Global Ethics What We Can Learn From Christians Overseas

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Global Ethics What We Can Learn From Christians Overseas
By Jack A. Hill, Assistant Professor of Religion
Texas Christian University

As we enter the next millennium, we are more conscious than ever before of living in a "global village." We drive cars from Japan, wear clothes sewn in China, eat bananas from Columbia, vacation in the Caribbean, and give Christmas ornaments made in India. We may have an idea about our church`s global mission outreach. We may even be dimly aware of "globalization," but it`s one of those things, like global warming, that we would rather not think about. What does it have to do with our way of life? Does it mean protecting our borders against encroachment and terrorism? Is it primarily a matter of advancing America`s interest in freedom, democracy and prosperity? Although our answers to such questions are important, I would like to focus on a few of the implications of the global for Christian ethics.

As a former missionary who has lived in three continents, I think that living in a global village means that we have to re-think the starting place of Christian ethics. Ethics is reflection on moral experience. Traditionally, in the U.S. and Europe, it has concerned thinking about the norms, values, ideas of the good, and stories of right conduct in our western tradition. Christian ethics has been rooted in Scripture, the life of Jesus Christ, and the witness of the church as seen through western eyes. But today, the axis of Christianity is shifting away from the First World to the so-called "Two-Thirds" world. For example, there are now more Christians in Africa than in all of North America and Europe combined. While the mainline church in the West is losing members, the church is growing by leaps and bounds in places as far apart as Zaire and Brazil.

Consequently, what were formerly "missionary outposts" have now become teeming centers of Christendom in their own right. In the past, we in the West "planted" churches and educational institutions abroad and presumed the knowledge to instruct our colleagues overseas. Now the planting is essentially over, and our international neighbors want to share their own experience of Christian faith and practice with us. Two decades ago, I recall asking Jamaican church leaders what message they would like me to take back to churches in the U.S. The response was immediate and unambiguous. "Tell them we want them to get to know who they are."

I am convinced that deep down, we are afraid of getting to know our new global Christian neighbors. We Americans are one of the most mobile people in human history. Continually on the move, we are perhaps especially anxious about forming new associations. It is tough enough to break the ice and get acquainted with new neighbors in our hometown, let alone in a strange city or region of the country. We are no longer as sure of our own roots as our grandparents were, and it is therefore even scarier to interact with people who are different from us. And now we find ourselves in a global arena. We are no longer-if we ever were-the center of the universe. In fact, we are now part of a shrinking "One-Third" world.

I think we are afraid to get to know Christians in the "Two-Thirds" world because we are afraid of what we might learn about ourselves from listening to them. At bottom, our fear of our global neighbors lies in a gnawing insecurity about the ground and integrity of our own moral experience. Most Americans still profess religious faith-the vast majority professes a monotheistic faith-but we are less sure of how to live out that faith in our day-to-day routines. As a result, it is harder to listen to folks who speak of alternative ethics without feeling nervous about the "truth" of our own ethics. We fear that dreaded phenomenon, "relativism." We worry about what ethicists call "normative claims" because in these post-modem times it is no longer clear what is to be considered "normative." We try our best to think in terms of rules and standards derived from Scripture, but Christian ethicists themselves disagree vehemently about the pros and cons of hot issues such as pre-marital sex, abortion, and capital punishment. No wonder many intelligent, well-intentioned Christians are just throwing up their hands. Increasingly, we either resign ourselves to the idea that most of ethics is a matter of subjective preference (it really is not something we can intelligently discuss) or adopt the cynical attitude that it does not really matter anyway (as long as we do not directly harm anyone or break a "serious" law). When it all boils down, is not all ethics really a ruse? Is it not really all about getting our way? Is not all ethics really politics?

I think this climate of moral resignation and cynicism is deeper and more widespread in the church than many of us are willing to acknowledge. No, I am not a doomsayer, and yes, there is a lot right with what is happening in our country. But somewhere along the way we have lost vital connections with our land, traditions, and values-with what Tocqueville called "habits of the heart." When I was a kid you could still drink out of fresh water streams in the Rocky Mountains without fear of pollution, I remember when church picnics were a big deal, and folks used to spend long evenings talking to neighbors on their verandahs. I recall a time not too long ago when we were challenged to build a "Great Society" which would eliminate poverty and racism. Now we buy bottled water when we go hiking, no longer build verandahs on our houses, and worry about the viability of social security while the digital divide grows and the church continues to host the most segregated hour in America.

