I have a bookmark for an article by Eugene Volokh, published by Slate, and I'm not sure where it came from, although I think it was one of Ben's links over at The Tiger In Winter. If it's not, well, there's a free link for you. ;-)
In it, Volokh talks about some of the criticisms that conservative people have about those who are more liberal. I'd like to comment on some of his observations, which seem to be those of a secular conservative befuddled by some of the "inside baseball" stuff that Christians say.
1) Moral absolutes
Leviticus is terribly misunderstood. It is frequently invoked to argue that Christians are arbitrary, hypocritical and inconsistent. Well, make that charge if you must, but leave poor Leviticus out of it because it won't help your case. Volokh is not really attacking Christians here, but he does seem to make what is a common error:
Leviticus condemns male homosexuality as an abomination, but it also condemns eating shellfish as an abomination (11:10). Most Christians don’t follow the dietary rules in Leviticus -- and they may have good reason to do so, reasons based on interpretations of other parts of the Bible, or on tradition, or on their reasoning about what God must care about. But this just means that they, like those who follow a secular moral code, must make hard moral judgments that may often lack clear textual authority.Non religious and non practicing Christians are often unaware that Leviticus is from the Old Testament, and the rules it contains were among the many things that were dropped after Christ's coming. So it's irrelevant. I didn't know it until recently either. My Study Bible's reading guide to Leviticus says:
... Since many of the actions in the first half of Leviticus are tied to priestly roles in the Temple, the book has become a negative symbol for Christians who emphasize the so called "freedom from the law" that Paul speaks of in his letters in the New Testament. Even the current name of the book means basically "That which pertains to the levitical priests."There might be strains of Christianity that adhere to Leviticus, but they are to the best of my knowledge minor groups, likely with a very literal take on the Bible. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Leviticus is also part of the Jewish Torah. Having a fuzzy idea of how mainstream Christian morality is anchored leads Volokh to draw a weak parallel:
many nonreligious people do operate using what they see as moral absolutes, such as the need to maximize human happiness, or the need to promote human flourishing, or respect for individual freedom, or what have you. Now naturally these foundational moral principles are pretty general and abstract, and thus ambiguous in application.It IS true that "many nonreligious people do operate using what they see as moral absolutes." And it IS true that mainstream Christians have to find ways to apply their moral principles, just like non religious people do. The difference is that a non religious person could drop a moral absolute for any reason at all ("I was wrong," "I changed my mind," "it's too hard"), and a religious person cannot. He can't change them because they are not his to do with as he sees fit. I think that's a pretty important difference and advances in medical science are making it more important, not less, everyday. One stance is absolute and one is "what I think or feel right now." 2) The means justify the ends Volokh writes:
Some ends do justify some means, in the sense that some of our moral principles (don’t kill, don’t let people trespass on others’ property) operate differently depending on whether there’s a pressing social need to do something (fight a war, enforce the law). We can surely criticize others for their moral errors in deciding which ends justify which means. But I don’t think we can criticize liberals on the grounds that they are more likely to say the ends justify the means, or on the grounds that “the ends justify the means” is inherently an immoral position.This is a credo that utopians of all stripes use to justify acts that range from annoying to murderous. It IS true that there is such a thing as a religious utopian - jihadis come to mind - but violent theocrats are not very common in the west today. On the other hand, we do see things like ecoterrorism and other forms of violence advocated more often by the left than the right. Disrupting the Republican Convention comes to mind too. How many Republicans tried to mess up the Democratic convention? How many advocated it? Practically none, as far as I know. I would argue that this is because the right is better tethered to our religious heritage and that heritage rejects this argument in all aspects. Now, wait a minute, somebody is going to bring up the Iraq war as an example of the right using the ends to justify the means. But war is not forbidden to Christians. The Catholic Church allows a war if it can be proven to be just, and it gives criteria to evaluate a potential conflict. Whether Iraq meets that criteria or not is a matter of much debate, and is beside the point I want to make. Catholics see the world and everyone in it as fallen. As a result, it is inevitable that we will be put upon by others acting out of ignorance or malice. We can respond in many ways. "Turn the other cheek" is often used to invoke a very strict pacifism, a pacifism that I reject. The Bible also says that to enter heaven we must "hate our parents" and no one takes that literally. It means we must put God first, even if it puts us at odds with our parents. God is the higher good. I read "turn the other cheek" in a similar way. Turing away might be the ideal response, but it may not be practical - it's a fallen world, remember? By turning the other cheek we might allow great harm to be done, and this is also sinful. So we will sin no matter what we do. The choice is really to figure out what is the lesser sin and to do that with as little sin as we can. And when the fighting is done, we are to fogive our opponent and seek the same from God. I'll end with a quote from an editorial from one of the the Vatican newspapers, Avvenire, dated Sunday, September 26, 2004:
Even the European countries that opposed the American decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime with a unilateral war know well that an Iraq in the hands of the worst terrorists and criminals goes against the interests of all: of the West as of the Arab-Islamic world. Thinking that the withdrawal of American troops would of itself permit the improvement of the situation, or even the reduction of concern, is pure naiveté. Moreover, the only condition that can bring about a reduction in the American presence in Iraq is the multilateralization of the crisis: including, and especially, from the military point of view.** Ben tells me I got the name of the writer I'm refering to wrong. The post has been corrected to reflect that.
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