The Situational Application of Ethics is NOT the Same as Situation Ethics

Being somewhat of a contrarian, I submit the following to those who question the use of lesser evil/greater good paradigms in making ethical decisions:

"[The responsible man’s] conduct is not established in advance, once and for all, that is to say, as a matter of principle, but it arises with the given situation.  He has no principle at his disposal which possesses absolute validity and which he has to put into effect fanatically, overcoming all the resistance which is offered to it by reality, but he sees in the given situation what is necessary and what is ‘right’ for him to grasp and to do.  For the responsible man the given situation is not simply the material on which he is to impress his idea or his programme [sic] by force, but this situation is itself drawn into the action and shares in giving form to the deed.  It is not a ‘absolute good’ that is to be realized; but on the contrary it is part of the self-direction of the responsible agent that he prefers what is relatively better to what is relatively worse and that he perceives that the ‘absolute good’ may sometimes be the very worst." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (Translated from German by Neville Horton Smith)

The point here is that while God's moral law does not change based on the situation (contra situation ethics), how and when we apply a moral precept certainly does.  No doubt, in many situations the application of morals or ethics is clear-cut and unambiguous.  However, in other situations - more than we would care to admit - what to do is murky and confusing.  A concrete example of this comes from Richard Baxter's Christian Directory.  He says,

“Suppose that I swear to God that I will cast away a shilling . . . here I take perjury to be a greater sin than my casting away a shilling . . . but when I question whether the oath should be kept or not, I have greater suspicion that it should not than it should, because no oath must be the bond of the least iniquity.”

Notice that by referring to perjury as the "greater sin,"* Baxter is making a judgment that perjury and the casting away of a shilling are both sins, but of the two, the casting away of a shilling is the lesser evil. Additionally, he has a  “greater suspicion” (not certainty) that the oath itself might be sinful and thus, if sinful, should not be kept. So is the answer to Baxter's conundrum here (concerning what he should do) clear and self-evident or are the lines a little blurred?  If blurred, then apparently all the wisdom we need is not simply baked into the commandments themselves.  This is because the principal function of God's law is not to provide us with the power or wisdom to obey, but rather its function is to show us what we are.  This is what Martin Luther was referring to in his Bondage of the Will when he wrote:

“'By the law is knowledge of sin,' says Paul (Romans 3:20).  He does not say: abolition, or avoidance, of sin.  The entire design and power of the law is just to give knowledge, and that of nothing but sin; not to display or confer any power; but it teaches and displays that there is here no power, and great weakness.  What can 'knowledge of sin' be, but knowledge of our weakness and badness?” (Translated from German by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston)

So in our attempts to make ethical decisions, it is imperative that we beseech the Lord to grant us wisdom (James 1:5) so as to apply His law as a situation warrants.  And frankly, how such applications can be made without some understanding of lesser evils and greater goods is beyond me.

Again from Bonhoeffer's Ethics concerning ethical situations:

"Our responsibility is not infinite; it is limited, even though within these limits it embraces the whole of reality.  It is concerned not only with the good will but also with the good outcome of the action, not only with the motive but also with the object; it seeks to attain knowledge of the given totality of the real in its origin, its essence and its goal. . . . One must risk looking into the immediate future; one must devote earnest thought to the consequences of one’s action; . . . Responsible action must not try to be blind."

*The modern-day trend of leveling sins, where all sins are said to have the same weight, defies both Scripture and reason.  Even Christ Himself spoke of “greater sin” (John 19:11).  And while some may fear that degrees of sin necessarily lead to categories of mortal and venial sin, that conclusion, in my estimation, is a non sequitur.

Addendum (12/28/20):  In true ethical dilemmas where a decision is unavoidable, I believe the lesser evil paradigm is often preferable because it has no need to “strain out the gnat” (Matthew 23:24) looking for some scheme to justify a decision made or action taken.  In other words, there is no attempt by the decision-maker to claim his/her action has some kind of moral virtue.  It is understood that the decision made is questionable at best, but still in the prayerful judgment of the decision-maker, it is likely a lesser evil than the other choices contemplated or understood.  And thus the decision-maker, while knowing all sin deserves God's wrath, does not lie “to his own conscience in order to avoid despair" (as Bonhoeffer elsewhere puts it).  Rather, he/she hopes in nothing but God's mercy for Christ's sake.  In fact, this may explain the stalwart action of the midwives of Israel in Exodus 1:15-20, who did not hesitate to both disobey and lie to Pharaoh in order to save the lives of male Hebrew newborns, one of whom was Moses (Exodus 2:1-10) and all of whom Pharaoh wanted dead.  And while the midwives likely did not have a formal ethical system to follow, it seems obvious they regarded lying and disobedience to authority as far lesser evils than being complicit in the intentional murder of babies.

