World of Love Sess14 - Ethical Decisions in the Age of the Spirit

The most important thing for ethics is man's real nature, the spirit in which he acts, the presence or absence in him of inner light, of beneficent creative energy. Ethics must be based upon the conception of energy and not of the final end. It must therefore interpret freedom as the original source of action and inner creative energy and not as the power of fulfilling and realizing a set purpose. The moral good is not a goal but an inner force which lights up man's life from within.-Nicholas Berdyaev ¹

The cold hard-set virtue devoid of creative fire is always dull and never saves. The heart must be set aglow if the dullness is to be dispelled. Dull virtue is a poor remedy against the boredom of emptiness. ... No rule or norm can save us from dullness and from evil lust engendered by it. Lust is a means of escape from boredom when goodness provides no such escape. -Nicholas Berdyaev ²

... my self-actualizing subjects seem quite easily and decisively to "know right from wrong" for themselves. -Abraham Maslow ³

This session provides a basis for personal ethical and moral reasoning, showing how the structure of agape provides the “transformed reason” necessary for reliable operation of some kind of situation ethics. The next session deals with the ethics, morality and decision-making in society.

Ethics in the age of the Spirit will move the question of behavior gradually over from the negatives of law and grim duty to the excitement and joy of doing justice and loving other people.

Christian ethics is also transformed through the answers to our two recurring questions:

1. What ethical actions follow if we believe that salvation is more a matter of becoming like God rather than to go to a place called heaven?

2. What would a stage 6-7 ethical response to God look like?

People in modern society know a great deal more about doing right and living with compassion than they put into practice. This may always have been true. But we live in a much more complex society than previous generations. We are pounded by conflicting value systems spread across the stages of ego development. We feel ourselves helpless to change society and its evil. This situation creates a new intensity of helplessness and frustration. The complexity tends to make us simply give in to the dominant powers in society, to accept uncritically their ethical posture, based as it is usually on stage 4 nationalistic values. This fixation has the further effect of tending to hold individual growth to stage 4.

What then would a revised Christian ethics have to say to us in our helplessness and frustration?

This session suggests two points: (1) that in the four-fold structure of agape we find a different kind of concrete ethical guidance which is perhaps more adequate for our time and conformed more closely to God's purposes; and (2) we must have a new level of motivation. We have to somehow find an ecstatic joy in living ethically, so that it becomes more creative play than grim effort. In this Berdyaev is our prophet.
Creativity also suggests the kind of breakthrough which can save our world. It becomes the new means by which we can galvanize the general longing for peace and wholeness and focus its energy on viable solutions to ethical dilemmas.

The mobilizing of creativity constitutes, moreover, the one way of reaching those locked into the lower stages and attaching booster rockets to them, enabling them, not to leap over intervening stages of growth, but to scoot through them more rapidly and smoothly.

The Background and Context of Ethics

Christian ethics finds its initial motivation from thankfulness for the grace of God. Traditionally, this meant that once we experience forgiveness of our sins we are overwhelmed with joyous thanksgiving.

Ethical living is empowered by this thankful joy. This has, in fact, often happened.
This motive appears at the center of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the prologue of the call Yahweh issues to Israel for obedience to the Torah, he reminds them that they were worthless slaves and he brought them out of bondage. The Torah, then, calls for them to behave in the same way toward others, including widows, orphans, the helpless, the poor, the weak, and even the foreigner who lives among them.⁴ The foundation of ethics, the model, if you will, is Yahweh's graceful action of liberation.

For the Christian, the primary motivation for ethical and moral behavior has been thanksgiving for the liberating power of Jesus in our lives in and through the community of believers. Here, God is revealed as a loving Parent who seeks to replicate the divine love in every person and to bring about an on-going community of unselfish, over-flowing, redeeming love.

Christian ethics finds a powerful secondary motivation and its basic content from the actual living out of this love. Such living provides behavioral reinforcement. The deeper satisfaction and joy of building up rather than destroying, of helping people rather than hurting them are a kind of reward which encourage expansive growth and further acts of agape.

A New Start in the Third Age

This historic stance is correct, but too little and too late. Thanksgiving should start for us with the celebration of the unmerited gift of life itself, whether we are Christian or not. We should wake each morning ecstatic (unless we are sick or haven't eaten for a couple of days, in which case all bets are off) with the prospect of another day we did nothing to deserve, a day open to all kinds of creative possibilities. If we all had this Garden of Eden joy in creation and life most of our ethical problems would be solved.

