The Accountability of Responsibility

Once upon a time I drew from a list of conventional conservative Christian morals to inform my decisions about what was right and what wasn't. My last post suggested a disruption in my relationship with these conventions. This raises the question: Without an immediate, intimate connection to the posits of Christianity what influences my lifestyle decisions? What prompts my ethical posture in the world?

Do I still believe in right and wrong? The short answer is: I don't think the differentiation between right and wrong is cut and dry. But neither do I think that striving to live well, seek righteousness, or pursue justice are inconsequential matters.

Something drives us all. Something informs our decisions. Here is the reflection paper I wrote for my Ethics class this week:

A decade ago I encountered the quote: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I believed that idea to be true. I am no longer so sure. Since coming to Chicago Theological Seminary I have encountered another idea, a different reality. I have encountered the reality that the world needs more than people who have “come alive”. Women, people of color, and indigenous populations require recognition of dignity that patriarchal and imperial cultures have long withheld. Many people in the world who are impoverished beyond the ability to survive need resources that will provide for the basic sustenance of life. The earth itself aches with urgency for us to pay careful attention to the demands we place on it, and it in turn demands that we attend to the natural ecological rhythms that sustain the diversity of life.

My first ethical considerations were informed by the only world I knew as a child. I was a Wesleyan evangelical Christian who believed that the Bible functioned lucidly as the ultimate authority in all matters of life. Such assurance granted me profound relief in making decisions. I accepted an exclusivist reading of the Bible and the testimony of my insular community as absolute. This acceptance of an external authority governed my behaviors and rendered me free of the responsibility to consider the implications of my style of life. I did not have to think about what was right or best or true. I was simply required to behave myself according to my community's code of conduct. Good behavior was primarily contingent on acts that I omitted, desires that I repressed, and ideas to which I submitted. Since then I have learned to think, and to question my impulse to be well behaved.

Life would be easier if I could still base my ethics on good behavior or on the simple question, “What makes me come alive?” But I can no longer, with a sense of integrity, ground my actions in such myopic concepts. I am troubled by a conflict. I remain convinced that, indeed, I must foster my dreams and drive for personal abundance in life. Yet that conviction is critiqued by an expanded consciousness including my recognition of personal privilege and exposure to the stretch of social and ecological injustices around the globe and in my neighborhood. I am not sure where my recognition of privilege ought to take me. How does my identity as a straight, white, credentialed, employed, sheltered, relatively affluent male inform and problematize my active intentions, ethical postures, and political stances? I think it depends on how my narrative intersects with the narratives of others with whom I am engaged.

Ynestra King wrote, “Practice does not wait for theory – it comes out of the imperatives of history.” With this insight I recognize that I may not be able to find or invent an ethical theory that will promise me absolute ease of conscience. But I must still act according to some driving principle. That principle for me is the responsibility I have to pay attention to relational encounters. Any theory that has proven influential has come to me on the heals of an encounter with an other that has resonantly prompted a shift in ethical posture. My ethics are based on how I relate to others – human and nonhuman. They are therefore relative, subject to the nature of the relationship at hand. This requires a careful measure of deliberation. I must address ethical decisions case-by-case and conversation-by-conversation.

I know of no absolute authority or standard that grants me the assurance that I have acted right. But I believe that, “Listening to all voices of subjugation and hearing their insurrectionary truths make us better able to question our own political and personal practices.” I am unwilling to dismiss my ethical responsibility by insisting that a sacred text, divine authority, or code of conduct has made it clear that I am to act one way and not another. I have to attend to my intuition, listening to my conscience, and I must reckon with the realities of my environment, letting my community impact me. This is a risky endeavor toward ethics. It is not sure. It provides a hazy accountability at best. But I think it is better to be aware of this than not. It is better to embrace the implications of my actions as my responsibility, rather than ultimately displace my decisions on an external source. I am responsible, and to a certain extent that keeps me ethical.