My Third Conversion (Closing With Christ) - Part 2

"Only he who has felt the heavy sword of the law hanging over him has learned to confess, 'Christ my righteousness.'" - E. J. Carnell

Not only did I believe in God, I believed in judgment.  And the question of how I would stand before God on the Day of Judgment was a question that weighed heavily on my mind.  What would be the basis for my acceptance before God?  What would be my plea before His throne?  Had I built my life on sand or upon a rock (Matthew 7:24-27)?

To answer these questions, I knew I had to examine myself.  I had to determine if my faith was real because Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (NIV).  And yet I had no idea how to discern with any certainty whether my faith was saving or merely the faith of demons (James 2:19).

Fortuitously (or maybe not), another avenue of self-examination came to my mind.  I had been told that repentance and faith were two sides of the same coin.  It seemed reasonable to me that if I could somehow determine my repentance was real, then I would know my faith to be real also.  So I began to examine my repentance by looking for its fruit as mentioned by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:8. 

But more than just examine the fruit I could discern, I also made a conscious effort to bring forth even more fruit.  I did this primarily by making an inventory of past wrongs, then apologizing and making restitution when necessary.  For example, I remembered having eaten with some friends at a local restaurant years earlier.  During the course of our conversation, we began to talk about a man named Heath (not his real name).  I’m not sure how he became the topic of conversation, but I said something derogatory about him.  What I didn’t realize was that his wife was our waitress that night.  I found this out only after the fact.  So during the course of my self-examination, this arose in my memory.  It bothered me that I had made this unjust comment, particularly within earshot of his wife.  I had no idea if she heard me or knew it was her husband we were talking about.  But the possibility was definitely there that I had offended her, and maybe him.

At first, I wrote them a letter to apologize and asked them to respond.  After a few days, when I hadn’t gotten a response, I became very anxious.  I needed to know if they had gotten my letter.  I needed to know if they had forgiven me.  So I convinced a friend to go with me to their house, but when we got there, neither Heath nor his wife were home.  Someone, maybe one of his children, told me that Heath was at his brother-in-law’s house a few miles away.  At that point, I just couldn't wait any longer.  I immediately went to his brother-in-law’s, knocked on the door, and asked for Heath.  When Heath got to the door, as you might imagine, he was both surprised and confused.  He said they had gotten my letter and were going to write back but just hadn’t had time.  He assured me that neither he nor his wife remembered anything about being offended by me.  Regardless, I asked for his forgiveness, and he graciously forgave.* 

Now, you would think I would have felt better, but I didn’t.  On the one hand, I was glad I had asked for forgiveness, but on the other hand, it was just another thing to check off of my very long “making amends” list.  You see, every time I checked something off, where I had gone and tried to right a wrong, it was like the Holy Spirit would just put something new on the list, something I had long forgotten but now it was brought back to my remembrance.  It was a never ending cycle.  I was never finished.  It was like an albatross around my neck.

Making amends also required a lot of wisdom.  It is surprisingly much more complicated and delicate than you would think.  Why?  Because often you can make things worse, or you can bring in other people inadvertently who are innocent in every respect and yet they suffer for it.  As Richard Baxter wrote in his Christian Directory,

“It is no duty to confess our sin to him that we have wronged, when, all things considered, it is like in the judgment of the truly wise to do more hurt than good: for it is appointed as a means to good, and not to do evil.”  

So you have to be very careful.  I learned that the hard way because I wasn't always careful.  When I tried to make amends for the past, I so wanted to know my repentance was real that I was reckless about what the consequences might be for others. Thankfully, the Lord kept me from doing any real harm, as far as I know.

But my efforts at amendment made me more and more miserable because I still could not discern if my repentance was genuine.  At times I was so distraught and distracted I would forget to eat.  I would lose weight.  I would have difficulty concentrating on even the simplest everyday tasks.  My prayers became more groans, sighs, and tears than words.  And like the Psalmist, I could say, "My heart has been smitten like grass and has withered away, indeed, I forget to eat my bread" (Psalm 102:4, NAS).  You see, I well knew of the faulty repentance of Saul, Esau, and Judas.  Remember Saul was aggrieved because of his sin.  Esau sought repentance carefully with tears.  And Judas even tried to undo what he had done.  Yet all their efforts at repentance were insufficient.  So by what objective standard was I to know if mine was real?

