantaged and oppressed. We try and fail and try again to find ways to make the world a more just place. One person, one story, one community at a time.

1 Karen Lebacqz, “A Contract Response: John Rawls,” Six Theories of Justice (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), 37.