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advice to young pastors: prepare thyself for moral dilemmas
There’s a biblical category they don’t tell you about in many seminaries: the category of the moral dilemma. There are moral dilemmas as surely as there are moral certainties. There are situations through which the way forward is not clear, just as surely as there are situations through which the way forward is is indicated with flashing lights, blaring horns, and a helicopter hovering above to draw your attention. Thankfully, the latter, in the realm of moral choices, exceeds the former, but the former exists. King David, for example–read the account of his life and some of the choices he faced, his heart being after God’s heart and all. How after serving for a time, he knew it wasn’t for him to build the temple because he had blood on his hands, and not just Uriah’s. Take Abraham, walking with his son Isaac to Mount Moriah–did what he learn about moral dilemmas in seminary prepare him for the one he was walking into? Can you even read that story without understanding that its dramatic impact makes no sense without the category of moral dilemma?
We live in a time, like all times, when the religious enterprise is dominated by the party spirit. It’s in the nature of the party spirit to assume all of the truth is on it’s side and none of the truth is on the side of it’s opponent. Which is why presidential candidates don’t learn from each other.
The party spirit draws it’s lines with a fat magic marker. But sometimes life requires lines drawn with a .5 mm lead pencil. Sometimes it requires, dare I say it?, dotted lines.
A single mother calls you in distress, pastor. Her eleven year old daughter, already menstruating, has been raped, during a possibly fertile time in her cycle. The single mother is torn. She gave birth to this daughter even though all her friends and family had urged her to get an abortion after conceiving her daughter. This woman is passionately pro-life. And passionately pro-daughter. She says to you, “We are at the doctor’s office and he wants to give my daughter the morning after pill, something I’ve always opposed. Will God forgive me if I let my daughter take the morning after pill? Will God forgive if I don’t?”
You do a quick scan of your moral theology and come up with one answer. You do a quick scan of what you would do if it were your own daughter and come up with another. And the single mom on the other end of the line is waiting for your answer.
Tags: moral issues, party spirit
July 15th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I hold the following truths to be self-evident:
That all women and girls are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these is the right to prevent the existence of a new person, a new human being, at any time before that new person exists.
That before a living human brain exists, there is no new person, no new living human being. Living human tissue without a living human brain, no matter how complex and genetically unique that human tissue may be, no matter what its current human potential may be, does not equal a living human being until a living human brain exists. And I don’t mean an ideal, thoroughly healthy human brain. Any living human brain, no matter how deformed, imperfect, mentally challenged, or unconscious it may be, is a living human being, as long as it is capable of consciousness, as long as it is not truly brain-dead.
I find it tragic that so much destructive guilt can be heaped upon a mother and her eleven year old daughter by the religious superstition that condemns them for exercising their Creator-given inalienable right to prevent the existence of a new person, a new human being, at any time before that new person exists.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Ex-Christian- I am no expert on this, but having witnessed by wife go through three pregnancies (one miscarriage), I recall brain development beginning within the first tri-mester. It might actually be just a month or so after conception. I am sure a few google searches could nail it down. I guess it depends on what you consider a “living human brain.” The youngest infant I have touched and seen was my little nephew who was born at 23 weeks; yes, 17 weeks premature. Bo was 1lbs 1oz and there was no question that he was full of life and had a functioning brain. I am not sure when Bo started to exist. Nor when any of my kids started to exist in their bodies for that matter. Interesting question…
July 16th, 2008 at 6:19 am
my understanding of the morning after pill is that it prevents the egg and sperm from joining. i don’t think it will actually abort if conception has already taken place. maybe i am misunderstanding the info?
either way, this would be an extremely emotional and difficult situation with long term consequences regardless of which decision is made. no one should be heaping guilt on anyone here.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’ll say that I like dotted lines. They coincide with a “both-and” theology and are easier to explain throughout the history of God’s redemption of mankind. At a cursory thought sweep through Scripture, dotted lines explain a lot of things. Rahab’s involvement in the establishment of Israel. Jesus being fully divine and fully human, hanging out with those who are fully despicable. Scandalous grace seems like a misnomer, but a life full of trying to figure out dotted lines and understanding how to live makes more since with them (dotted lines).
July 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I have a dear friend whom I’ve known since she was a schoolgirl whose first child was conceived by rape. She says that this child has been a means of healing and that her existence has redeemed the experience. Of course, my friend wasn’t 11 when her daughter was conceived…
While I can assert that I know what the only moral decision could be, I have to acknowledge that sometimes the right thing to do involves such a profound personal risk or sacrifice that I simply can’t just demand it (of anyone other than myself, anyway). I don’t have the right to expect someone to die for someone else. For a person to do the conscionable thing in such a case requires a faith that would be horribly tested by a situation like Ken describes, and I cannot presume that if faced with it myself I wouldn’t struggle or even falter. I know that I mustn’t take that degree of faith for granted, so when I see it operate—like with my friend—I am always in awe. Conversely, when I see it fail, I refuse to condemn (although not to mourn); if I were ever to face that degree of trial, I would want to have laid a foundation of mercy for myself.
But a pastor’s job is much harder than a friend’s because his words bear the responsibility of spiritual authority. I suspect that a believing mother in a case like this would be asking her pastor for direction partly because she can’t bear the thought of suffering the imaginable consequences of either decision. Her flesh wants a scapegoat. Time for the wisdom of Solomon…
Perhaps the best thing would be to just weep with her, provide an ear for her struggling conscience, and pray like crazy. Maybe she would like to talk to my friend…?
