Ethical Houston

Jeremiah  5: 1 ; 7: 3-11

“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares.  If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.”

            ”Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.  Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!’   If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.”

            No one likes a prophet.  It was true during the time of the prophets and it was true in the time of Jesus and it’s true now.  In today’s world the language of the bible and the concept of God as a vindictive capricious old man seem antiquated and mythically irrelevant.  Most people can’t relate to this kind of God, even if they believe in God.  The Church of the past placed great emphasis in this understanding of God and people both in the faith, and unbelievers say that this concept of God is an ancient concoction that needs to be purged.  J. B. Phillips in his book “Your God is too Small” explores our historical and limited view of God.  Characterizations of God as the “resident policeman”, “parental hangover”, “the grand old man”, and “the puppeteer” are all limitations and holdovers from a time past.  He goes on to say that because of the immensity of God our human mind cannot wrap itself around the fullness of God’s being.  He states that the closest we come to an idea of the nature of God is through Jesus of Nazareth.  He quotes John to make his point.

John 14: 9  “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

John 14: 6 “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Phillips interprets this by saying, “ Jesus says, in effect, that there will be no inward endorsement of the truth of the way of living he puts forward as the right one, until a man is prepared to do the will, i.e. co-operate with the purpose of God.  This at once rules out arm chair critics of Christianity and any dilettante appraisal of it merits. “You can’t know,” say Christ, “until you are willing to do.”   He further states that Jesus calls us to “pick up our cross (i.e. bear the painful cost of that denial) and follow him (i.e. live positively according to the principles that I teach and demonstrate).” 

“Now at the moment a person does this, even temporarily and tentatively, they find themselves in touch with something more real than they have known before.  There is a sense that they are touching a deep and powerful stream that runs right through life. In other words, the moment a person begins to really love, they find themselves in touch with the life of God.”

            There is also the warning that even though we can experience Grace, there are consequences to our actions.  Even our best intentions are subject to judgment and consequences.  Just because we don’t know God’s law or can’t foresee the unintended consequences, none the less consequences flow out of our actions.  Our ethical and moral decisions have effects.  I don’t think that God sits in Heaven and metes out judgments and punishment on a daily basis.  To the contrary, God has set in motion God’s physical and spiritual laws for us to live by, interpret or ignore.  Even in the 21^st century, with our knowledge base, we don’t always foresee the results of our actions. 

            In spite of our cultural isolation and the realities of the challenges facing the human race, we still stubbornly live out of personal self interest, a sense of individualism, positivism or on the other end of the continuum, a sense of dread and doom.  Much of what we hear from the television pulpit is the gospel of prosperity.  If we only believe enough, we are told, God will make us prosperous.  On closer observation, we know that’s not correct.  Often, regardless of belief and right actions we will suffer.   None the less, God is with us.

             On closer observation we see that Christ takes all of life into Himself.  Our separation and lack of understanding or adherence to His will are all taken into Himself.  And in so doing he still acknowledges his love for us in this isolated and broken state.  He weeps and bleeds and dies in our separated state.  He shares in our joys and our life’s learnings.  In His resurrection he acknowledges and points to this alternative way and it leads to Him and to new life.  He points us towards the God of new beginnings; that we can make mistakes and even be lost in our will to power, but that if we are willing to acknowledge this brokenness we can start new, even knowing that we will fall again.  Even if for only a little while we can be in the Light and know that there is another way and that we are always welcomed back.

            But acknowledging our fallenness is only the first step.  We next have to commit to change and learn from our mistakes and realize that we are not the center of the universe.  We look back at Gen. 3: 22 “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’   We might say further that we have the ability to know good and evil, but sometimes our eyes are covered with scales. 

In William Menzies 1936 movie adaptation of H.G. Wells book Things to Come, the world is followed through a series of wars and plagues from 1936 until 2036 until a pool of technocrats build a society in Basra Iraq and finally in 2036 dominate the world with their superior technology and intellect.  Even in their domination there is a sense of cold resignation that something is missing and one of the characters Cabal, then delivers a speech to the idea of progress and humanity’s quest for knowledge, asking, “And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

I contend that there is another alternative.  It is that faith in the power of relationships, where we live, love, suffer and pass but along the way, are connected in a spiritual way to our inner selves, to one another and to God.  Our salvation is not in our knowledge of the universe, or in things, wealth or power, but in the realization that we are all connected and unconditionally loved in spite of our self absorption.  Life then becomes an adventurous journey to share that vision with one another and live into it.