Life Work: Confessions of an Everyday Disciple

By randy harris

What does minimal human ethics look like? Can Christians really be followers of Jesus in the way they live today? In his own unique style, Randy Harris wrestles with these and other ethical issues facing Christians and all humanity.In a world gone crazy, what would basic human decency look like? Are there principles that all humans could follow to make their neighborhoods, countries, and world more just and peaceful? Randy Harris, from his long experience as a teacher of philosophy and ethics, calls us to those principles of fair play, justice, and peace.But Christians are called to an even higher standard. As a follower of Jesus, Randy, sometimes humorously, always pointedly, focuses on the call of Jesus for a higher righteousness. He places Christian behavior in the context of the philosophical and cultural contexts of our day, making profound concepts accessible to all his readers.This book offers down-to-earth wisdom from a lifetime follower of Jesus. Out of his own practice of the spiritual disciplines, his presentations before hundreds of churches and university audiences, and his deep love for his students, Randy draws us into the circle of love for God and for our neighbors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: Apr 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780891127178

Book preview

Grace."

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. On Ethics

One: Two Ways of Telling Right from Wrong

Two: Two More Ways of Telling Right from Wrong

Three: Four Principles of a Minimally Decent Ethic

Four: Three More Principles of a Minimally Decent Ethic

II. On Cruciformity

Five: The Subversive Ethic of Cruciformity

Six: Five Principles of the Cruciformed Life

Seven: The Fully Mature Christian is Not Distracted

Eight: The Fully Mature Christian Doesn’t React

Nine: The Fully Mature Christian Dies Happy

III. Fellow Travelers

Ten: Great Ideas from Off-the-Wall Dead Christians

Eleven: Great Ideas from Living Off-the-Wall Christians

Twelve: Great Ideas from Another Off-the-Wall Christian

IV. Shalom

Thirteen: Practicing Peace

Fourteen: Peace at Last

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about ethics, usually defined as something like ideas on good and bad behavior. The ideas here come from my experience as a teacher of ethics, from reading a lot of books, and from being in a different church almost every week.

Ethics. Aren’t you excited?

But you should be, because ethics are about life. They are all about living life well (hence the name of this book—Life Work). In these chapters I will lay out some ethical dilemmas, which will lead to a discussion of ethical theories. But do not worry, I will then get very practical and make the case for certain behaviors that would lead to a minimally decent society. And wouldn’t that make for a happy change!

But this book is not an exercise in philosophical ethics. I am above all a follower of Jesus Christ. As such, the important question for us is, How can I better follow the one whose life was all about going to a cross? So I will make the case for cruciformity as the way of Jesus. That is, he calls us to a life of self-surrender and death for the sake of others.

Taking up the cross is a tall order. It can’t be done by just trying harder. So I’m going to give you certain attitudes and practices that God can use to make you a more mature follower of Jesus. Then I want to share some things I’ve learned from dead and living Christians about living the cross-shaped life.

Finally, I will address the source and practices of peace—both personal, inner peace and peace between people, tribes, and nations.

For those who have read my previous books—God Work and Soul Work—some of the stories and themes here will sound familiar. Together these books kind of make up my post-systematic theology. My prayer is that God will bless you through these thoughts.

Chapter 1

TWO WAYS OF

TELLING RIGHT

FROM WRONG

I'm going to argue that there is a particular way of doing ethics from Scripture that makes sense. But it’s going to be quite a trip. I’m not going to jump to that. I need to get you thinking about some things first.

My favorite sports headline of all time is this one: Harvard beats Yale 29–29. It’s a true headline. Great headline, and therein hangs a tale. Harvard is playing Yale and everybody knows that this is the game. No other game matters if you’re from Harvard or Yale, and so they are playing for the Ivy League championship and Yale is undefeated, and Yale is ahead in the game 29 to 13 with less than a minute to go. Harvard scores an unlikely touchdown, goes for two and makes it and now there’s like forty seconds left in the game. They kick the onside kick, recover it, score a touchdown on the last play of the game and while students are pouring onto the field, they score the two point conversion to tie the game 29 to 29, so the next day in the newspaper the Harvard paper reads, Harvard beats Yale 29 to 29.

