The Limits of Kindness
By William H. Willimon, Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry
Duke University
Note: Although first published in The Christian Century on April 14, 1982 (when the author was pastor of Northside United Methodist in Greenville, SC), these words are amazingly relevant for our day.
The late Carlyle Marney was fond of saying that he had a "private Jew" whom he kept close by him to "keep my religion honest." Fortunately for my religion, Beth Israel Synagogue is next door to my church. The other day over coffee, the rabbi was complaining about the obviously anti-Jewish statement made by one of our local politicians.
"Well," I said, "you`ve got to remember that this man has limited education and background. I`m sure he sincerely believes that what he said was right."
"So what difference does his sincerity make if what he did is wrong?" asked the rabbi. "Is it still possible for a Christian to be wrong, or is it now only a sin to be insincere?"
The rabbi had me there. Is it still permissible for Christians to question people`s behavior? There was a time when Christians wanted to be obedient and faithful. Lately we are content to be sensitive. Once we aspired to justice and righteousness. Our present ethical concern is that we be kind.
This insight came home to me when a group from our own denomination was preparing for our church`s General Conference. Since homosexuality was to be debated, delegates were studying the issue. But their study quickly fizzled when one delegate read a letter from the father of a homosexual son who claimed that the church`s questions about the gay lifestyle had made the young man so uncomfortable in his local congregation that he had dropped out. With that, a number of pastors urged that compassion be shown to homosexual Christians, and the discussion ended. After all, what Christian wants to be accused of unkindness?
One reason that we seemingly cannot get a good argument going, even a polite discussion of pressing ethical issues is that Christian ethics has been reduced to a matter of good intentions. We don`t ask people to think clearly anymore; we simply ask them to be sincere. The proverbial road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but good intentions are good enough for contemporary believers.
THIS ETHICAL IMPASSE has many sources. It stems partly from the sincere attempt of Christians to show the same straightforward compassion that our Lord showed people who were caught in ethical binds. We are not to throw the first stone at brothers and sisters. God is the judge, not you or I.
But let`s be honest: some of our problems stem from the human penchant to exonerate ourselves from the tough task of behaving like Christians. We do not cast stones because it`s safer that way. In the resulting melee, we might be hit. It`s easier to be kind. Granted the appropriateness of Christian compassion, I think we must also admit the questionable motivations for our current appeals to kindness.
I have noted in myself and in other pastors the tendency to reduce all ethical questions to pastoral care questions. We cannot discuss divorce without thinking of the woman in our congregation who has finally summoned the strength to divorce her abusive husband. It is well that we put particular faces on particular ethical issues. But there`s a place, in ethical discourse, for generalization and objectification for the purpose of making balanced judgments that adhere to our dominant convictions.
How to care for Jane Smith and how to help her make her own decisions are pastoral-care concerns. Anything we say about divorce in general must be related to her specific situation. But surely part of Jane Smith`s dilemma is how her decision relates to who she is as a Christian. How are we to offer her pastoral care without some clarity about what values are at stake in her decision, what this decision will do to her as a Christian, and how this decision will affect those whom she owes Christian love?
In this instance, as I read my church`s statement on divorce, I read a masterful piece of equivocation. One of my parishioners read it, hoping to find guidance on whether to seek a divorce or not. He summed up the statement this way: "It says that divorce is not good, but divorce is sometimes good if the person decides that it is good to do." What help is that?
Many of us were taught to conceive of pastoral care as a value-free enterprise – skillful compassion practiced in a Rogerian, value-neutral universe. We were to counsel people to find their own values, taking care not to preach or to scold. Fortunately, pastoral psychologists like Don Browning (The Moral Context of Pastoral Care) have recently recognized that a major source of people`s psychological discomfort is their moral confusion. Browning urges pastors to use the resources of the church`s tradition and values to minister to troubled persons seeking to find order for their lives.
Good pastoral care does not preclude ethical considerations. My personal dilemmas are often dilemmas of right and wrong rather than simple questions about my feelings. Some of us feel guilty because we are guilty. No amount of pastoral reassurance that guilt is outmoded or that I am, after all, basically nice should prematurely relieve me of my legitimate burdens.
In his Pastoral Care in the Black Church, Ed Wimberly indicts the value-free, narcissistic, radically individualized pastoral care that we have often practiced. Wimberly notes that it is difficult to get a black pastor to believe that any care worthy of the term pastoral can sidestep questions of what is biblically right and wrong. Kindness, Wimberly suggests to me, is one of those convenient cop-outs to avoid the burden of doing simple justice.
