Mere Morality by Lewis Smedes
Smedes, Lewis. Mere Morality. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
Introduction
1) We do have choices, and they are sometimes between real moral options. The choice we make can put us in the wrong with God and our ideal selves—or leave us in the right. And being in the right means being in harmony with God’s design for our humanity. Pg vii
2)
To demoralize life is to dehumanize it. The call of morality
is an invitation to the truly human life. Pg vii
Chapter 1: Commands for Fiddlers
3) It is a truism today that we are in a crisis of morals. The crisis is not simply that people are doing wrong things; that has been going on since the Fall in Eden. The crisis is the loss of a shared understanding of what is right. Pg 1
4) Law without love tells us not to kill a stranger; law with love moves us to go out of our way to help a wounded enemy. Pg 13
5) Grace does not make them [the commandments] obsolete; it gives them solid ground (Rom 3:31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law) Encircled by grace, the commandments point to the life grace came to restore (Tit 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, Tit 2:12 instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age. NASB) Pg 14
6) The moral commands of the Decalogue build on the commands of justice and love. In spelling out how justice is to be pursued within a specific sector of life, each command asks for respect of the person of a neighbor in his or her role within that sector. Respect is the sense for the other person’s right to be who he is, to have what he properly has coming to him, and to be allowed to do what he is called to do. So for instance, “thou shall not steal” points to the respect we should have for a person’s right to have what is properly his own. “Thou shall not commit adultery” points to the respect we should have for a person’s right to be an exclusive partner within the sexual covenant we call marriage. In short, the commandment specifies what justice calls for within a given sector of life. Pg 15-16
7) But the same commandments point to love as well. Love means caring for what a person needs in order to play a role as a member of the community. Pg 16
Notes from Chapter 1 (back of book)
8) The most powerful way the Bible speaks to the moral life is in its panoramic vision of life as a whole. The vision is important because the way we see life is usually the way we live it. The Bible provides a perspective on where we came from, what we are, and where we are needed. And by letting us see ourselves, it helps to see our duty. Pg 245
9) The vision of our origin. The Bible tells us that we are creatures. If we see ourselves as such, we are open to two powerful moral influences—one more rational, the other more emotional. The former has to do with how we think about life with a Creator; the latter affects how we feel toward the Creator. If we see life as created by a rational God, we are likely to look for and find purpose in it. We assume that the world has been created with plan and purpose for its rational inhabitants and tend to think of our life as a calling to conformity with the Creator’s design. We also tend to believe that the divine commandments will match the divine design. On that basis, to believe in creation is to believe that the call to be moral is nothing more than the call to be human. Pg 245
10) To feel life as a creature is to sense one’s dependence. Life around us and in us, every tender relationship with another person, every outstretched hand, each deep breath, every ray of beauty, every experience of love, is received as an instant-by-instant gift of the Creator who intends our welfare and wills our joy. The experience of being created is the same as the feeling of gratitude. To a person who experiences life as a creation, it will seem natural and appropriate that he ought to do what the Creator expects him to do. Pg 245
11) The vision of our fallenness. The Bible is not about sin, but about redemption from sin. But we hear the story of redemption well only in context. What this means for morality is that we do not take our final cue from how people generally manage their affairs. Social research is not the last word on how life ought to be lived. Customs are too often corrupt and people too generally obstinate for moral direction to come from our collective habits. God’s commandments are alien only to fallen inclinations, not to creation’s design. For fallen life is not typically human; it is a loss of humaneness. Pg 245-246
12) The vision of our future. We are saved, not by morality, but by divine love. While we cannot be saved by morality, we are saved for morality. We are engaged by the Creator Spirit so that we can be human again, brought to our true selves within a genuinely humane community of loving people. Pg 246
13)
Separating temporary commands from abiding ones becomes more
difficult as the commands become more concrete. Maybe there is a parallel here
between rules for playing games and rules for the moral life.
First there are rules of the game. Some rules control the
essence of the game; change the rules and you change the game. Take baseball.
If you give up the rule that a batter is out when a fielder catches a ball he
hits, you will have altered the basics of the game. Some of the Bible’s rules
are rules of the game. Take communication; you would change the nature of human
dialogue if you gave up the rule of truthfulness.