Which also tells you a great deal about human psychology, because many people at Yale still describe that as the worst day in their lives. First of all, they need to get a life. For the people at Harvard this is one of their proudest moments. But the interesting thing is . . . it’s a tie. They should feel exactly the same way about it, but they don’t because it’s not just the destination, it’s the trip. It’s how you get there. So the way we are going to get where we are going is going to be a lot more interesting than the destination.

Fat Freddy

What I’m going to do is hit you with one ethical dilemma after another. Some of these are going to be totally absurd. Some of them are going to be a little more real to life, but if you take the trip with me, there’s actually a point somewhere in our future. All of these are in the literature of philosophical ethics, and if you want to see their original form and lots of talk about them, they are just a Google away!

Dilemma number one. You and a group of your friends decide to go spelunking (cave exploring) in a cave down by the seaside. You stay longer than you should, and when you get ready to leave you find out that the entrance that you had come into is now underwater because the tide has come in. There is no way for you to get out. So you start exploring the cave further and find another exit, although it’s not quite as big as the one you came in. There are ten of you, and leading your party is a young man that we shall describe as Fat Freddy. And Fat Freddy tries to lead first and manages to get himself stuck in the hole. And so his head and his shoulders are on the outside, but the rest of him is stuck in the cave. And the cave is filling up with water and you cannot for the life of you move Fat Freddy out of the hole. It looks as if nine of you are going to drown and the only person who will be saved is Fat Freddy since his head is on the outside.

Now you are a resourceful bunch of spelunkers and so you have brought everything you might possibly need, including one piece of dynamite which, strategically located, will remove Fat Freddy from the hole. Now this is going to be a little hard on Freddy; but if you don’t do that, you’re going to have nine dead people and one live one. So the question is, Are you going to blow Fat Freddy out of the hole?

The Dead Millionaire

By the way, I need to tell you: an ethicist never tells a happy story. If you’re waiting for the happy stories, just forget it. There aren’t any. Dilemma two. You go hiking with an eccentric millionaire, and as you’re hiking he loses his step and falls a hundred feet down the cliff. You rush down to his side and it is clear that he’s dying. He grabs your arm and says, You know, I have never trusted banks. I have a million dollars in the backyard under the old oak tree. Would you please be sure that my son gets it? And you say, Sure. And he says, No, no. Promise me that you’ll see that my son gets it. And you say, I promise. And he dies.

Now you happen to know this guy’s son. You know that he is what, in ethical terms, we would describe as pond scum. You know that he is a worthless ne’er-do-well and you know that if you give him that million dollars he is just going to squander it in what Scripture might call riotous living. And no one in the world knows about the promise you’ve made besides you. So what you are thinking is something like this: I could say, With his dying breath this man committed to giving $100,000 to Aids research in Africa, $100,000 to relief of the poor in Appalachia, and $100,000 to the church. And you just think of these ten places that could use $100,000. No one in the world will ever know that he didn’t say that. How many of you would say I’m going to give that million dollars to his lout of a son?

Torture the Terrorist?

We are now going to do what has affectionately come to be called the 24 dilemma. How many of you have watched the television program 24? I don’t watch television, so I don’t know very much about it. But they tell me this is the dilemma in every episode of 24, but I can’t attest to that. There is a terrorist who has planted a dirty bomb and it is going to kill 100,000 people. We need to know where this bomb is and we don’t know so our best shot at it is to try to torture this guy and get him to tell us. Otherwise, 100,000 people are going to die.

Would you torture him? How about this? He turns out to be a really tough nut to crack and it just so happens we get our hands on his seven-year-old son. How many of you would be willing to torture his seven-year-old son in front of him to get the information from the terrorist?

The Trolley Driver and the Doctor

All right, let’s try just a couple more here. The famous trolley driver dilemma. You’re a trolley driver (as if we knew what a trolley was). Let’s make it a train. And you notice that there are three children playing down the track and if you do nothing it appears that the trolley is going to run into them and kill them. By flipping the switch you can turn the trolley onto another track where seven workers are working and you will almost certainly kill them if you turn the trolley. If you do nothing, the children will be killed. If you take action you will be directly responsible for making the choice that causes the death of seven others. How many of you say you would turn the trolley?