All the preaching I had ever heard about examining ourselves or making our calling and election sure never gave an exact standard.  They would tell you to look for certain fruit, but they never made it clear how to know if said fruit was real or artificial, that is, whether it came from a regenerate state.  You would think this would be important since much of what passes as fruit can be and often is found in the lives of those who make no pretense whatsoever about being Christians.

Frankly, having no clear standard made self-examination an exercise in futility.  To illustrate, I once heard a preacher say, when examining your repentance, that your repentance doesn’t have to be perfect.  Now, I believe he was trying to be helpful, but he really wasn’t.  Because how close to perfect must it be?  99%?  90%?  63.2%?  3%?  Without a clear line of demarcation, it’s just a guessing game.  I wanted to ask this preacher if his repentance was real, and if so, how could he know that?   

So slowly, by experience and a lack of any true alternatives, I became convinced that working your way to Heaven and working to prove that you’ve been saved by grace are, for all intents and purposes, functionally the same thing.  Both are a heavy weight; both lead ultimately to despair because both are law and both have to be perfect.  The pastor, Torvik, in the novel Hammer of God, was right when he said “it was an altogether hopeless task to search out all sin and make amends for it.”  You might as well demand that I flap my arms and fly to Heaven.  It was and is hopeless. 

About this same time I became conversant with an older man named James Webb.  He was some kind of preacher, although at that time not affiliated with a particular church.  As far as I could tell, he just talked to people about the Scriptures, and he had started calling and coming by to see me on a regular basis.  I had told him a little about the turmoil that I was going through, so one day out of the blue, he asked me if I loved God.  I was stunned - not because he asked me about my love to God, but because I had such difficulty answering his question.  I knew what it meant if I said no, but I couldn’t honestly say yes.  The best answer I could muster was “I want to love Him.”  At the time I was not aware of Martin Luther’s reply to a similar question.  At a point in his life when he too was trying to please God by his efforts and yet felt condemned, he was asked if he truly loved God.  Luther's reply was much more blunt and honest than mine.  He said, “Love God?  Sometimes I hate Him!”

I cannot overemphasize the jolt that Mr. Webb’s question gave me.  Because how can you, by an act of your will, choose to love something or someone you don’t love?  To illustrate, as far back as I can remember, I have always detested peas.  Not only can I not stand to eat them, I can’t stand to smell or even see them.  To me, they’re nauseating.  So if someone told me I had to love peas in order to go to Heaven, I would be at a loss.  The very best I could do would be to choke them down, gagging all the way.  But no force of my will could ever make me love them.  I just couldn’t.  The same is true with loving God.  If I could not honestly say to Mr. Webb that I loved God, how could I force myself to love Him?  The law was condemning me at every turn. 

Finally, I got to a place where I was numb on the inside.  I stopped trying to do anything because I just couldn’t.  I began to pray in my heart something like this: “Lord, if you want to condemn me to Hell, I deserve it.  I am a great sinner, and if you damn me, so be it.”  I stopped contending with God that I deserved anything but Hell.  It was settled.  Ironically, I now believe that’s what the beatitude means, where our Lord says, “Blessed are the meek.”  Meekness as described by Jesus has nothing to do with a milquetoast personality or a kind of mousy disposition.  Rather, it is when someone quits contending with God and honestly says, “If you damn me to Hell, it’s right, good, and just.”  And that’s where I was.  But understand, it wasn’t something I chose to do.  It’s wasn’t a work I performed.  It’s just something that happened because the law had slain me.  I had no righteousness, real or pretended. 

Yet, one verse of Scripture kept me hanging on.  Isaiah 42:3 says, "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out" (NIV).  If nothing else, I knew I was bruised and smoldering.  So I hoped, albeit faintly, that the Lord would yet somehow deliver me.