In the image of the new life in Christ, I want to suggest a fresh beginning. I think we need to reconsider our understandings of Christian ethics in the light of the moral experience of our global Christian neighbors. This is risky business because once we admit pluralism, or the reality of other points of view, we may become even less sure of the truth of our own fragile beliefs. We also risk conflict and controversy. But perhaps the deeper risk is that in hearing about how others live, we may be challenged to change the way we live. And who wants to change? Yet is not transformation at the heart of the New Testament message? We are told repeatedly that we must repent and be born again. Jesus also reportedly told us to become again as a little child. This is what I am suggesting. Not that we adopt a naïve, uncritical attitude toward our global neighbors, but that we approach them in a spirit of repentance, openness, and vulnerability.

When we start getting to know Christians in the "Two-Thirds" world we start hearing about connections to land, traditions, and values that have something to teach us about ethics. One of the real joys of being a missionary is that you get to spend a lot of time sitting down with people, sharing stories. As major Christian ethicists have noted, stories represent storehouses of moral and religious insights about living in community and about right relationships. Many of us grew up learning biblical stories, especially from the Old Testament, and Jesus frequently taught by telling stories. But in our heavily visual culture, where television, VCR, and computer transmissions are the norm, we are more and more prone to bite-size, fragmentary, graphics-oriented presentations of experience. We also tend to "objectify" that experience in such a way that we begin to think that the only things that are "real" are the objects of these bite-size pieces of experience-Outback shoes, stock market quotes and weather reports. The problem for ethics arises when these objects are abstracted from the concrete contexts of our lives. That is, it is not clear how they relate to or fit within the stories that have been significant for generations of Americans. Further, we are impatient in our high speed, multi-tasking techno-existence. We rarely sit still or focus our attention long enough to assimilate, let alone appreciate, a good story, assuming we can still find a storyteller.

During my seven years in the South Pacific Islands, I heard some good stories usually in connection with rituals of farewell, welcome, mourning, reconciliation, birthdays, or various ethnic group celebrations. Many of these tales were told in connection with the ancient ritual of kava drinking. Kava is a drink made from steeping a local root in water. Consumed steadily in moderate amounts over several hours, it has a mildly sedative effect. It`s relaxing and it`s conducive to storytelling.

It was around the kava bowl one night that I heard the story of Willi, a college student from Vanuatu. Willi was traveling with his family on a small inter-island ferry between islands. As night fell a major storm developed. As the seas churned the ferry capsized. Willi and his two daughters leaped overboard and managed to hold onto a piece of wood in the open sea. Willi`s youngest daughter, not quite two years old, became weaker and weaker. Finally, she couldn`t hold on any longer, and when she disappeared under a huge wave, Willi dove for her. Grasping the limp body for several hours, Willi too was losing strength. In desperation his ten-year old daughter, Vivian, pleaded with her father, "Let her go, Daddy." In the middle of that vast ocean, Willi improvised a funeral service for his little girl and let her go home to the depths of the sea.

Drifting for the rest of the night, growing weaker by the hour, they cried out to God in prayer. When dawn broke, Willi suddenly remembered an ancient song his father had taught him to "call the dolphins." Willi sang this song, and after awhile a dolphin appeared with a coconut and plopped it down near him. Willi cracked a hole in the fruit with his teeth, breaking two teeth in the process. But now drinking the lifesaving coconut juice and eating the nourishing white meat within the husk could replenish him and Vivian. From then until a passing boat finally rescued them, some forty-eight hours after they were tossed into the sea, the dolphins continued to swim in a protective circle around them.

After their rescue, Willi learned from a young woman named Roslyn how the dolphins had also befriended her. After the boat sank, Roslyn found herself in the stormy sea with nothing to hold onto. When she called for help, two dolphins appeared with bele (a nourishing leafy vegetable) in their mouths, which they gave to Roslyn. Then the dolphins swam to either side of her, each gently nudging a fin beneath her arms. In this way they carried her for many hours, only swimming away when the rescuers` hands pulled her aboard the rescue boat.

Although both episodes in the story sound so "miraculous" that they strain credibility, I have every reason to believe that they are true stories. Willi, then training to enter the Anglican priesthood, spoke with an authority and seriousness that could not be lightly dismissed. But there was also "truth" in another sense. When told in the context of the Christian community in the Pacific Islands, these stories evoked in the listeners a reaffirmation of a profound relationship to the natural world. Not only were Willi and the other islanders interconnected with the dolphins, but also the dolphins represented salvific agents. Reflecting theologically on his experience, Willi spoke of the dolphin that brought the coconut as "the Dolphin Christ." Here is a radical sense of the immanence of God in the animal kingdom. When Willi calls out to the Dolphin, it responds with Christ-like compassion, presenting the lifesaving coconut.