You are a physician and you have a patient who is a Jehovah’s Witness. The parents come to you with their son who is seriously ill. He’s twelve years old and without blood transfusions he’s going to die. And the parents say you can treat the boy but you cannot transfuse him. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that, based on an obscure Old Testament passage, that transfusion is blood mixing, which would result in the boy going to hell. So they refuse to give permission for the transfusion. The boy also says he doesn’t want the transfusion. He’s only twelve. You’re uncomfortable with that. You know you can save this boy’s life and if you do not take action he is going to die. So, you go to court and try to get an injunction; you bring it before the judge and you say that you have to have a decision now. This boy is going to die without a transfusion. I want you to order the transfusion so I can save this boy’s life. If you’re the judge are you going to order this transfusion over the boy’s and parent’s objection, or are you going to abide by their decision which means certain death for the young man?

The Lying Son

¹

You have an eighteen-year-old son (so you’re already in a world of hurt!). You are people of very modest means. You’re part of the working poor and your son is an excellent student and he wants more than anything else to go to Harvard. He’s come to you and said I need $500 so I can take this college preparatory test so I can get high enough scores to go to Harvard. And you say, Son, I’d love to do that for you, but we just don’t have the money. You’re just going to have to make it on your own. So he takes the test and he makes really good scores. Harvard level scores. And he comes to you and says, I got to get this off my chest. I cheated on my college boards. I picked up a little scheme. We got the test questions before the test and I’ve worked really hard my whole life. I’ve always wanted to go to Harvard. I think I deserve to go to Harvard. You couldn’t afford to help me take the preparatory test and it’s kind of eating at me. I just wanted you to know that.

You’re a little bothered by that. How many of you would be a little bothered by that? Now you have a tough decision to make. You might say, Son, I don’t really think you ought to go to Harvard on those scores and he says, Well, Dad, Mom, I’m going to. I’ve never done anything like this my entire life and once I get to Harvard I’ll either make it on my own or I won’t, but surely you’re going to allow me this one indiscretion, after all it’s a harmless crime. It’s not like axe murder of a baby or something.

So here’s my question. Are you going to allow him to go to school on those scores or are you going to say, You are not going to school on those scores, and if I have to, I’ll turn you in.

The Jewish Neighbor

I have one more dilemma. The Nazis come knocking on your door. You’re hiding your Jewish neighbor behind the refrigerator. They say, Do you know where your neighbor is? Your choices are this: you either say, No, I have no idea or Yes, he’s behind the refrigerator, let me get him for you.

When you consider your answers to these dilemmas, I expect you will find some inconsistency. I want to explore that inconsistency to see how we think about right and wrong. And then I’m going to work my way to what I hope is a biblical position.

I never know exactly how much people know about ethics and so I’m going to pretend you don’t know very much. If it turns out to be insulting, I apologize in advance. This is kind of the way ethics works. We all start out with some sort of worldview. If you are both a theist and a Christian, you are greatly influenced in your ethical reflection by that fact. As you’re thinking through each of these dilemmas, you’re thinking from the point of view of your Christian worldview. My guess is the reason you don’t feel right about lying about the million dollars has a lot to do with your Christian worldview, because otherwise I can’t see why else you would be so hesitant about that.

Worldviews and Ethical Theories

So it’s your worldview that creates some sort of ethical theory and ethical theory provides a framework by which you figure things out. Now, most people’s ethical theory is not very reflective and probably the reason you had some inconsistencies in your responses is that you were changing ethical theories from case to case. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it probably is. Those ethical theories give you certain principles and it is those principles that you use to solve ethical dilemmas.

From my experience with live audiences, I’ve been tempted to think that absolute honesty is a central principle since many wouldn’t break that promise about the money; but then many people have told me they would lie to the Nazis. So it’s clear that most Christians don’t mind lying