Get behind me, pragmatism!

I was talking with a few friends the other day about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (we’ve been going through it at church) and what the New Testament says about violence (we’d all been reading a book on ethics called The Moral Vision of the New Testament, by Richard Hays). It was the week following the videos coming out of the beheading of 21 Christians by ISIS, which made our discussion about Jesus saying to turn the other cheek pretty tough to wholeheartedly embrace. It’s a difficult demand, and you’ll find there’s plenty more in the New Testament about not taking up arms and solving problems with violence, but rather living as part of the kingdom that is not of this world.

So all in all a good, thought-provoking conversation about ethics—but then all of a sudden some of my friends started raising exceptions. My American friends wondered how a radically non-violent Christian position would fare when faced with an armed home invader. My Nigerian friends wondered the same thing for their friends and families back home, faced with Boko Haram and other groups intent on destroying their homes, churches, properties, and lives. “There must come a point”, one of them said, “where a Christian can say, ‘Enough!’ and defend his home and his family.”

This is a dangerous point to be at. Pragmatism—doing what works—is a poor way of making ethical decisions, especially when they contradict sound doctrine you’ve been convinced of apart from the heat of the moment. There may well be good reasons to say ‘Enough!’, but the problem was that we hadn’t come up with them at the time. It was entirely pragmatic.1

Doing theology on the run is bound to work for a while, because after all that’s the basis for making that decision, but in the long run you’ll hit trouble. Ethical thinking is often involved and complicated, but it’s worth investing time into investigating how our union with Christ in his death and resurrection actually plays out in the day-to-day decisions of life. As Michael Jensen wrote on a comparable issue: “Deeply-held doctrinal convictions are our immune system against theological aberrations”.

There’s always going to be pressure to do what works in the short term, on almost every issue: evangelism, what we do in church, sexuality, every ethical question you can think of and more. But Jesus doesn’t say to us “Take up your cross and follow me, but you’re welcome to put it down if it gets really tricky”. Being his disciple is often going to be hard, and it may well be personally costly. Are we convinced in our doctrine, in our reasoning from the Scriptures, and in our imitation of our redeemer Jesus Christ? If so, do that, not (just) what works right now.

1. The other thing to say is that ethical decision-making is very rarely so stark as we imagine it is going to be. In this case, it’s almost never a case of shoot-or-be-shot; there are other possibilities out there. But that’s for another time… or go read Andrew Cameron’s excellent Joined-Up Life.↩

Photo credit: Andrew Butitta