Second, there are rules of
strategy. Take baseball again. There is a rule that you never purposely walk
the potentially winning run. However, any manger can walk the potentially
winning run without tampering with the essence of the game. The Bible has rule
of strategy too. Moses’ rule against charging interest on loans was a strategy for
helping the poor people to keep their farms.
Third, there are rules of
propriety. Baseball again. There are rules against swearing at umpires, or
kicking sand at their pants leg. But the angry player does not assault the game
of baseball by kicking a little dust at a myopic umpire. The Bible has many
rules of propriety too. Paul’s rule (1 Cor. 11.4) that women wear veils when
they pray in public is one of them. Flaunting a women’s face in public hardly
upsets the moral scales. And when the feeling about female face changed, the
rule was seen for what it is, not a rule of the game of life, but a rule that
said: be sensitive to the feelings of people. When feelings change, the rules
change. [These distinctions will not always settle which biblical commands are
directions for all peoples in all times, but it is a good guideline.] Pg
247-248
14) A moral law is a statement that tells us all what we ought or ought not to do (Kant). It is also a measure or standard by which we can tell whether we did what we ought not to have done (Aquinas). Pg 248
15) [the gap between knowing and doing] The trouble is not the intellectual move from general principle to a particular case, but the ‘evil desires that gently tickle the mind’ of a person ‘with the most excellent disposition,’ leading him to snuff out the light of reason when he walks in the darkness of his own desires. Pg 250
Chapter 2: Respect for People’s Rights
16) To claim religious virtue while practicing injustice was to mimic the man who brutalizes his wife every evening and claims virtue for staying home nights. Pg 22
17) For that reality of getting and keeping what is rightfully ours we use the word justice. When we talk about what is ours by right, we mean something we need not say “thank you” for. Justice, then, is all about rights. Thus, rights exist before justice does. The very idea of justice occurs to us only because we believe people already have rights. Justice is a situation when people actually get their rights. Pg 24
18) If one person has a right, someone else has the duty to honor it. If I have a right to stay alive, you have the obligation to keep your hands off my throat. In one way or another, we are all obligated by other people’s rights simply because they share our humanity. I must honor everyone’s right to life and everyone must honor mine. Pg 24
19) Only persons have rights. But justice is impersonal in that it does not depend on our personal attitudes toward individuals. We want justice from each other whether we are friends or foes, lovers or strangers. Pg 25
20)
Every ‘Thou shall not’
signals a right. Pg 32
Chapter 3: Care for People’s Needs
21)
Healthy human love blends four gifts into one act of loving:
A) Care: Love as “the active concern for the life and growth of that which we
love
B) Responsibility: Love as a “response to the needs of another human being”
C) Respect: Love as a feeling “with him or her as he is, not as I need him to
be as an object for my use”
D) Knowledge: Pg 48
22) Love made Jesus indiscriminate. He excluded none. Pg 49
23) It is not love of self, but love of self alone, which is sinful. Pg 49
24) We diminish our neighbor only when we fail to respect him, turning him from a priceless person into a mere instrument for our pleasure Pg 52
25) The two absolute mandates that pervade all our human relationships are love and justice. How do these touch each other? Does love tell us anything about the duties of justice or justice about the duties of love?
