Teaching Christian Ethics: What Are We Obligated To?

Or, What If Your Happiness Isn't A Good Indicator About What You Should Do?

An ongoing series for paid subscribers reflecting on the art of teaching Christian Ethics. The first installment is here, and the second here. Not a paid subscriber? Easily fixed.

The Unavoidable Obligations of the Moral Life

About a year ago, I spent several sessions thinking about the nature of moral obligations: what we should do, and why. You can see the basic theses here, and I think they’re pretty solid still. The tricky part about the term “obligation” is that it gets so easily encoded with law, which in a Christian mind gets easily entangled with not-grace: obligations becomes those kind of things which we know are binding upon us, though we can’t quite make sense of why.

To say that we have moral obligations that we must meet is common sense: if you’re a parent, your kids need you to care for them. If you’re a teacher, your students require your guidance. If I’m a friend, my friends need my gifts, my presence, and my encouragement and challenge.

But this brings up a lot of additional questions:

Will God turn against us if we don’t meet our obligations?

Are obligations the same things as commandments?

And how do we know what obligations are ours to take up, and which are ours to not take up right now?

If, in the previous session, my students took up the question of what the end or the aim of Christian ethics is, this question is the one which helps set us toward that end in the right way. To say that “human beings are meant for ultimate happiness with God” is (I take it) basically correct, and so, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” helps to give some shape to what that happiness looks like: a shared happiness. The ultimate good toward which our actions are ordered is a shared one: both of the great commandments speak of a good which is not possessed privately, but shared—to covet God for one’s self or to divide yourself from your neighbor both mean to shut yourself off from the broader ecology into which God has set you.

But let’s bring this into focus: what might this have to do with, say, the ongoing war in Israel?

Talking about moral obligations with respect to our close neighbors, or our family, is one thing. But it’s another entirely to ask if we have obligations toward distant strangers, and it’s only here, I think, that the notion of obligation becomes the most clear, in three ways:

1. What is binding to the far off differs by degree, not kind. One’s neighbor, we are taught, is not limited by geography, or proximity, or familiarity, but by necessity: the Samaritan attends to the wounds of the traveler for no other reason than the wounds were in front of him. Similarly, to seek the good of those who are distant in Israel is no less binding because they are half a world away. This is not to say, however, that the degree of obligation is the same: I do not owe an Israeli or a Palestinian child what I owe to my own children, insofar as they are my children, the ones who are members of my own flesh and blood.

   **

   And yet, what is key here is that both my children and Israeli children are my neighbors. They are not God, and thus, not owed what I owe God, which means that even these two who I love more than my own life are my neighbors, albeit closer ones. This reminds me that they are not mine, that they are God’s and in meeting their needs, I am doing what I should for my neighbor. In praying for peace among distant Israelis and Palestinians, I am doing what I should do for neighbors distant or near. But the ways in which I can contribute to that peace differ by proximity.

2. What obligations we have to strangers is mediated and informed by those closest to them. In the same way that, if others were to help my children, they would listen to those who are closest to them (their parents or guardians), so for me to aid distant neighbors means listening to those who are closets to their need. My relation to Palestinians and Israelis is mediated by those who are with them consistently, and so, my sense of how to love my neighbor depends not on my own intuition, but on the testimony of others.

   **

   This means, by extension, that our obligations do not arise as intuitively as we think: my judgments are not immune from distorted vision; my zeal to help is not immune from being self-serving. And so, we need mediation in our understanding. The Samaritan, again, meets some needs for immediate aid to the traveler, but must rely upon the judgment of the inn keeper for others: he has no idea what other things will be needed, and will not be present to see for himself. Likewise, the traveler is likely a Jew, and may require additional treatment in accordance with the Law which the Samaritan may or may not be aware of.

3. The obligations we owe to both near and far neighbors are ongoing and endless, but in keeping with the relation we have to them. If the Law and prophets hang on this command, then to meet this command is to show oneself to be truly a keeper of the Law. And so, meeting the needs of a distant neighbor is in part so that they might be a neighbor who is near, one who has joined in the household of faith: the closer in they come, the more entangled our lives become, and the more I am obligated to them.

   **

   This is not a call for indifference to distant needs, but a recognition that all needs are met best in local forms. And the closer we are to a neighbor, the more our obligation to them spills out into new and novel forms which we couldn’t have seen before. When we had kids, I was obligating to them, though I couldn’t have known I was obligating myself to being up in the middle of the night, or spending hundreds of dollars on urgent care—these things were found along the way, and come with the territory. To care for a distant neighbor is to not only defer to the mediation of those closest to them, but to acknowledge that the things I can do to aid must not rob those closest from their chance to be obligated as well: to get to care for each other is part of the gift of an obligation.

And so, on we go. We talk about the different obligations present in the Ten Commandments, and how these make claims on us, but of different kinds and times, but all tied together in this way: there is no escaping obligation any more than there is escaping the world. That which is ultimately good will be shared, or not at all.