Judge for Yourself

You shall not covet your neighbor's house, wife, slaves, ox. or donkey. This is the tenth commandment. I get the don't covet part. Greed is bad; greed leads to jealousy and envy, and envy is the deadliest of the deadly sins. Don't covet. Okay. But don't covet your neighbor's donkey?

This didn't make a lot of sense until I watched all these donkey videos on Facebook. I am not sure what algorithm I'm in, but it's most likely called "never too many donkey videos."  I love 'em. Need to laugh, watch a donkey video. Feeling low, sorry for myself, watch a miniature donkey video and am I alright, happy as a lark. Before this I thought the not coveting of donkeys was a vestige of ancient culture.  But now?  Oh, no.  Beware.  I want a donkey, definitely tempted to covet my neighbor's donkey.

              The ten commandments are a moral code.  A moral code is something you must obey, something usually given by God or a commanding figure who demands loyalty, think king or pope.  This is exactly how the ten commandments begins.  I am your God; you will have no other.  You will not make an idol; you must follow my instructions or be cursed to the third and fourth generation.  Don't take my name in vain, in other words don't speak for me. God speaks for God.  Honor your father and mother and keep the sabbath.  These are all moral codes.  If you follow them, God will bless you; that is a promise.  If you don't follow them, God will curse you, that too is a promise.

              A moral code should never be confused with ethical standards or laws.  A moral code is a demand of a god; an ethical code is something we agree to, see as a mutual forbearance.  Ethics is the rules of the game for us to live together in this world, in this place, in this time; a moral code is a divine direction demanding obedience. An ethical code is not a demand, but more of an agreement to follow. 

              We need both.  We need both morality and ethics.  Yet, mostly what we need to do, struggle to do, and quite often fail to do, is keep them separate.  This is hard.  At times they overlap.  Don't kill is a moral commandment, one of the ten, but it is also an ethical standard.  We have a pretty clear agreement about killing each other. Don't do that.  But we also have don't steal as an ethical agreement.  Lots of laws about stealing and murdering; these laws are a matter of ethics, how we chose to live together.  But not stealing is also a commandment, something our God has required of us.

              Some of the commandments do not overlap with ethics as much.  Not coveting, truth telling, honoring, loyalty, rest from toil, even infidelity all has a hard time finding an ethical form.  Moral?  Yes.  Ethics?  Hard fit. You shouldn't lie, that is a matter of morality.  Imagine how crazy life would be if everyone who lied was arrested.   

              A great set of ethical standards is the Bill of Rights.  We got some folks together and they amended the constitution with a set of rights, ethical standards, all to say, we should respect these, we should protect these rights so our life together would be good.  As agreed to ethical principles they have served us very well.  You should have due process.  The press should be free.  You need to be able to speak your mind with a group of people and not be injured for doing so.  Some of these rights have been quite helpful.  The right of women to vote.  Good.  The prohibition of alcohol didn't quite work out well.

              Some of our agreed to rights have changed, morphed; the amendments have been amended.  This is healthy and good.  When we do struggle with rights, the struggle is usually an attempt to blend moral codes and ethics.  We have been arguing about health care as a right for the last forty years or so.  Some believe health care should be a right not a privilege.  Intriguing question. 

              Often our debates are clouded and convoluted with greed.  Slavery and the abolition of slavery was argued and debated as both a moral issue and an ethical one.  But it was ever clouded by greed.  Health care today is the same.  We should love and thus care for our neighbor (moral code); every human being should be responsible for themselves and their own health (ethical question).  This is an intriguing dilemma until you realize the debate only started once there was money to be made in medicine. Prior to the 1960s, not many doctors got rich being doctors.

              The Ten Commandments were read every Sunday in the cathedral of Geneva were Jean Calvin preaching in the sixteenth century.  Each week, the ten commandments were read for all to hear.  That they were read in French as part of worship is key to understanding the Reformation, our heritage, why there are bagpipes.

              The Reformers believed the church and the pope had lost their moral authority; they were no longer the basis of a moral code.  Before the Reformation the pope was the moral authority of western Christianity. A key to the Reformation was how the Bible replaced the church as the moral authority.  Which is not entirely new.  Papal authority has changed before. What was new is that the Reformers also said, here is the bible, judge for yourself, let your conscience be your guide.  What was the bible and the church became the bible and the individual conscience.  This was the new moral code. 

              To say the folks in Rome took issue with this is a bit of an understatement.  To say this has worked without error or stumble is also not true.  Giving the bible to the people was one thing; telling them they were now their own moral authority, well, that was quite another.  This had consequence.