26) Some would say that love and justice have nothing to do with each other. They speak different languages and work on different premises. Love is practiced person-to-person; justice is practiced through institutions like governments and courts. Love is spontaneous and generous; justice carefully calculates the merits of competing claims. Love goes out to people regardless of their undeserving; justice deals only with what people merit. Love gives without counting costs; justice counts the cost to the penny. Love and justice are like oil and water; each has its place, but each loses its own usefulness if you try to mix them. Pg 54
27) Quite the contrary others would retort. Love and justice are the same: justice is the tough side of love. Or to change the image, love is the motor, justice the rudder. Love has the vision, justice the direction. If there are two wounded men on the road to Jericho, justice is only love deciding which one to help first. Pg 54-55
28) The discussion of how love and justice are related tends to become a matter of definitions, and we find our attention straying from life to ideas. If we do focus on life, we sense that love and justice are two different dimensions of reality that belong together. There are several ways in which love and justice need each other, and if they are kept together they help us to know what God expects us to do. [see next note] Pg 55
29) Love demands that we do justice. Justice is love’s minimum demand. Since the law of love commands us to help our neighbor, it requires us at least to help him get or keep what is coming to him. Although love does not tells what our neighbors have the right to have, it does require that we support them in their right, whatever it is. Pg 55
30) But love is never satisfied with justice. If people received only what was theirs by right and gave others only what they had coming to them, we would be shorn of love’s beautiful extravagance. Love adds heart to the demands of justice. But we who love may never ignore the cool claims of justice in the name of love’s warmer gifts. If love does not work for justice, it probably does nothing at all. Pg 55
31)
Love enlarges the scope of justice It nudges our
concerns for justice beyond those who are close to us. Pg 55
32)
Love enriches justice. Love keeps pushing the
common sense of justice beyond itself into the righteousness of the kingdom of
God. The temptation to be satisfied too quickly with legal justice is a strong
one: if others are getting what the laws of their society allow them, we too
easily assume, justice is being done. But no society of sinful people achieves
even the bare bones of a structure of justice through its legal system. Without
generous love to move its people to a richer sense of justice, a society tends
to be satisfied with the minimum. Pg 56
33)
Love gets direction from justice. There is seldom
only one wounded man on the road to Jericho. And most Good Samaritans have a
limited budget. Whenever we have the resources for only one needy person and
meet two, the calculations of justice must direct the work of love. If there
are two wounded men, we need to ask which of them needs help the most. Will one
survive if he waits for the next Samaritan to arrive? Is one likely to die no
matter what we do for him? These are not questions love is able to cope with;
they call for the headwork of justice. Pg 56
34)
Justice also respects the responsibilities of the needy
person. Justice says that a person who chooses to be poor should be allowed to
have what he chooses. Nor will justice allows us—for love’s sake—to assume
responsibility for other people’s mistakes. If my neighbor goes deeply into
debt for luxuries he bought with his credit card, and then habitually expects
me to pay his heating bill, justice holds back the hand of love. If my neighbor
business is on the verge of ruin because he is incompetent and lazy, justice
may require love to let his business fail, and then help him find another line
of work. Pg 57
35)
[Quoting Niebuhr] Agapic love is “the potential and
perfection of every human being.” The law of love is therefore the law of life.
Agape is what I was made for. Pg 59
36)
[Quoting Merton] “The power to love another for his own
sake is one of the things that makes us like God. It is a power which
transcends and escapes the inevitability of self-love.” Pg 59
37)
Jesus calls us to be nothing else but human, and what he
asks of us as disciples fits what we are as creatures. The costliest demands of
discipleship are really invitations back to our true selves. Love is my
identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my
name. Pg 59
38)
Our theology of
Jesus Christ confirms the humanity of divine love. For if Jesus is truly human,
His love is truly human love. As the man for others, He tells us what it is
like to be a person. He reached out His hand to heal people as if loving were
the truly human way. In giving us a commandment to love each other as He loved
us, He was inviting us to His own very human life-style. Pg 59
39)
Agape does not flow freely and easily from our sinful
hearts. Eros always tends to overreach, and our best love is twisted into
deceitful little demands for pleasure on our terms. We love, as we live, by
grace. What matters is that when, subdued by grace, we love as Jesus loved, we
are truly human again, loving as God made us to love in the first place.
Realizing this, we can resist the false humility that says it is only God who
loves through us, as if we are at best like tubes with divine love hardly
touching us as it flows through them. When we practice love, we know that it is
really ourselves who love, though we know it is Christ within us who enables us
(Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. NIV)
God’s love comes into our lives to make them more, not less, human. God abides
in us without crowding out our humanity. Pg 60
40)
How does love tell us what to do? The love commandment
asks us to help a neighbor, for the neighbor’s sake, at a greater cost than we
feel like paying. The commandment is universal and absolute, and it is a law of
life—that is, it commands us to conform to what we are. Yet the law is as
general as it is universal and as broad as it is absolute. Can we sharpen the
focus? Pg 60-61
41) I
propose we look for cooperative links between love and the other commandments.