Sessions 5 and 6 spell out why we do not enjoy such a sensible playful and ecstatic approach to life. We are brain-washed by the social structures around us which have been twisted over centuries of hate, violence, greed and lust for power, and by the negative examples of those around us.

A Christian faith and community based upon stage 3 and 4 values cannot deliver most members from their inner demonic self-systems which worship the hateful and violent values of societies around us. Something more is needed.

Before we get to motivation, we must first look the way in which contextual ethics is different from the perspective of stage development and the god-self.

Ethical Guidance

Concrete guidance in ethical issues should come from what I call the structure of agape, its four-fold, wholistic pattern, which helps fill in and make specific what it means to become like God:

FREEDOM ------------- RELATEDNESS
EXPANSION ----------- INTEGRITY

Agape is the controlling sustained motive force of all that kind of personality which is like God; that is, that which is characterized by this sort of (1) internal coherence, unity and strength; (2) content and caring expanded to the universal/cosmic; (3) freedom from internal and external controls other than love itself, autonomy in the sense that one is dependent on no power except God; and (4) liberated compassion expressed as freedom to and joy within deep relationships of shared, selfless love with individual persons in community.

Life lived simultaneously at all the four corners of this square is as near to a workable, practical definition of a stage 6-7 life as we can come at this time, as well as what it means to be godlike.

Another way of putting it would be to say that we should always be guided in ethical decisions by the "highest" we know, and what produces this kind of life in people and society.

Love with a Cutting Edge

With this as a foundation, we arrive not at a system of ethics or norms and laws which always apply. Session 8, it was made clear why no system of natural law can be adequate in our time. Nor can such a system provide in any sense the fire of creative energy which Berdyaev says is necessary for the motive force behind right living.

What we can start from, however, is one approach to ethics, among several, called situation or contextual ethics. Such approaches appeal to love as the one basic norm of ethical action which is applied appropriately to ethical decisions according to the demands of the specific situation, and also guided in varying degrees by middle axioms which shift in nuance and hierarchy with shifts in stage level and power relationships.

An ethics controlled by the four-fold structure of agape should be, however, a kind of situation ethics with an especially sharp cutting edge. Seeing this approach in action should reassure many sensitive people who believe that any situation ethics is an open door to immorality and chaos.

One of the clearest definitions of situation ethics is that of Joseph Fletcher:

Situation ethics goes part of the way with natural law by accepting reason as the instrument of moral judgment while rejecting the notion that the good is "given" in the nature of things, objectively. It goes part of the way with Scriptural law by accepting revelation as the source of the norm while rejecting all "revealed" norms or laws but the one command -- to love God in the neighbor. The situationist follows a moral law or violates it according to love's need. ... Only the commandment to love is categorically good. ⁵

Love's business is not to play favorites or find friends or fall for some one-and-only. It plays the field, universalizes its concerns, has a social interest, is no respecter of persons. ... Disinterested love can only mean impartial love, inclusive love, indiscriminate love, love for Tom, Dick and Harry. This is possible because such a disinterested love properly wills the neighbor's good whether we like him or not. ⁶

From the analysis of the origins of evil in sessions 5 and 6, we clearly see why reason is a corrupt and inadequate guide, a dirty lens. The god-self within is the only reliable and impartial guide to seeking our own and the neighbor's highest good. The god-self is the one self-system within us capable of a healthy disinterested love. All the other self-systems arrive at ethical decisions through reasoning which includes some element of anxious self-interest. We have seen, in our analysis of Kohlberg's stages, the various forms this immature and egocentric reasoning take, how the twisted immature and neurotic desires of the demonic self-systems inevitably cause us to warp our professed universal love into something which serves our needs and self-interest.

Disinterest

The term disinterest, to which Fletcher gives so much weight, needs a more precise definition, and this will clarify further the nature of agape as an impartial guide to clear ethical reasoning.

The disinterest which mature love requires is not a lack of caring. Quite the opposite. What it means is that egocentric desires, needs, wants, ambitions, and lusts (usually more for power than sex) are transcended and left behind. This is the floating free from attachments which characterizes stage 7. We no longer compulsively need anything and so are free to love generously, out of overflow, and thus to seek the real, long-range good of the other, that is, her growth into godlikeness.

