How to Live and Why

O.E. Parker wrote: "Is is important for everyone to live according to a consistent ethic? For anyone? How do you build, find, or choose such an ethic? How do you evaluate its worth?"

Sweet, an easy topic for my first night of vacation! Seriously, though, that's the question, isn't it? Seems like most of lived religion, and quite a bit of lived stuff that isn't religion, is meant to answer the question of how people should live and why. (Except for that part of religion which deals with the question of how people should worship and why, which inspires fights equally if not more bitter.)

We learned a model in our Art of Theology class called theological reflection, kind of a misleading name--it sounds like it helps you create theology, like books in libraries, but it's meant to lead to practice. The general steps are attending to experience, engaging in dialogue between tradition and experience and allowing the fruits of this dialogue to lead you to change your practice. Of course, this presumes a million things about someone's willingness to attend to her own experience, to learn about tradition and to change.

Another weakness of this model is that it begs the question of whether you need to experience something in order to come to a theological decision about it. This model would work fine for developing an ethical response to something that happened to you (assuming you had the time--which is actually a critique of this model we came up with in class) but it's hard to see how it would apply in all cases for making decisions about the future. Some decisions, like whether to join the priesthood, you can approximate by coming close to them, living in formation or something like that. Other decisions, like whether or not to sign a DNR order for a relative, there's really no way to come close to until you've been there. And then, of course, if you listen to your experience in dialogue with tradition and come to change your position on a moral issue you've lived through, people will accuse you of being relativist and wishing to change rules only when they suit you.

I don't think you can "choose" an ethic, and I also notice that people do it all the time. Deciding what you want, and then adhering to it consistently, might work for a New Year's resolution, but it doesn't require the self-transformation of a Build Your Own Ethic (tm) reflection. This would be true whether you were creating yourself a hedonist or a puritan; self-enforced rigidity of behavior isn't transformation, although it's not impossible for the former to cause the latter.

How do you evaluate its worth? I think you answered your own question with your use of the word "consistent." Does the behavior your ethic demands express the person you want to be? Are the general principles behind that ethic expressed in everything you think it leads you to do? Consistency should include a committment to re-evaluating the ethic itself. This might mean that your ethic will change, but it doesn't have to--it could be that the ethic will stay the same but as your life and experience change, you'll find that a completely different understanding of the same ethic is more helpful for you.

Is it important to live according to a consistent ethic? Depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want a meaningful point of reference to look to in making decisions, then sure. (That's why some champions of rigid so-called orthodoxy are so pleased with themselves about it: immobile lodestar, constant certitude.) If you think you'll give a better account of your beliefs by living consistent with them . . . well, it would be nice if it worked that way. Some people will write off all your beliefs because one of them doesn't jibe with theirs, others will be confounded because your ethics don't conform to what they think your ethics should be, given your beliefs, and others will be affronted by the fact that you attempt to live by a constant ethic at all. All love to St. Paul, and I do think it's important not to make a stumbling block where you can, but in an age where everyone (even Theologienne) feels entitled to her own ethical platform I think it's best just to worry about style when it comes to stumbling block removal. One can't go around massaging one's ethics to consist with the local climate. If you think you'll be happier living with a consistent ethic, it's very possible. Many derivations from God's plan for them make people profoundly unhappy. On the other hand, there are definitely those who aren't capable of using an ethic as anything but a whip on their own backs. Is it useful to know what you think so you can figure out how you think in relation to others, and know whether you're learning from someone who agrees or disagrees? One thousand percent. Should you worry that God will love you less if you don't live consistently?

Isn't it obvious?