Episode 3.3: Biblical ethics

A certain very charismatic ex-boyfriend of mine attended an evangelical seminary after college, and took a class on “Developing a Christian Worldview.” I never talked to him about it (he was decidedly ex at that point) but was always curious, what do you learn in such a class? 

The third class of the term was titled “searching for biblical ethics” and there were a number of parts to it. The text started by making the point that there is not one single coherent ethical framework in the Bible, but several, including: the creation myths, which explain the Judeo-Christian relationship with God; the ten Commandments, which outline the identity of the Jewish people and the ground rules for tribal life; the teachings of Jesus, who contrasted the rules of worldly power with those of God’s kingdom; and those of the apostles, who merged Jesus’s teachings with Greek philosophy to form a Christian faith based on what in German is succinctly called das Doppelgebot (the double commandment, does this have a name in English?): love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. 

Predigerkirche, Zurich: das Doppelgebot is front and center

Something I found interesting was the link between the biblical creation myth, “God created Man in his own image” and the modern Western notion of human rights: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” In ancient times, this wasn’t self-evident at all: in Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered a god, at an entirely different level than other humans; in Greek mythology, the gods mixed with and toyed with humanity in ways that were anything but equal. And of course even the writers of the Declaration of Independence were only talking about rich white guys. But my point is that it’s easy for us today to think that human rights are indeed “self-evident” when they are in fact a product of one strain of human thought that stretches back to the creation myths of Judaism. What we in the West take to be a secular worldview was very much nurtured by Judeo-Christian thought. Maybe that could be a comfort to those in the church who feel threatened by secularism, and a caution to those who feel they have evolved beyond religion: a Christian worldview is in fact what most of us already have, whether we like it or not.

I’ve been delaying and delaying this post because I wanted to say something about what’s going on in the U.S. right now. Or really, what’s going on in my Facebook feed. But everything I write either sounds wishy-washy or preachy, and in the end, I’m in the limbo of expathood – clearly not Swiss but also not really American. I’m just not there, I don't know what y'all are going through. But still...I guess what is comes down to is, please liberal friends: you may have lost a battle but you are winning the war, demographically and ideologically. Don't lose sight of that. In my last post I said that my own worldview fell somewhere between “our values are changing (for the better)” and “we live in a multi-ethical society, and we need to learn to deal with that.” The events of the past week have made me realize that I’m not in between at all, but firmly with that second one. Our values are changing, and will always be changing, hopefully largely for the better. But 323 million Americans (not to mention 7.5 billion humans on our planet) are never going to be on one side of any given question. I don't think we can hope to win everyone over - but what we can hope for is that we'll learn to do better at living with each other, at learning to love our neighbors (yes, even our white supremacist neighbors) as ourselves. I'd like to think that there are tools within the Catholic tradition that can help us do that, and that's where my own journey seems to be going at the moment. But more than that I feel very deeply that there are contributions to be made - to appropriate a much-maligned phrase from last week - on many sides. As naïve as I know that sounds. To borrow a less-maligned phrase: Don't Panic.

Episode 3.2: Ethical worldviews

The title of the second chapter of the class readings was “tools for ethical thought” and it was not clear to me for a long time what that meant or what we were supposed to do with these tools. But indeed, with time, the darn things have proven pretty useful. One of the “tools” is a “mini-typology of ethical worldviews,” which goes something like this:

People’s worldviews related to ethics fall into one of three categories.

1. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and things were better before. 
2. Things were not better before, and in fact we are in the process of replacing our outdated values with a set of more evolved ones – for example, from exploiting earth’s natural resources to understanding sustainability and how we can live in harmony with nature. 
3. There is a whole diversity of different and sometimes competing value systems in the world. This is not inherently a bad thing, but it necessitates that we learn to navigate them. 

I did wonder at first, doesn’t this just simplify things way too much? But of course that’s the point, our brains naturally simplify things all the time, and the basic worldview we have absolutely influences what evidence we’ll accept and remember, and what conclusions we draw when faced with new facts. The point of the categories isn’t to put everyone into bins, but rather to help us contemplate the other options out there – what do I think? What does that mean about my natural biases? Where is that other person coming from?

Among other things, this turns out to be useful for explaining why I often feel out of place in church. In short, there’s a great deal of (1) around. And naturally, if you believe things were better before, you will hold tight to the things that are slipping away. I think many churchgoers think that one of our primary duties as a church is to defend our beliefs and traditions against the relentless onslaught of self-centered consumerism. And I can’t deny the real dangers of self-centered consumerism. But my own worldview lies somewhere between (2) and (3). Perhaps I’m too young to remember when things were better? And consumerism is, for better or worse, what puts food on our table. I feel like it's possible for the us to celebrate and take pride in our traditions without building walls around them; that we as a Church could approach the rest of world with more curiosity and humility and less defensiveness.

On a church field trip (the benefits of being a church employee, who knew?!), we visited Kloster Ilanz, a convent built in the 1960s. The church there has a series of 12 windows, one for each article of the Apostles' Creed, designed by the Swiss artist Max Ruedi. Check them out here on Wikipedia. I love their simplicity and joy. (Also, the idea of someone building a convent in the 1960s sort of blew my mind? My knowledge of history needs a lot of help...)

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." (Revelation 22:1-2)

Episode 3.1.5: Update

I got these for Mother's Day, which was about as long ago as the last time I posted on this blog...

Update: Ok, it’s been a while. When I started this blog, I thought it would be pretty amazing if it lasted a year, because honestly, most projects of mine don’t. There is a large and growing pile of unread books on my windowsill that attest to my short attention span. But this time I didn’t lose interest so much as get oversubscribed. I started my little job at church and I decided to take a class in spiritual writing from Creative Nonfiction (unpaid advertisement: Creative Nonfiction classes are cool) and, well, life. On top of which the instructor this term had a somewhat stunningly boring, if effective, teaching method: we’d spend the first part of each class taking a test on the material from the class readings, and the rest of the class going over the answers together. Definitely good for reviewing the material, not always so great for processing it, maybe? Anyway. The class has now been over for a good um...several...months, but I haven't given up hope on this blog project.

Update 2: because guess what? It turns out that there’s a whole rotating 4-year series of 16 classes in theology given by the same institute I took this class from. I had a whole long and drawn-out internal debate about whether and how I should sign up for these - one class or two? distance or evening? for credit or not? is my German really up to this? of course it isn't! no, don't sell yourself short, you'll be fine! ok then, should I definitely take the classes for credit, so they could potentially count towards some kind of degree in the future? yes! no! (Repeat until headache ensues.)

My (new and still under development) calmer and intuitive self prevailed and said: sign up for both classes not because this might have some future application but because you are interested in this stuff. See how it goes, don't worry about credit, but do try to keep writing about it. Sooo...more theology classes next year! This coming semester I’ll be taking an evening course in dogmatic theology (every Monday night) and a distance course in liturgy (one weekend this winter and one week next summer). How will this go? I have no idea! Onwards!

So without further ado, catching up. I’m really a short-format type of girl anyway (see short attention span, above) so my grand plan is to write a short essay inspired by each of the remaining class sessions, or whatever parts of them have stuck in my swamp of a brain. Since it’s been a few months, probably good to repeat the standard disclaimer: I have no idea what I’m talking about.