Some of the best definitions of disinterest and its relation to our becoming godlike are found in the sermons of Meister Eckhardt. In his sermon "Justice, the Work of Compassion," he taught:

A just person is one who is conformed and transformed into justice. The just person lives in God and God in him. Thus God will be born in this just person and the just person is born into God; and therefore God will be born through every virtue of the just person and will rejoice through every virtue of the just person.

The just person does not seek anything with his work, for every single person who seeks anything or even something with his or her works is working for a why and is a servant and a mercenary. Therefore if you wish to be conformed and transformed into justice, do not intend anything in your work and strive for no why, either in time or in eternity. Do not aim at reward or blessedness, neither this nor that. For such works are truly fully dead. Indeed, I say that even if you take God as your goal, all such works which you do with this intention are dead and you will spoil good works. ... Therefore if you enter into your ground and work there and these works which you work there will all be living. ... For all works are surely dead if anything from the outside compels you to work. Even if God were to compel you to work from the outside, then such works would surely all be dead. If your works are to live then God must move you inwardly, in the innermost part of the soul, if they are really to live. There is your life and there alone you love. ⁷

None of us has fully reached stages 6 and 7. None of us lives fully and always in the god-self. All of us are subject to the distortion factor of the needs and lusts of our demonic self-systems. So how may we, singly or together, act purely by agape?

The answer, of course, is that we cannot. We can come closer, however, if we understand two things:

(1) Our goal in life is to become like God and to make a society which produces such people. This gives a surprisingly different and still fairly concrete guidance to our moral and ethical deliberations, if we keep this to the forefront, Eckhardt suggests.

(2) We are only on sound ground if we submit our ethical and moral reasoning, at least in important matters, to the community of faith. A number of people reasoning together come much closer to a decision based on stage 6-7 morality and upon agape than one person alone. Different forms of self-interest tend to cancel one another out. We are able to come closer to what Kohlberg considered to constitute stage 6 reasoning -- the arrival at decisions which looked at from the standpoint of anyone in the circle (musical chairs) will still seem the best and most just. It also illustrates Jurgen Habermas's point that ethics and morality must be based on decisions arrived at through the most free and unfettered communication.

An illustration of this in operation is the Quaker clearness committee. When a Friend faces a decision such as a change of job or marriage s/he may ask the meeting to assemble a clearness committee. S/he can meet with the committee as many times as necessary, until all feel they have delved the subject down to bed rock, considered all the possibilities and consequences. When this is done, the committee may reach a consensus and recommend one course of action, or only agree on several alternatives.

The person consulting the committee may in good conscience take the committee's advice or not, but in either event is enabled to act in the greater clarity arrived at through the group's analysis together of what agape calls for in this particular situation.

In the course of such discussions, the committee usually manages to touch base with all the four elements Joseph Fletcher considers to be involved in all moral and ethical decision-making: ends, means, motives, and consequences. The committee discusses what result the person seeks to achieve; whether the means to be employed are Christian or not (in keeping with agape); whether the person has examined the motives or not, and whether those motives are clear and clean or there are hidden agendas which may muddy the waters and cause problems later; and finally, they will ask questions with regard to whether the person has considered all the possible consequences of the action, for instance, whether those who may be hurt have been consulted, and so on.

We cannot consider ends alone. An action, we may feel, will serve our becoming godlike, but if it does serious harm to another, then it will not do so in the long run. We cannot decide solely on the basis of anticipated consequences alone, either. Sometimes an action seems demanded in principle. We may not know in advance whether it will help the situation or not. Considering all the possible negative consequences we may still decide to go ahead because a person must be defended, or a cause witnessed to.

Christians are likely to give careful attention to means than others since so much in the teaching of Jesus and our experience in Christian history show that the most noble intentions pursued through violence and deceit tend to be defeated in the long-run.

The Problem -- Motivation

A major problem of ethics in public morality is that people know a great deal more about right and wrong, what helps people and what hurts them, than they enact. How we motivate each other to do the good we know we should do?

In session 8 we saw how in the modern age the prohibitions of law and the welcome reality of forgiveness of sins are not adequate to motivate growth into the higher stages, and to overcome the power of death in life. Nor do they provide motivation to do right and good adequate in our complex societies. The questions of people in our age of sophistication and cynicism are: Salvation to what? What is the content of life which gives it meaning? What could possibly be interesting enough to make eternity other than a hell of boredom?

Berdyaev is correct when he says that boredom is the source of a great deal of the evil we do.