Between love and the commandments there ought to be a ‘holy marriage’ and
mutual enrichment. [See following notes] Pg 61
42) Paul
said that love never hurts the neighbor (Rom 13:10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love
is the fulfillment of the law. NIV) and therefore fulfills the law. Behind
the law of harmless love stands the respect for the person of our neighbor. He
is there, in his inviolable personhood, demanding by his very existence and his
place in society that we respect him. The negative commands call us to stand
back and let our neighbor be what he is and do what he is called to do.
Following Paul’s lead, then, we can read each commandment as a rule that tells
us at least how we can avoid hurting our neighbor:
A) Love respects a neighbor’s right to his biological life
B) Love respects the a neighbor’s right to keep what is rightly his.
C) Love respects a neighbor’s right to truthfulness
D) Love respects a neighbor’s right (as a spouse) to fidelity in a covenanted
relationship
E) Love respects a neighbor’s right (as a parent) to the dignity and respect
due to a parent of a child
43)
Love did not allow the Good Samaritan to “live and let
live.” Love translates the negative rules into affirmative laws. Respect
becomes care.
A) Thou shall not kill becomes: Do everything in your power to protect,
nourish, and nurture your neighbor’s life
B) Thou shall not steal becomes: Do all that you can to help people keep their
property they rightfully have and to get the property they rightfully need.
C) Thou shall not bear false witness becomes: Speak truthfully, act out the
truth in your own life, and seek the truth on behalf of your neighbor.
D) Thou shall not commit adultery becomes: Do all you can to nurture marriage
and your neighbor’s marriage into a mutually enriching human relationship.
E) Honor your father and mother is already an affirmative rule, and love needs
only to direct honor into personally helpful ways. Pg 62
44)
As love turns negatives into affirmatives, it pays the price
of imprecision. We venture into uncharted regions with commandments as a
compass, not a map. It isn’t difficult to understand what it means to refrain
from stealing; but helping others get enough property to survive as human
beings is a loose-jointed mandate. In short, as love translates the law into
affirmative directions, we are left with greater responsibility but less
precision. Pg 62-63
45)
The compass needle of love always points in the direction
of the neighbor who needs help. Generally speaking, love tells me that my
neighbor’s life is more important than my property. Love, as a rule, indicates
that ‘thou shall not kill’ is usually more important than the other
commandments, because unless there is a person alive before us, we need not
bother about his property, marriage, or his good name. Pg 63
46)
There may be a time and a place to say ‘yes’ to something
and another time to say ‘no’ to the same thing. How can we know the difference?
Love says: enjoy your freedom, but never at your neighbor’s expense. Pg 65
Notes for Chapter 3 (end of the book)
47)
Joseph Fletcher sees the relationship in this way: Justice
is Christian love using its head, calculating its duties, obligations,
opportunities, resources” (Situation Ethics pg 95) Pg 256
48)
[Quote from James Gustafson in Can Ethics Be Christian?
(Chicago; Univ of Chicago Press, 1976), pg 91] “It is only when all thought of
worthiness of the object is abandoned that we can understand what agape is.” Pg
257
Chapter 4: Respect for Authority
48)
Authority has become hopelessly confused with
authoritarianism, though in truth they are utterly opposed to each other. Pg 73
49)
What we must get clear, however, is that authoritarianism
and authority are related as sickness is to health. Authoritarianism is a
pathological caricature of authority. Authoritarianism is sick compensation for
weakness; authority is a healthy expression of strength. Authoritarian people
stifle freedom; authority requires freedom to make it work. Authoritarianism
works only when people surrender their own wills; authority works only when
people give free and critical consent. Pg 73-74
50)
The character of a family changes radically when parents
abdicate as authorities. Instead of a community in which loyalty holds people
together in committed trust, it becomes a random bunch of individuals competing
for the affection and services of the individuals who happened to have arranged
for their arrival on earth, a hit-or-miss arrangement of schedules and
appointments, a crises-prone conglomerate of people who sometimes hate and
sometimes love each other but who have to get along because they all need a
hearth and board. Into this kind of accidental alliance of individuals the
biblical commandment comes as a promise of ordered love. Pg 76
51)
Authority seems to be a blend of power and legitimacy, of
might and right. Pg 76
52)
A person, then, must be given authority, not seize it as
one seizes power. At one level authority comes to someone before exercising
power; and he or she expects people to recognize it. At another level, however,
it is the people affected by authority who determine whether or not someone has
it. People must believe and affirm that a person has authority; otherwise, in a
very real way, they deprive him of power and, thereby, of effective authority.