In this state of numbness, I didn’t know what to do with Christ or His gospel.  Yes, I wanted to go to Him for forgiveness, but I felt it necessary to have true repentance first, and as stated above, I couldn’t find that within myself.  In a blessed old book I’ll discuss below, Thomas Boston made the following observation:

“To tell sinners, that none may come to Christ, or have warrant to believe, but such as have a true repentance, must needs, in a special manner, entangle distressed consciences, so as they dare not believe, until they know their repentance to be true repentance.  This must inevitably be the issue in that case; unless they do either reject that principle, or else venture to believe without seeing their warrant.  For, howbeit they hear of Christ and his salvation offered in the gospel, these will be to them as forbidden fruit, which they are not allowed to touch, till once they are persuaded, that they have true repentance.”

How right Boston was!

Then one night in my study, I began looking at a book called The Marrow of Modern Divinity written by Edward Fischer (at least he is believed to be the author).  I didn’t know it at the time, but The Marrow had caused quite a controversy among Presbyterians in Scotland a few centuries back.  The famous preacher Thomas Boston had accidentally discovered this book and found it to be very helpful.  He defended it and was apparently involved in having it republished during his lifetime.  The copy I acquired contained notes that Boston had written which served as a running commentary on the contents of The Marrow.

Like Boston, I too discovered the book accidentally.  I had gone to a conference at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.  They allowed attendees at the conference to purchase books in their bookstore at half-price, so I bought anything and everything that looked even remotely interesting.  The Marrow was just one out of many books I purchased.  I perused it a couple of times, but it mostly sat on my bookshelf.  It wasn't until I was broken and without hope that I really started to read it.  (This is just one reason I believe in God’s providence.)

In The Marrow the author liberally quotes Martin Luther and other Reformation theologians, but the book itself is actually a theological novel about an evangelist who is dealing with someone who is a legalist, another who is an antinomian, and another who is a neophyte (a genuine, unprejudiced seeker).  In the story, the evangelist goes back and forth talking to all three men, but it gets to a point in the discussion, after the evangelist has cleared away many objections, where the neophyte wants to believe upon Christ but feels he lacks the strength to do so.

The Evangelist asks him, “But tell me truly, are you resolved to put forth all your power to believe, and so to take Christ?”

Neophyte responds:

“Truly, sir, methinks my resolution is much like the resolution of the four lepers, who sat at the gate of Samaria; for as they said, ‘If we enter into the city, the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also; now, therefore, let us fall unto the host of the Syrians; if they save us, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die,’ 2 Kings vii. 4 . . . now, therefore, though I be somewhat fearful, yet am I resolved to go unto Christ; and if I perish, I perish.”

I thought something like this as I read Neophyte’s words:

“This is me.  I can’t make myself one iota better.  Despite all my efforts to ‘prove’ my repentance and thus my salvation, I have found myself to be a spiritual leper.  Yet if I just sit in this stupor, I’ll perish.  But If I attempt to go back to my own efforts to earn or prove my salvation, I’ll also perish.  So like the lepers, I too am resolved to go to Christ just as I am and hope in His mercy.  And if I perish there, I will perish at the foot of the cross.”

Surprisingly, the evangelist’s next words were:

“Why, now I tell you the match is made; Christ is yours, and you are His, ‘this day is salvation come to your house,’ (your soul I mean:) . . . O therefore, I beseech you, stand no longer disputing; but be peremptory and resolute in your faith, and in casting yourself upon God in Christ for mercy; and let the issue be what it will.  Yet let me tell you, to your comfort, that such a resolution shall never go to hell.”

Startled, I said, “That’s it!  That’s it!  The match is made.  Christ is mine, and I am His!”  I had closed with Christ.

Now, I need to cautious about what happened next.  It was not a vision or some extra-biblical revelation.  I suppose it was more like what you see in your mind’s eye when someone speaks about Christ’s crucifixion, or you hear of His feeding of the five thousand or running the money changers out of the Temple.  You see something like a vague picture in your mind.  At that moment, I was thinking of Revelation 22:17, where it says, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”  It was then that I saw Christ standing before me extending to me a golden chalice full of water, specifically, the water of life.  This water contained everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).  It was righteousness (that imputed righteousness that Dr. Mahoney had spoken about years before).  It was repentance and the forgiveness of sins because Christ has been exalted to “give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel” (Acts 5:31).  It was also love to the brethren, love to God, adoption, the Holy Spirit, and even Christ Himself. 