The ability to transcend cynicism, to persist in personal moral action and struggle for social justice, against all discouragements, and to avoid the fatal disease of liberals, burnout, requires an inner power of being which enables the person to approach all aspects of life with an attitude of joy, peace, patience, and love.

Creativity is the new key addition to God’s arsenal, the recognition that God now calls for the creative contribution of each one of us. This evocation of transcendent and joyous meaning is what lifts us up out of cynicism, conquers death in life, and motivates an ethical stance transcending mere law-keeping.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the god-self. And it is only the god-self, because of its power of being, its wholistic gestalt, which makes this style of life possible.

A Universal Ethics

While such an ethical approach is centrally Christian for us, it contains within it a way to connect and dialogue with secular people and believers in other faiths, because it rests faith and ethics upon a definition of wholeness/maturity/love, the content of which overlaps to a large degree with such definitions in developmental psychology, so-called Third Force psychology, and other schools of social science.

The drive for something like natural law, the yearning for external authority, the reluctance in the church to let go of the wrath of God and hell -- all of these spring from fear. There is fear of disorder in society, of its collapse.

This terror of loss of controls is understandable. We see such genocidal, sadistic evil in and around us, that we do not trust human law and police to confine and control it without the threat of divine justice and punishment in and beyond this life. We are afraid to give up the Boogie Man. We argue that some people only understand force, coercion, threat of punishment, so what else will restrain them?

This is in no way a suggestion that the enforcement of law and order in society be abandoned. The threat of consequences does often have a deterring effect. We might as well accept the fact, however, that the threat of divine punishment is effective only with a tiny minority of people in our day, as it tended also to be also in former generations. Someone remarked that the church turned the fires of hell as high as they would go in the Middle Ages and it did not cut down much on crime or sin.

Many argue that if God is justice in any meaningful sense, then S/He must punish sin and crime. Otherwise there is no moral order in the universe.

But these arguments straitjacket the debate within Kohlberg's stage 4 and its reasoning. We have only to shift to the stage 6 perspective in which we are all a family of brothers and sisters, equal in value, and then ask the question, Would I send my son or daughter into eternal punishment regardless of how serious the crime?" The answer, of course, is no. This admission opens the way to begin to understand how and why God does not punish and comes to us only in forgiveness and love, though as mentioned before, every sin or crime does get punished in some way. This is fact that can be proved.

The meaning and purpose of life, for the Christian, is the redemption and liberation of all people. That is the work of grace, of out-going, self-less love. Punishment and threats of punishment represent the failure of grace; they accomplish little or nothing in moving people toward redemption and the inner activation of the god-self.

Conclusion

Stage 6-7 ethical perspective and motivation are becoming irregularly but cumulatively more powerful in history as more individuals arrive at stage 6 and our institutions are made over to embody this perspective.

Even while we all fall short of incarnating and living stage 6 and 7 agape, we can meditate on what we know about it and seek to live by it.

This is what Berdyaev terms “transformed reason.” Uninformed human reason does not arrive at very good decisions in ethics and morality. We need a reason informed by agape. We can have this to a large extent even before we become one with such love.

Agape also can add the other essential part of this new ethics. It will arouse in us and others energizing human creativity and the joy of it empowering a passionate motivation to do justice and love in our time.

Questions for Thought

Consider and discuss: Both Christian and secular experts on ethics would read this chapter and say something like, "All this talk of creativity and fire and motivation and going deep inside for guidance is fine and good but it has no place in a system of ethics. Ethics is about giving people a foundation and criteria for making good moral and ethical decisions." Read again the opening quotes and first few paragraphs of the session.

Contact the author at: vjross22@hotmail.com

1. The Destiny of Man, page 103
2. The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, pages 175,6
3. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, page 315
4. Deuteronomy 5:6; 14:28-29; 24:10-18. The eighth century prophets and the II Isaiah of the sixth century continue the process of separating out from considerations of survival and special treatment for the Jews this ideal of including all persons within Yahweh's family and characterizing Yahweh more and more as a God with a passion for justice and love for all peoples because his (sic) inner nature is justice and love.
This was inevitable as the implications of Yahweh as creator of all peoples came to be more fully understood and spelled out.
The contrast between this ideal and the behavior of the nation of Israel toward the Palestinians is stunning.
5. Situation Ethics, The New Morality, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1966, page 26
6. ibid., page 119
7. Matthew Fox, op. cit., pages 464. 465

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