c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) I learn that an acquaintance is making an unwise decision. How unwise remains to be seen. Possibilities range from costly to self-destructive.

Those who know the situation shake their heads. What can we do? Our counsel is ignored. We can’t protect him from taking a dangerous course. About all we can do is dodge the fallout, prepare to bail out those whom his decision will hurt, and be ready to lift him up when he falls.

Besides, who knows, he could be right. The rest of us could be wrong. This isn’t black-and-white, like a child stepping in front of an oncoming truck. It’s a weighing of options. And in the weighing of options, it can be difficult to get out of one’s own way, to move beyond self-interest and fear and to see clearly.

Much of the hyper-moralizing going on today has worked itself up to an absolutist fervor in which complex situations are deemed simple and, it is said, only moral cowards or the biblically illiterate fail to grasp certainty.

Believing they have attained black-and-white clarity, some say that ethical questions like abortion and sexuality can be reduced to a few basic tenets. Time to legislate, they say. Time to shout warnings, maybe put up protective fences.

Others disagree. Such matters are inherently ambiguous, they say. They entail a weighing of options. We make choices from an array of possibilities in which each choice has a measure of truth and likely outcomes include both gain and loss. Finding a few potent Scripture verses doesn’t remove the ambiguity or point to a simple solution. The Bible is so ambiguous on moral matters, they say, that searching it thoroughly yields more questions than answers, and harvesting it selectively leads to self-righteous cruelty.

It isn’t moral cowardice to honor the ambiguous. Nor is it moral heroism to cling to simple tenets. Ethical decisions aren’t a matter of adding up rational arguments or relevant scriptures, and then measuring armaments and scoffing at methodology.

It is no more “evangelical” to take a conservative moral stance than a liberal one. If the Bible becomes a source of weapons, it loses its capacity for grace. We’ll end up shouting anyway, so why not just go straight to shouting and leave the Bible in peace, not a battlefield strewn with bodies and bullet casings, but a soothing pasture providing respite from self-generated storms?

The trick in ethical quandaries, it seems to me, is to get out of our own way, to turn down the engines of self-interest and fear, and to gaze at a confusing world with enough courage to see its confusion. I think it is lazy and cowardly to snatch a few simple answers and then beat up on those who disagree. It is a form of self-protection _ or as Jesus put it, trying to save one’s own life, rather than losing one’s life for his sake.

And when the hyper-moralizing is aimed at preserving one’s privileges, or protecting a worldview that causes one to feel safe, even as it wounds others, we are standing on evil’s ground, continuing history’s sad saga of the bigots and predators who have used holy words to justify their cruelty.

We cannot save ourselves. We cannot protect an acquaintance from hurting himself. We cannot make our lives better by depriving others of their safety, dignity or freedom. Yes, there are times when law enforcement is required or nations declare war. But only fools enter such battles lightly, without an awareness that when jailing and shooting start, everyone loses.

Jesus refused numerous pleas for simple answers. He honored the ambiguities. He piled paradox on paradox. His teachings took the form of parables, not black-and-white answers. His counsel wasn’t to take one course of action as absolutely right, but to examine one’s motives.

Are we prevented, then, from acting? No, we all have decisions to make. Some of them, in ethical areas like sexuality, race and wealth, are wrenching. But we must make our decisions humbly, rather than arrogantly; with personal courage, rather than the cowardice of a self-righteous mob; and with the armor of love, not the hateful sword of right opinion.

DEA END EHRICH