Pg 77
53)
The Gospel offers Jesus as that real ideal of authority
who uses power in order to serve. Pg 78
54)
From Jesus we can draw a few tentative guidelines for
thinking about the authority parents have to lead and teach and direct their
children:
1) Authority is a union of legitimacy and power; the right to use power to
influence people, even to prevail over them, gives a person what we call
authority.
2) A person’s authority must be believed by the people he hopes to lead; no one
can function as an authority unless people are willing to trust him.
3) Persons have genuine authority only when they use power over people to
nurture people into responsible freedom. Pg 79
55)
What we see, then, is that authority is a reality which
exists only in a relationship where the authority-bearer and the
authority-follower are active. People have no real authority unless they are
trusted and believed; and no one deserves to be trusted unless he or she helps
people be free. Pg 79
56)
A family is a group of people bound together in a covenant
of care for one another. Pg 79
57)
Morality has to do with what is truly important and right
about life, and what is important about life depends on what is true about God.
So the heart of family is the parents’ calling to pass on the moral and
spiritual reality of life to their children. Pg 80
58)
A family is not a spillover from romantic passions, nor a
product of society’s requirement that parents provide their offspring with bed
and board, nor a little circle of people deriving their emotional support from
living together, nor a social contrivance for keeping our broods in control,
one which could become obsolete if a social planner were to find a better one.
In a Judaeo-Christian sense, family is rooted in the Creator’s design for the
ongoing nurture who bring faith and moral value to the next generation. Pg 81
Chapter 5: Respect for Human Life
This chapter deals with several issues concerning the implications of the sixth commandment. He analyzes several reasons for suicide, such as the benevolent suicide (the person gives his life as a sacrifice), the suicide of escape (from pain, loss, shame, etc.), the suicide of despair (a soul stripped of joy or hope). His counsel on suicide is that "the primary moral response is not to condemn suicide, but to save despairing persons from the threat of their joyless souls.[Pg 117]"
Concerning capital punishment, his advice is "The sixth commandment surely inclines us against capital punishment. But there is evidence that capital punishment might sometimes be society's only way to defend itself, or its people. So we have practical resons to suppose that the cause of human life may be served if some murderers were killed. We conclude, then, that the commandment, filtered through the realities of life, allows for self-defense through capital punishment. But the commandment does not allow for it as a regular policy.[pg 124]"
Dealing with abortion, Smedes asks the question: "But if abortion destroys life, does it destroy a person [Pg 126]?" He further states, "The Christian belief in personal immortality does not let us identify persons with biological life. Though linked in mysterious symbiosis, body and soul are not one and the same. Therefore, the fact that a fetus has the biological life of human being does not of itself tells us that a fetus is a person. [Pg 126]" Smedes analyzes the various views concerning personhood and the social dimension of abortion. His belief is "we must probe our way toward a law that will control and limit abortion drastically, while not prohibiting it absolutely. [Pg 143]" He offers some guidlines for legislation: 1) Abortion should be legally permitted during the first six weeks of pregancy 2) Abortion should be severly restricted after the first six weeks and through the twelfth week and only allowed for extreme reasons concering the life of the fetus or mother. 3) Abortion after the twelfth week should be a crime. He qualifies these criteria, however, with the admonition, "It is important to understand that as we make the concession we also insist the laws of the land should, for the most part, come down on the side of the right of the fetus to live. [Pg 145]"
Tackling the question of euthansia, Smedes made several ground rules: 1) "We go into every medical situation with a presumption in favor of keeping a person entrusted to our care alive. [Pg 147]" 2) "If we keep our focus on the specific person rather than the general value of life, we are better able to take account of special circumstances. We will not value life less, but our sense of its value will--in any particular instance--be qualified by the question of whether life is in each case supporting a human person in a genuinely personal existence. [Pg 148]" He addresses the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of sustaining life. There is also a discussion of who gets to decide concerning sustaining life. He takes the side of the patient, but does not adopt an absolutists position, "While no one has exclusive or absolute authority to make the decision, the patient or his family have special authority to decide with respect to their own lives and the