July 17th, 2008 at 4:20 am
teresa,
i think you are right, according to wikipedia, some types of morning after pill prevent fertilization although another type does prevent implantation after the egg has been fertilized. generally “morning after pills” are just high doses of birth control pills. i think ken perhaps meant the ru-486 pill? although i suppose there are some people opposed to abortion who are also opposed to birth control pills so maybe that is what he meant. we’ll have to wait until he gets back online (sometime next week i think) to hear.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Another moral dilemma…. Some years back my wife and I took on the responsibility of leading our first small group. As caretakers for the group, we often met with folks to help them work through their issues through interaction, prayer and commitment to friendship. One Saturday afternoon we were sitting around doing nothing and we got this crazy idea of spending the afternoon doing random acts of kindness for folks in our small group. So we prayed and then decided to go to the first couple that came to mind. So we headed to a young married couple’s house where we ran into what we saw as a divine appointment. We found the wife alone in her home caught up in tears. In short, there was a marital dispute and it was apparent that there was trouble brewing in their relationship, to say the least.
The woman ended up moving in with us for five or six weeks, while I would spend time trying to work out things with her husband. One day I received a phone call from the husband at 2:30pm while I was at work. He said it was over and he was heading to see a lawyer to file for divorce. At the time, to me that was the unthinkable. God doesn’t like marital breaks up I thought, so nor did I. I actually left work immediately and talked the husband in to meeting me at his house where I prayed for him and allowed him to tell me what was going on. The papers were not filed…
The couple eventually got back together, went through months of counseling which seemed to bare little fruit and with time they ended up transitioning away from our church (a whole other issue in itself). To fast forward a few years, the couple ended up having a child together. Which now brings us to last week when I learned that they have both filed for a divorce. I thought that marriage was to be fought for at all costs. That wisdom could only be found in “working things out”, which meant striving to make things work; regardless of circumstance (minus things such as affairs and abuse). But today, I wonder if the voice of wisdom may have been for them to part years ago. It was clear back then as it is now, that there are and has been some serious issues that have caused compromise in their relationship…soon to be former relationship. My heart breaks for their child. Lord gives us ears to hear the voice of lady wisdom in all these moral dilemmas that we and others constantly face.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Phil, I’m a conservative when it comes to answering the question, “At what point in time during human gestation does a collection of neurons and their synaptic connections qualify as a living human brain?” I’ll go with whatever the most conservative science reveals about that, just to be on the safe side. From the first moment when a living human brain can possibly exist, and continuing until that human brain is no longer alive but is in fact truly brain dead, I am pro-life. Before a new living human brain, and therefore a new living human person, exists, I am pro-choice, for the reasons I elucidated above. How about you?
July 17th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Just a brief clarifcation: I am pro-life from the moment a new person exists in the womb, and pro-choice at every moment before that, just like God is. He has given every woman the inalienable right and the inalienable free will to create a new person, and also the inalienable right and the inalienable free will to prevent the creation of a new person, before that new person exists. If we can all agree on that, then we can talk in a civil and respectful manner about the empirical evidence for when a new person does in fact first exist.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hey Ex, I have a hard time with the question of whether I am pro-choice or pro-life and I like to think it’s not because I am “lukewarm” in my beliefs. With a lot of politically charged questions like abortion, it seems that people are looking for a binary response: Yes or No? True or False? I actually like your response b/c even though at the end you say you are pro-choice, just before that you basically say it is more conditional and that given the time factor (level of cognitive/brain formation) you could find yourself on either side of the fence. All of this reminds me of the Gospels where you have the Pharisees trying to make faith in God so black and white; specifically in accordance to how closely one follows the law. So Jesus did the unthinkable and told those who thought they were “In”,that they indeed may be “Out” and those who are rushing into the Kingdom are the ones who the Pharisees thought were furthest away from God.
So my answer: abortion is imperfect. It leads to guilt, shame and probably a lot of heartache. These are the things that I think Jesus came to free people from.. BUT, young teens having children is also imperfect. They can be lead into a life of poverty, pain and struggle. It’s a dilemma like Ken mentioned and I hope that I will be freed from having to look at my little Iris when she gets older and have to help her work through that decision. My hope is that when the world Isaiah speaks about (65:17-25) is here, that I am present and I will not be called upon to answer this question. I can say though that in my own marriage I am pro-life; although I still struggle with wanting to take control on when I think the little lives should be created; as if some how I magically know best. The funny thing is all three of our pregnancies were not “planned”.
I apologize in advance if that sounds like a copout, but it’s all I have right now. Try me again in a few years..hahaha
July 18th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Phil, I appreciate you sharing those thoughts. And I respect anyone who believes that a new living human being, a new person, first exists at a time earlier or later than the time at which I think a new person first exists. We can each of us investigate for ourselves the evidence and the logic behind our beliefs w/o relying upon Dogma for our beliefs. We’ve all been given the priceless gift of Reason from our Creator to use in discovering the evidence and logic behind any argument about anything, including about when a new human being, a new person, first exists.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 am
We are at the doctor’s office and he wants to give my daughter the morning after pill, something I’ve always opposed. Will God forgive me if I let my daughter take the morning after pill? Will God forgive if I don’t?”
Maybe you could say you already have been forgiven back on the cross. As you stand there you have been forgiven. Do you still want to end this child’s life.
August 25th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I would like to say that i really like your site kenwilsononline.com a lot
now.. back to business haha
I cant say that im 100% with what you typed up… care to elaberate?