Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 1 Foundations of Christian Ethics
Chapter 6: Duties to Self and Society
2. Duties in interpersonal relations
Without serious and resolute attention to them, we shall be but feebly equipped to serve God or our neighbor.
— this appears to be indisputable. Yet this does not settle for us the many problems that emerge in daily life as to whom to serve and how best to serve them when human need is overwhelming and time, strength, and money are limited. If we can draw some directives from our gospel, we must find them, even though to find ready-made answers to all these impinging dilemmas is a vain hope.
It is a significant fact, suggestive of the outgoing character of Christian agape even among those who have never given serious thought to its meaning, that the Christian tends naturally to universalize it even when he fails to live by such an implication. What is "brotherly love"? Even a churlish and parochial Christian hesitates to say in principle that it
means only an obligation to one’s own family, or next-door neighbor, or fellow member of one’s own local church! The brotherhood of man is assumed to include everybody; the problems begin at the point of acting in a brotherly fashion toward one of another race, or nation, or politics.
Therefore, there is a common tendency to read into the recorded words of Jesus more than he says, while at the same time their application is far too constricted.
An unbiased reading of the Gospels —or at least, as objective a reading as possible, since every reading is an interpretation — leads to the conclusion that most if not all of the sayings of Jesus preserved in the records were spoken to individuals about their relations to God and to other individuals. There is a conspicuous lack not only of large-scale social programs but of corresponding social directives. For example,
"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you" (Luke 6:27), may well enough by us be taken to mean an attitude required toward the enemies of one’s nation, but it is doubtful that Jesus had this context specifically in mind.
One who is bringing a gift to the altar and remembers that his brother has something against him is enjoined, "First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matt. 5:24).10 In all
probability this meant to Jesus and to those who heard him speak these words neither a blood brother nor a fellow Christian, but another
personally known individual. Even the immortal parable of the good Samaritan fails to define for us precisely who "my neighbor" is; it makes clear the quality of neighbor love and leaves it to our Christian imagination to supply the answer to the lawyer’s question (Luke 10:29- 37).
From this fact, two cautions are in order, for Christians have often gone
to one extreme or the other. The more serious error has been to restrict the meaning of Christian duty wholly to individual, or more correctly, to
"small group" relations. This has been the traditional impact of Christian ethics through the centuries, cultivating the virtues of almsgiving,
ministry to the sick and helpless, chastity, personal honesty, and in general a responsive conscience in the presence of immediate need, but with little sensitivity to those caught in the grip of an evil social system.
To broaden the scope of the Christian moral imperative, and with it the scope of "brotherhood" and "neighborliness," the social gospel emerged.
This was — and is — right in much of its emphasis on the need of applying the principles of Christian love to all men, but often wrong in its assumption that to Jesus, the kingdom of God and such a liberated and alleviated society were equivalent terms.
What we have to do is to begin from both the explicit words of Jesus and the implicit meaning of agape, and in times and conditions very different from those of first-century Palestine, attempt to discover how to be Christian in both immediate and large-scale relations with our fellows. There are no fixed rules but some basic necessities, in disregard of which we fall into error and what is more serious, into sin. In every case we need to find, not a middle ground in the neatly balanced
Aristotelian sense of the mean between extremes, but the truth within a paradoxical relation in which to state one obligation without its
counterpart is to miss the full meaning of the obligation.
The first fact to be noted is that within the immediacy of interpersonal relations lies man’s greatest capacity for self-giving love and his worst temptations to self-love. Not only within the natural biological unit of the family, but in the relations of pastor and people, teacher and student, employer and servant, doctor and patient, counselor and counseled, and many other relations of friend to friend, one sees at times very moving demonstrations of sacrificial love. Only the cynic can say that it is the desire for personal approbation or for mutual benefits that prompts every act of patient, forgiving, unrewarded, and possibly even to others unknown service. There are too many examples, not only of outstanding personal service to humanity in ways exemplified by such men as
Francis of Assisi, David Livingstone, Wilfred Grenfell, Albert Schweitzer, and Frank Laubach but among thousands of unsung
Christian saints, to say that all human acts are egoistic. "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." The counterpart of this is the fact that without thought of personal gain Christians have again and again given all they had, even
to the giving of their health or bodily life to be burned away, in sacrificial love.
Yet this is not the whole story. Where do tempers most readily flare up, and where are caustic, stinging words most often spoken? In the home, among those we know so well that our inhibitions are down. Where do we most eagerly covet prestige and recognition? Among those who know us. There is slight comfort in being heralded by the world if among those near us we feel we are "not appreciated!" Where is self- pity most rampant? Exactly at this point. Where is the temptation to manipulate and dominate other personalities strongest? Where it is possible — and this possibility is usually greatest in interpersonal relations. Where are the most subtle rationalizations of self-will?
Precisely at the point where they can most readily be concealed under cover of friendship, of parental duty, of "doing the Lord’s work," or some other plausible-sounding excuse for following our own desires.
As was earlier noted, the medieval Church showed keen discernment in focusing attention on the seven deadly sins of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. While these are not limited to the relations of individual persons to one another, their most frequent expressions (with the possible exception of avarice) are at this point.11 It is in the
impingement of one life upon another, multiplied throughout human existence by both overt and covert forms of sinful self-will, that the most deadly damage is done.
The deduction is clear. On the one hand, we must recognize and be grateful to God for genuine expressions of Christian agape as we see them in others, and be challenged by them to fuller self-giving. On the other, as we look at ourselves, the warning is always in order,
"Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall"
(I Cor. 10:12).