lives of those in their care; the others, including doctors, ought to help the family decide responsibly. Where neither the patient nor the family is able to decide, the doctors on the case, as the fiduciaries of the patient's life, must decide. [Pg 154]" . Concluding, Smedes clarifies, "Letting people die is a moral option only when the alternative is forcing them to live. We have no precise rules to cover all situations. We have a sweeping law of love that tells us to let people live. What we need besides love is the gift of discernment, awareness of how delicate are the fibers that hold us together in a community of respect for another's right to live. What we need is spiritual wisdom, purity of soul, and clarity of vision to know the right thing and the courage to do it. [Pg 154]"
59)
Faith assumes that what God asks of us is also good
for us, precisely because what He asks matches His original design for
our lives. Pg 104
60)
I think I would rather speak of the sacredness of persons
than the sanctity of life. We then should speak of persons--of thinking,
feeling, believing creatures--who are indeed alive, but who are always
something more than and different from the life they embody. Sacredness belongs
to individual creatures who have names, like John Perkins or Doris Dekker. As a
moral principle, being ‘pro-person’ seems preferable to being merely
‘pro-life’. Pg 105
61)
If we rest our case for the sacredness of persons on our
diagnosis of human character, we could be persuaded of our own divinity and our
own depravity. A little lower than angels, we are only a cubit higher than the
demons; and we have no clear signal that of all the creatures on earth who
sings of love and plans for war is the only inviolable, untouchable,
un-killable creature among them. Pg 106
62)
In the biblical world the sixth commandment is rooted in
the reality of what persons are in relationship to God and to each other. God’s
creative love gives them sacredness. In their relationship with God, they are
meant to accept His sovereignty over their lives. In their relationship to one
another, they are meant to care for their neighbor’s life, to honor the right
he has to respect, and to protect his life within the human fellowship. The
Sixth Commandment expresses a law of life that obligates us both to let people
live and help them to live. Pg 110
63)
What is joy? Joy is the experience of gratitude, of being
glad for life in the presence of the Giver of Life. Pg 117
64)
It is argued justice makes capital punishment mandatory.
Besides inflicting punishment on the criminal, retributive justice witnesses to
society’s own moral sense. Sentence the kidnapper of a child to three years in
jail, and you advertise how much you value the life of a child. Sentence
murderers to the same sort of punishment that you give a car thief, and you announce
that you really put murder and theft in the same category. Thus, the argument
runs, any society that wants to witness to its respect for life must punish
murder by the unique and dreadful rtual of judicial death. Pg 122
65)
The plausible foundation of the argument from justice is
the notion that only by taking a person’s life can we match his crime. In the
first place, ‘eye-for-eye’ justice cannot work in the literal sense. A rape for
a rape, or a theft for a theft, would be insane justice. Pg 122
Notes for Chapter 5 (end of the book)
65)
If the command forbids ‘A’ it must require the opposite of
‘A’ and since helping someone live is the opposite of causing them to die, the
command against killing must require that we help people live. It is the logic
in Jesus’ word that the whole law ‘hangs on’ love. Thus, the Sixth Commandment,
Calvin writes, requires that “if we find anything of use to us in serving our
neighbors’, faithfully to employ it; if there is anything that makes for peace,
to see to it; if anything harmful, to ward it off; if they are in danger, to
lend a hand.” (Institutes, II. Viii.37) Pg 262
Chapter 6: Respect for Covenant
Smedes addresses thou shalt not commit adultery by stating, "The concern for the seventh commandment is not merely with sex; its real business is with marriage and its wholeness” [Pg 157]. Additionally, "the inner essence of a marriage is a human relationship, rooted in sexual difference and human oneness. It is the one relationship that joins two people on every human level: emotion, intellect, spirit, and body. So, too, this relationship can break down at any of its levels, not just through sexual unfaithfulness. Fidelity to a marriage is therefore a steady commitment to the fragile network of communication between two partners. The vow is the moral foundation; the relationship is the personal essence. And fidelity is the mortar that holds the relationship together on the grounds of the vow. Hence, fidelity is an all-embracing moral call to devote our energies to the growth, enrichment, and repair of the tender relationship of two people within the personal union of marriage. [Pg 162-163]" Smedes also deals briefly with the issue of divorce, believing that Jesus was really aiming at a prohibition against divorce--rather than remarriage--when he mentioned adultery in this context.
