A Response to Conservative Ethics

A Conservative Christian Summary of Ethics
I don't actually know who developed this video, but it seems to summarize briefly most Christian's viewpoint of ethics. The four points below summarize the points of the video, and after each I give my response.


1. Secular ethics are situational
This video seems to want it both ways. First, they say that secular ethics change according to the circumstance, that they have no basis for their morality. Second, they say that everyone, without exception, has God’s morality in their heart, and so morality is based on God’s ethics. I agree with the second principle, but not the first. Secular moral reasoning is based on an a priori ethic, the same as Christian ethics. The only difference between Christian ethics is that they, supposedly, have a foundation for their ethic that they can point to. Secular ethics do ethics without an actual known foundation for their ethics. However, as Paul says in Romans 2, often those without the law can do the things contained in the law even though they don’t have the law as a standard. It is funny how secular ethicists often live out a better ethical life than Christians based on their gut rather than having a standard that they can point to and make excuses about.

2. Christian ethics are authoritative
Usually, when Christians talk about ethics, they are actually speaking about commands. And commands, they think, are cut and dry, absolute moral standards, which clearly and simply create morality. However, as Jesus points out in Matthew 5, this is not the case. Jesus points out case after case that one can be strictly obeying the ten commandments and yet still acting in an immoral fashion. Thus, Jesus’ principle was that love must always interpret law and sometimes supersede it. Christian morality, then, must be principle based, not law based. In other words, Jesus gives us general principles to follow, such as “love your enemies” or “let your yes be yes”. We must determine, first of all, what the principles actually mean and then we need to apply those principles to our life. In one circumstance, “love your enemy” means to not cut your enemy with a knife. However, if you are a surgeon and use cutting to save life, then “love your enemy” may mean to cut your enemy with a knife. Law is an inadequate basis for Christians to determine morality, rather we must train Jesus followers to look at principles and how to interpret those principles in circumstance.

3. Christian ethics is based on God’s nature
One’s nature is what we can see. As I’ve already argued, human morality cannot always be discovered by looking at God’s nature. God can kill human beings because He is creator, but human beings must not. We must understand that God’s nature must and can be followed, but not necessarily all of God’s actions. The classic biblical statement of God’s nature is, “YHWH is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love and truth, offering forgiveness to thousands, but does not leave the wicked unpunished.” (Exodus 34). The first part of God’s nature, we must follow and imitate. However, punishing the wicked is not for humans following God, for it says “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord”. We can desire the wicked to be punished, but we are NOT slow to anger, NOT forgiving of the repentant. Thus we always screw up judgment. For this reason, judgment should be left in the hands of God who alone has the wisdom to judge correctly. God’s nature is not something we can just take on ourselves willy-nilly. God’s nature often requires God’s wisdom and power to live it out truly.

4. Christian ethics are based on God’s preference
Francis Schaefer is quoted as saying, “God can get ticked off”. Certainly God has preferences. And Christians are supposed to be interested in loving God as well as loving humanity. Part of loving God is knowing God’s preferences. Why? Because just like if we have a friend we want to spend time with, we don’t defecate in their living room. That isn’t good for our continuing relationship with them. Even so, if we want a relationship with God and want to love Him, there are things we may prefer to do, but we don’t do because we want to have a continuing relationship with God. If we act in certain ways, without regret or repentance, then we cannot relate to God in an open way. God is constantly disgusted by our actions, and so we can’t fairly have a relationship with Him.