Christ was offering all of this to me, freely, without cost or effort or conditions.  I didn’t deliberate as to whether I already had these things to some degree or another.  It was being offered to me now in totality.  So I took the cup, and I guzzled it down like a man dying of thirst.  It went up my nose and ran down my neck.  I now think I know what our Lord meant when He said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).  I had no righteousness of my own, but Christ gave me His.  He is my righteousness.

I don’t recall the exact date this happened, but I was in my early thirties. You would think I would have been dancing, shouting, and skipping about.  But instead I went straight to bed and fell asleep.  For the first time in years, I laid my head down on a pillow without the sting of conscience reminding me of this or that sin.  And I slept.  As Psalm 127:2 says, "He giveth His beloved sleep."

*May the Lord remember Heath’s kindness to me that night and the kindness of others who likewise showed me mercy.
                                                                                                               
Note: This was the final installment of a four-part series. To view the first three parts, click on the links below.

My First Conversion
My Second Conversion
My Third Conversion (Closing With Christ) - Part 1

Thank God for Paxil

There is an undercurrent in some corners of Evangelicalism that says anyone who takes antidepressants, whether for depression proper or anxiety (both of which could be called a form of melancholia), is simply masking over a sin problem in his life.   If he would simply repent, then these “crutches” would not be necessary.  In the last couple of years, I’ve heard at least two preachers say that while there are some people who have medical conditions that warrant the use of antidepressants, most mental health problems are related to unresolved issues of guilt in people’s lives.  Whether this is true, I am not qualified to say.  But I strongly suspect that neither of these preachers was qualified to make this judgment either.  More likely than not, they were parroting what they had heard some nouthetic counselor say - with one unintended consequence being that anyone known to be taking these meds automatically is brought under suspicion of being unrepentant.

No doubt, there is a kind of anxiety that is always sin, such as worrying about the necessities of life (Matthew 6:25).  But there is also anxiety that comes with the acknowledgment of sin (Psalm 38:3).  Likewise, there is depression which flows from a discontentment with the way God disposes of us, and then there is depression that is a discontentment with being alienated from God (or feeling this to be the case).  And although a person needs to turn to Christ in each of these cases, this doesn’t immediately alleviate the symptoms of depression or anxiety.  Why?  Because even a believer often struggles to believe.  Roland Bainton in his famous biography of Martin Luther rightly said:

“. . . faith in Christ is far from simple and easy because he is an astounding king, who, instead of defending his people, deserts them.  Whom he would save he must first make a despairing sinner.  Whom he would make wise he must first turn into a fool.  Whom he would make alive he must first kill.  Whom he would bring to honor he must first bring to dishonor.  He is a strange king who is nearest when he is far and farthest when he is near.”

Add to this that in many cases melancholia has an organic component.  Such people have a mental illness or defect.  Granted, the illness may have some connection to sin, either personal or the sin of Adam, yet that in no way precludes medicine to help the person function again.  To argue that would be the equivalent of prohibiting chemotherapy to someone who once smoked cigarettes or prohibiting heart surgery to someone who had been a couch potato.  Neither logic nor compassion can go there.

Consider the counsel of Richard Baxter in his Christian Directory to those prone to melancholia.  He said:

“. . . commit yourself to the care of your physician, and obey him; and do not as most melancholy persons do, that will not believe that physic [medicine] will do them good, but that it is only their soul that is afflicted; for it is the spirits, imagination, and passions, that are diseased, and so the soul is like an eye that looketh through a coloured glass, and thinks all things are of the same colour as the glass is.  I have seen abundance cured by physic; and till the body be cured, the mind will hardly ever be cured . . .”

Now, I’m sure there are people that abuse antidepressants and doctors who over-prescribe them.  But what is there in this world that’s not abused by sinners?  Even justified, sanctified sinners?  We sometimes eat too much, drive too fast, or say things we shouldn’t say.  But does that mean because these things can be abused that anyone who eats or drives or talks should have a cloud of suspicion hanging over their heads?  Of course not.  But why the distinction between these activities and the taking of legal, often helpful medications?  Because people who are prone to deep debilitating depression or anxiety are strange, sad people.  And although their deformity isn’t physically manifest, it might as well be because it makes “normal people” feel uncomfortable.  The deeply melancholy are a small minority, and the majority simply cannot comprehend why these people don’t just pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and get on with living.  Or to make it sound more “spiritual,” they wonder why these sad ones can't just repent and trust God.

Note: For further reading on this topic, see D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book, Healing and the Scriptures, particularly the chapter entitled “Body, Mind, and Spirit.”