65) Within the unique relationship of marriage two people care for each other's total welfare. Each, in a total sense, becomes the spouse's keeper. Each is dedicated to the growth, healing, pleasure, and freedom of the other. There is a reserve clause in person-keeping that prevents it from suffocating the other person in our care. A person-keeper cares for the freedom of the other person. "Freedom in Christ" is the biblical model of freedom in marriage. The Lord is married to the church; it is "subject" to Him (Eph 5.23) and He is bent on its freedom (Gal 5.1). We are not truly experiencing subjection to Christ unless we are being set free by it. Christ's goal is always the freedom of the church. In the same way, each partner in a marriage is faithful when working at the other's happiness, healing, wholeness, and freedom. Paul was probably asking people to be "person-keepers" when he told them to be in subjection to one another (Eph 5.21). Pg 162
Chapter 7: Respect for Property
Smedes attempts to analyze the relationship between people and their possessions. Thus, he turns the eighth commandment into a positive admonition: “always do what you can to help people get property they have a right to have” (Pg 185). In other words, “behind the negative rule lies a positive law that requires active pursuit of property for the dispossessed (Pg 186). Smedes also looks at our rights and responsibilities in ownership, focusing on land and factories as illustrative models. He concludes, “the right to own things is not absolute, but relative, and that it depends largely on our dedication to the care of what we own, a care that reaches out to a larger community of people whose lives are touched for good or evil by the things we claim as ours.” (Pg 199). Further, “if we are given the right to own things in order to take care of them, our right is reduced to the extent that we are careless” (Pg 201) and “if I care for my things at cost to people, my moral right is not supported by my carefulness. Our moral right to property is not absolute even when we take tender care of our own; we are moral owners only within a community” (Pg 202).
Smedes also
explores if stealing can ever be justified. First is the scenario of stealing
from owners who have no right to what they have. He warns, “the character of a
victim does not give other people grounds to abuse him. It is just as wrong to
rape a prostitute as to rape a prude. If we may steal from anyone who does not
deserve to have what we steal, we open the door to violence against anyone
whose character is not up to our standard. To declare open season on the goods
of “bad guys” is to invite a reign of self-righteous terror” (Pg 203).
Secondly, the situation of stealing when “no harm is done” is evaluated. He
notes that “petty thefts from giant owners often seem justifiable on grounds
that the victim will never feel the loss” (Pg 203), but in actuality the whole
community is hurt because “trust is destroyed; people treat each other as
potential crooks. And thus civility in a trusting society gives place to
surveillance of one another in a distrusting society. And we all pay for being
watched by strangers” (Pg 204). Third, stealing to meet a human need is
scrutinized. Finally, stealing to avert a greater evil is debated. He advises
that “almost every common test for justifying stealing is unworkable” (Pg 207),
yet “we need no blind ourselves to moments when deepest need compels people to
take something that belongs to someone else. What we have to see is that these
are exceptions which underscore the rule, not weaken it” (pg 207).