              For many scholars one great consequence is that the new moral code born in the Reformation became the basis of modern democracy.  This liberating act of the Reformers, while often messy, created the place where we navigate what is a matter of morality and what is a matter of ethics; what does God require of us and what should we require of one another. The Reformers said, take this book, read it, judge for yourself, and find what is right. 

              If you look back at American history over the last three centuries, the challenge created in Geneva by reading the ten commandments in French to people gathered in worship, people who were given the bible in their own language, people who were were then bid, "judge for yourself," if you look back on American history this way it is not hard to see how much of our life and struggle for freedom was born in this simple act of worship. You could argue the freedom of religion, an ethical right, is a recognition that at our Protestant root is the belief: religion should create freedom, promote freedom, so we can judge for ourselves.

              Right now southern states are seeking to experiment with what happened in Geneva 500 years ago.  Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi have passed laws to post the ten commandments in every public-school classroom.  One of these laws will reach the Supreme Court sooner rather than later and then be the law of the land. 

              On one hand this makes a lot of sense.  It worked 500 years ago; maybe it can work again.  Reading the ten commandments during worship in the cathedral of Geneva, where the Reformers said, judge for yourself, offering this moral code to the individual conscience changed the world, gave birth to our democracy.  Maybe it will work again. 

On the other hand placing the ten commandments in public schools forsakes the hard-fought wisdom and the struggle for freedom we have achieved. We have struggled for freedom and continue to do so because it is not easy to distinguish morality as a relationship with God and ethics as a relationship with one another.  When you post a moral code in a public space you are making the state, the government, god-like; you are making them the one who determines morality.  What was "judge for yourself" becomes we tell you and you follow or else.

              Again, I get the argument.  If young children grow up with no moral compass, they will not be good citizens.  Everyone needs a moral code.  Hence, it's tempting to say, let's make sure these critters don't grow up godless and immoral.  Put the ten commandments in every class in every school for every child.  It worked before; could work again.  And what is the downside?

              Ten years ago I taught philosophy, a few college courses, for prisoners in a medium security prison.  This will sound strange, but I came to understand what it means to be free, to judge for yourself, in prison.

Teaching in prison is not easy.  Until you enter a prison you may not realize this is a form of torture, controlled violence, and as such prison is not a good environment for instruction, reflection.  Teaching philosophy in prison was even more difficult because philosophy (ethics) is ever a question of freedom. How can you consider being free in life to judge for yourself in a place without freedom? 

              There was a personal dilemma.  Philosophy, ethics, freedom, I was taught these intertwined with religion, theology, morality.  They must be separate, but they are always in conversation, they balance each other. How could I teach one without the other?  And I needed to because you cannot reveal your personal life in a prison.  The students were not to know that I was a pastor, a Presbyterian, clergy.  I was there to teach philosophy, not theology.

              What I found was amazing.  To teach philosophy and ethics and freedom without religion and morality and theology we had to answer the question of Jesus in our text.  Why do you not judge for yourself what is right?  To find the answer of freedom we had to consider the radical possibility of the conscience alone being the guide.  Judge for yourself.

              And like our passage, the downside of not judging for yourself was the loss of freedom.  Look at what Jesus says after his question.  If you don't settle with your accuser, you will be imprisoned, you will lose your freedom. 

              Week after week, philosopher after philosopher was examined with the demand, "judge for yourself."  With each ethical matter we asked, how are we to be free?  It turns out people who have lost their freedom value it more than anything else.  Prison was the greatest place to consider ethics, freedom, how we are to live together.

              It wasn't easy.  Many times, I wanted to balance the ethical question with its moral expression.  But to do such would have crossed the boundaries, forsaken the freedom of the class.  Near the end of one semester a question was raised that meant a great deal to me.  A student asked, "Dr. Garry with all these philosophers and books after all these arguments do you believe in God?"  I loved this question because it told me we did it.  We asked the question of freedom as a matter of conscience alone, judge for yourself.  We did it.  I smiled and said, "of course.  How can I not.  The real question is: does God believe in me?"

              Putting the ten commandments in every public-school classroom is a terrible idea.  An obvious confusion of moral code and ethical standard.  But more importantly, how terrible it is to forsake the true nature of freedom: judge for yourself what is right. It was not simply the reading of the ten commandments in Geneva.  No.  It was the power of freedom given to the people.  Judge for yourselves what is right is our heritage.  Amen.