According to Scott Lively, homosexuality is inherently morally wrong, just like murder, adults having sex with children and slavery. And he claims he knows this because he relies on an external authority to tell him it’s wrong. I presume that he’s referring to the Bible and the Christian religion.
Lively seemed to suggest that his authoritarian approach was superior to the approach of a lesbian attorney he once debated who didn’t claim to have any special awareness of a higher authority, but instead relied on her opinions to guide her.
First off, I would like to point out that just because Lively, or anyone of any particular faith, claims that their system of belief is authoritative and reflective of a superhuman understanding of morality, they are still basing their belief on their opinion because they can’t prove that the authority that they claim informs them is real. And they certainly can’t prove that their understanding of this authority is accurate.
But what got my attention is that Lively doesn’t seem to give any kind of weight to the feelings people have for one another. Lively’s ethic is litigious and not based on empathy, which, one could claim, isn’t Christian at all.
I studied philosophy and religion in college, and even though I am far from a professional ethicist, I’ve heard a lot of ideas concerning the basis and genesis of morality. There are lots of lofty thoughts about this subject out there. Beautiful thoughts. Amazing thoughts. And I believe that the study of this subject is worthwhile. But when you get right down to it, I think someone who is totally and completely unchurched and unschooled can be just as moral as anyone else. And on a practical level, when we’re in a particular situation and we’re forced to make snap moral judgments regarding the right course of action, I don’t think it’s often logic or law--either human inspired or supposedly divinely revealed--that informs us. I think we rely on gut instinct and empathy, if we have any, more than we realize. We may rationalize and defend or criticize our actions with a lot of fancy talk after the fact, but when we’re home alone, and someone breaks into the house and we have to decide to either blow the intruder away or try to appeal to the intruder’s humanity, it is mainly our instincts that guide us. We don’t stand there and think about Jeremy Bentham or John Stewart Mill, or Aristotle, or the Old Testament. We just act. And our actions reveal our basic character.
Forget for a moment the religiosity of Christianity or any of it’s supernatural claims. Speaking in anthropological, philosophical and historical terms, Christianity is important in regards to the development of our understanding of morality because it acknowledges and embraces the centrality of empathy in our decision making process. Jesus taught that we should treat our neighbor as we would ourselves. Some Christian theologians have claimed that we should simply forget about the law completely and focus our attention exclusively on this simple commandment. And one doesn’t really need to believe Jesus was the son of God to find merit in this creed. For many, it is a concise articulation of a guiding principle that seems to come to us naturally, even if we stray from it from time to time.
You can either live in fear and paranoia and view other people as your enemies, or you can open your heart to them and feel for them even when they’re flawed. It seems to me that those who have the most empathy, the ones who are quickest to forgive and love and see the goodness in others even when they act badly are the most moral people, regardless of their religion or philosophy.
It also seems to me that those who fear going through live without some kind of external authority informing their actions are often the ones who appear to be the least empathetic. Scott Lively is a case in point. He can thump his Bible all he wants, but it’s obvious to a lot of us that he is allowing his fear and hate guide him, and he rationalizes his hate by calling it his religion. If Scott Lively really is an example of a truly moral man, then God help us.
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