66)
[Premise: we are given the right to own things in order to
take care of them..see note # 61]
67)
“Thou shall not steal” The commandment confronts a modern
culture which accepts greed as a style of self-affirmation and whose systems of
exchanging property are so complex that recognizing the difference between
stealing and dealing is a lost art. Pg 183
68)
Let no one suppose that the design for life which makes it
right to own things ever justifies grabbing everything we can. Pg 189
69)
The Eighth Commandment calls for respect that lets people
freely do the job of caring for the things they own. Pg 190
70)
Stealing violates human community because it destroys
trust. When people sense that their private places are vulnerable, they fear
every stranger in their midst. And so they shut strangers out. Thus, community
shrinks to confined quarters where only proven friends are allowed. The open
spirit of hospitality shrivels to an intimate dinner party for close friends.
Stealing closes us in on ourselves and paralyzes us; love is frozen when people
live in fear of thieves. Pg 190
71)
My moral right to a slice of bread depends on how large
the loaf is and how many people need to share it. Pg 199
72)
We are born to be caretakers of God’s things on earth; our
right to own is rooted in our calling to care. So our moral claim to God’s
blessing on our ownership needs to be supported by evidence that we have used
our ownership to take good care of what we own. Pg 201
Chapter 8: Respect for Truthfulness
Smedes notes that “deception is the heart of all lies” (pg 213). He further elaborates, “I lie when I purposely corrupt the current between the message and my neighbor. ‘Message’ includes all the ways we express ourselves—gestures, symbols, facial movements, and silences. All are ‘words’ that carry thoughts to the haven of a neighbor’s mind. The key to lying is an intention to deceive a neighbor with our ‘words’” (Pg 213).
Smedes also deals with self-deception. Believers often deceive themselves about the reality of evil, while unbelievers deceive themselves about the existence of God. Smedes comments, “unbelief is not merely a point of view, nor mere ignorance, but self-deception, a refusal to face up to the truth that lies plain before the heart” (Pg 215).
Smedes spends a very brief space on the morality of various professions, such as acting or spying, that involve presenting the truth. “Respect for truthfulness does not compel us to reveal our minds to everyone or on every occasion. We are called to speak the truth in any situation in which we have the responsibility to communicate at all” (pg 216). In other words (applied to both speaking and living the truth without hypocrisy), “in forbidding deception the commandment does not demand full exposure” (Pg 217)
Smedes takes a deeper look at the commandment by looking at the positive law dimension. “As a concrete form of justice, read in the light of love, the Ninth Commandment compels us to defend and promote the honor and reputation of my neighbor. We must expend ourselves to protect people from untruth about themselves” (Pg 218).
Smedes
explores the potential justification for lying.
73)
A commandment that
forbids me to lie compels me to be truthful. It obligates me to be faithful to
what I think, what I believe, what I feel—and so to be faithful to the person
with whom I am communicating. I may not always be in control of the truth about
things, but I am always obligated to give my neighbor an authentic impression
of what is on my mind. Mind and message must be one so that through the message
my neighbor knows my mind. Truthfulness, like lying, is not a matter of
accuracy but of intention. Pg 215-216
74)
Truthfulness of being is an ideal we struggle toward. It
is hard for us to be whole—inside and out—because we are complicated and
confused within. We do not express our real selves because we do not know who
our selves are. In a sense we are like the demon-possessed man whom Jesus
healed. When Jesus asked him to identify himself, he said, “My name is Legion,
for we are many.” Pg 218
75)
God’s word is truth, not only because it speaks accurately
of all things, but because it faithfully reflects His thinking about things. Pg
220
Chapter 9: Obedience and Grace
Smedes sums it up: “The commandments do not tells us
everything we need to know as we face concrete decisions. But they provide
direction and they give us a bias” (Pg 239).
76)
Justice and love form a kind of moral counterpoint in
life. Justice holds back in respect; it tells us to let people be what they are
and have what they have. Love pushes us toward people in care; it tells us to
get into people’s lives so that we can help them be what they ought to be and
have what they ought to have. Justice tends to urge us to keep the rules,
especially the “Thou shalt not’s.” Love translates the negative commands into
positive invitations to creative helpfulness. Pg 240
77)
What God expects
of ordinary people is obedience born of gratitude; what God gives ordinary
people is forgiveness born of grace. Once forgiven, we hear His commands, not
as a burden, but as an invitation to enjoy our humanity, and in our joy to
glorify our creator. Pg 243