A second paradoxical situation with regard to Christian duty follows from what has been said. A person’s first duty is to those for whom he has most direct responsibility. Yet it is this primacy of duty which most often narrows his vision and curtails his wider service.
To illustrate, it is the Christian’s duty, as well as that of every other man, to provide for his (or her) family not only the material foundations of life but the conditions of happy and creative existence. One has a responsibility to one’s own family that one does not have to any other.
Not only by civil law and custom but by the obligations of Christian love it is wrong to sacrifice one’s wife or husband or children to a diffused idea of "serving humanity." This does not mean that in the intimate relations of the home sacrifices may not be shared; it is obvious that in most forms of devoted Christian service they must be. Still less does it mean that one party in this relation is justified in imposing his or her will upon the other under a selfish plea of being neglected. This is a too common form of self-love, and many an act of Christian service is inhibited by the partner’s whim or by a self-pitying assumption of martyrdom. Nevertheless, it does mean that it is not Christian to neglect or injure one’s own family in the service of others to whom no such direct obligation is owed. To serve the Lord is our supreme duty, but it may be doubted that God is well served in forgetfulness of immediate human duties or the immolation of those who ought to be loved and cherished. This applies to time, energy, and companionship as well as money, and many a "busy person" continually away from home at church meetings might well take heed.
A similar observation can be made regarding one’s work. When one has
"a job to do," whether in the form of a definitely assumed voluntary responsibility or paid employment, it is his duty to get it done to the best of his ability, and not to let his time and energy be frittered away by a multitude of competing, and quite possibly more attractive, forms of work.
If, as often happens, duty to family and work conflict, he must decide as best he can — if possible by mutual agreement — what is the prior duty in the particular situation. John Calvin felt impelled by a rigorous sense of duty to keep an engagement at the church while his wife was dying;
one may well doubt that it was his duty. On the other hand, there are many occasions when major public responsibilities must be met at the cost of minor inconveniences at home — and this with no diminution of the fact that one is never entitled to disregard or trample upon the
personalities of those to whom one is bound by special ties of love and obligation.
But what of the other side of the paradox? Granted that there is a primacy of duty to those for whom one has most direct responsibility, what of its dangers? For dangers it certainly has! To protect one’s family and enhance their status, whether in regard to material comforts, social prestige, or in general the securing of "advantages," many a Christian will violate known principles of Christian behavior. In order
to make one’s own work prosper, in a situation where motives of self- love and service to one’s group are mixed, one will do what he would sharply criticize another for doing. In such situations restraints of conscience are often less powerful deterrents than fear of the law or of social disapproval.
Furthermore, it is not in direct violation of known Christian principles that the most serious consequences occur. Where these are clearly confronted, there is a chance for the Christian conscience to operate in terms of repentance after if not prevention before the event. For this reason, Christian leaders without becoming moralistic must continue to give moral instruction with the hope that some of it will modify
consciences and hence affect decisions. But the more serious situation lies in moral dullness, which in turn may be the result either of
ignorance, or of willful moral blindness, or of unconscious self- deception, or a mixture of all of these factors.
This moral dullness, insofar as it is preventable, is sin. This is true, whether the moral dullness is with regard to the unconscious hurts one gives one’s wife or husband or child or the large-scale complacency before the evils of the world that makes an "immoral society" out of
"moral men." It is willingness to enjoy advantages in one’s own
situation with indifference to "my neighbor" in the broader context that both necessitates and imposes barriers to Christian social action. There is a legitimate primacy of love and Christian service in interpersonal relations; there is also an ever-present and often-yielded-to temptation to make of such relations a subtle cloak for self-aggrandizement and self- love.
There is a place for compromise. The absolute demands of love must be lived out within the relativities of human existence in which duties come mixed, and a perfect course of action is seldom open to us. This is true in interpersonal relations, as it more obviously is true in more impersonal social structures. The right course is the best possible course, not an impossible perfection. But compromise can be along the line of either the fulfillment of Christian love or its surrender. "To do what appears as relatively best is an absolute duty before God, and to fail in this is to incur positive guilt." All too often such guilt is incurred.
One further problem in this connection must be noted before passing on to look at the wider framework of society — a moral dilemma which seldom fails to confront the sensitive Christian. What of conflicting
duties, not only among legitimate and needed services to others, but between one’s duty to one’s self and to others? There are times for noble self-forgetfulness, but the Christian owes some important duties to himself. What if he cannot pursue these ends and serve others at the same time?
To illustrate, virtually every Protestant Christian leader, and in
particularly acute form nearly every married theological student, faces the dilemma of study versus family versus church to be served. Shall one neglect one’s reading, thinking, and in general his intellectual maturation under the pressing claims which come from the other two sources? The temptation is strong, and there is no single, all-time answer.
The answer must be found in terms of the largest possible service to God and to other persons within the total life span. This calls for careful and prayerful planning of the use of time. If Protestant ministers are to have homes, these ought to be good ones, and firm long-lasting
foundations are not built by giving the family in the early years of
married life the casually snatched fragments of one’s time and attention.
If ministers are to preach and be Christian leaders for the next fifty years, they must have something to say. This means that, save for the most pressing instances of immediate need, nothing should be allowed to interfere with preparation for a lifetime of Christian service. Not willfully or selfishly, but in sober and calculated Christian dedication, it is necessary to keep one’s mind and soul fixed on the main objective.
This entails that, not obstinately but firmly, one must sometimes refuse to serve for the sake of a larger service.