This interdependence of human and animal life, which is reflected in many other stories from the South Pacific, as well as from Native American and African traditions, has profound implications for the way we in the West relate to the natural world. Viewed in relation to Willi and his daughters, we in the West are alienated from a primal, basic relatedness to non-human life. In fact, we function as if completely autonomous from creation. We see dolphins as something to eat, admire, study, or preserve, but not as copartners, let alone as salvific resources. We use animals rather than entreat them. We consume animal flesh rather than honor the life force within.

I am not trying to make a case for animal rights, nor argue for vegetarianism. Nor am I suggesting that North Americans should try to talk to fish. In any event, we would have to search long and hard to discover cultural resources that could help us, even if we were still capable of such communication. The point is, that given our modern scientific orientations and fascination with technologies, we have distanced ourselves from other life forms in the world. This has resulted in a "not knowing" of those other forms, just as we do not "know" our global partners. We have made ourselves tragically alone in the world. Since we no longer know how to depend upon other life forms, we fear for our very survival. We try to ensure massive energy supplies. We drain the earth of its mineral resources. We genetically alter plant life to guarantee food surpluses. And in our fear for survival, we are systematically knocking out our life support system (what some Native Americans refer to as "Mother Earth").

This is not the place to chronicle the ways we are killing the earth. That has been done elsewhere. Our concern is, "What is the import of listening to such stories for Christian ethics today?" In the first instance, before asking about what is right, good, or true (that is, before doing normative ethics), we need to re-situate ourselves in the world. The teacher and prophet, Parker Palmer, says that we are living in a "culture of disconnection." Encouraging us to "think the world together," Palmer quotes the Catholic mystic, Thomas Merton:

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed Light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This Mysterious Unity and integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all.

Rather than thinking in terms of polarities-of animate or inanimate, of spiritual or material-we need to re-imagine the world as an interconnected whole. We think we are only dealing with fish or inanimate water-with biological units or elements on a periodic table-when our global neighbors are trying to tell us we are dealing with agential forces and spiritual beings-with the Dolphin Christ himself.

Christians in the "Two-Thirds" world are also calling us to re-discover our prophetic roots. While teaching in South Africa, I heard an extraordinary story about the renowned anti-apartheid activist, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was preaching at an evening service in a township near Cape Town. There was great roar outside as a mob of youth moved by, intent on bringing a suspected informant to justice. Tutu stopped preaching and went outside to see what was happening. When he reached the crowd, things were in a fever pitch. The suspect had been badly beaten and doused with gasoline. A youth was throwing a tire around his neck. Tutu cried out, "In the name of God, let him go!" There were murmurings in the crowd. One man said, "The one who speaks for a traitor is himself a traitor." But Tutu, in danger for his own life, held firm. Finally, the crowd parted. Arm in arm, Tutu and the suspect walked away unharmed.

I recall the story of Sister Lewis in Jamaica. She was a hard-working mother of three, loyal church member and Sunday school teacher. Sister Lewis made her living by sewing clothes at home on a foot-powered sewing machine. She worked long hours, taking sheets of fabric and transforming them into beautiful dresses for little girls. Embroidering fine needlework on sleeves and collars, she labored six hours per dress. One day I asked her how much she received for each dress. She responded that she got a dollar a dress. When I looked incredulous, she said that that wasn`t bad because she only paid forty cents for the material. One day I happened to see one of her dresses in a shop in Kingston. It had a label stapled on it, "Made in the U.S.A." Beneath the label I recognized Sister Lewis` familiar stitching pattern. The price? Thirty dollars.

After that experience I could never look at a purchase in an overseas tourist shop in quite the same light. Usually, we have no idea of how we unwittingly participate in systems of economic injustice simply by purchasing pieces of clothing. Yet this experience is magnified millions of times each year when we North Americans profit from the sweat and labor of our global neighbors in the "Two-Thirds" world. Of course, the problem is a complex one. Not every situation is as manifestly unjust as that of Sister Lewis. But my point is that if we really begin to get to know our global neighbors, these are precisely the kinds of stories we are going to hear.

As we enter the new millennium, the phenomenon of globalization poses two major ethical questions. How can we protect and sustain our eco-system? And, how can we more equitably share the wealth generated in our global community? We need to begin by getting to know our global neighbors. After all, we Americans have always prided ourselves on being good neighbors. We need to listen to the stories they tell us. And we need to allow ourselves to be transformed by what we hear. I believe that if we listen carefully, the stories of our global friends will provide important points of departure, if not essential clues, for a constructive Christian ethics that can creatively respond to the challenges of our time..

ENDNOTE

1 Thomas P. McDonnell, ed., "Hagia Sophis," in A Thomas Merton Reader (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 506.