THANK GOD that I have more to go on than my own anguish in confronting an ethical dilemma. Consider this reconstructed verbatim dialogue from a student pastor who was asked by a parishioner, "What does out church think about premarital sex?"
Pastor: Well, the really important thing is how you feel about it.
Parishioner: I guess I feel OK. I mean, so far my experience has been OK. But I thought the church was against sex before marriage. Isn`t the Bible against it?
Pastor: You`ve got to remember, the Bible is historically conditioned. I think you`ve got to take your specific situation into account.
Parishioner: So as far as you are concerned, sex before marriage is OK, depending on the situation. I`ve always thought that the church was against it for some reason.
Pastor: Well, the important thing is the individual relationship. Is the relationship open, loving and trusting? I`m sure that you have given this some thought.
Later, in a class discussion, students noted that the woman was asking a simple, straightforward, ethical and informational question: What does out church believe about premarital sex? The pastor refuses to answer her question. Instead he tells her that the real question is her own feelings in the matter. Then he repeats vague platitudes about the virtues of openness and trust. Without giving even the slightest nod to the church`s traditional opinions on this matter, the pastor reassures the parishioner that whatever she did must be right.
This pastoral attitude is curious at a time when the church fancies itself as socially concerned. Pastors feel qualified to make pronouncements on the ethics of nuclear power, racial justice, ecological problems and disarmament, but are rendered silent when asked how two people are to behave in a bedroom. Thus Stanley Hauerwas calls us "public legalists and private antinomians." We prescribe all sorts of moral behavior for the crowd from the safe anonymity of public policy. But we have no idea what to say to a parishioner who is neglecting his children. Last month I preached sermons that mentioned the problems of world hunger, private racist schools, and increased military spending. But I quietly passed over Jesus` sermon in Matthew 19:3-9. I did this despite my knowledge that at least half of my people who talk to me about their divorces invariably mention Jesus` words on the matter. It is easier for me to condemn the sins of Washington, D.C., than those in Greenville, South Carolina.
You see, I want to be kind. Am I my brother`s or sister`s keeper? Besides, we`re all trying to do the best we can. We`re not so much deciding and acting as we are coping, we say. And who would be so cruel to suggest that I can be any better than I am? How could you know the agony, which I`ve gone through to justify my life, to exonerate my behavior toward other people? What would you offer me in exchange for my self-justification?
IT IS MORALLY fatal for us pastors to let ourselves or our people off the ethical hook this easily. In our weaker moments, we are fond of portraying ourselves as submissive spectators, victims of the grinding cogs of fate. Who would be so insensitive as to question our motives or the results of our actions? We`re just getting by.
Without adopting a Promethean view of human nature, we can acknowledge that we do shape our destinies and ourselves through our choices. I may choose to avoid acknowledgment of the values by which I live, but I cannot ignore that these values are forming me into a certain kind of person. I must not expect coherence and depth in my life if my only value is experience. I need not wonder why I am lonely if my only criterion of judgment is "What will work for me?"
So a responsible pastor might say to the parishioner in the situation cited above, "It`s not only a matter of right and wrong; it`s also a matter of who you want to be at age 64. It`s also the social-activist matter of `what type of society do you wish to live in by 1984?`"
I must be more honest about the sources of my presumed "kindness." Pastoral self-protection may be the chief motive behind my paternalistic (or maternalistic) protection of my parishioners from ethical questions of value, means and ends. Dislocation from a particular community and that community`s dominant convictions, visions and norms keep the ethical life sealed within the safe confines of individual egos, individually derived values and individual concerns.
The ethics of kindness represents, for many of us, the slogans of our old Protestant pietism at their subjective worst: It Doesn`t Matter What You Believe or What You Do as Long as You Are Sincere.
I DO NOT KNOW whether the politician who uttered the anti-Jewish statement was sincere. I do not know whether he holds Christian convictions. I do know this: his sincerity (or lack of it) does not determine the goodness of his actions. Nor does his kindness (of lack of it) toward his actions determine the goodness of what he did. His actions, like mine or yours, are not beyond question.
Fortunately, God has not left us alone, victims of our own illusions and devices, trapped in the present moment. Nor are we the first generation to face tough decisions. Your kindness toward me in allowing me to pursue my illusions of self-interest may inflict untold cruelty on others. We are all in this together.
Our decisions either confirm or weaken the values which we hold. Our actions not only shape the world we live in; they also shape us.
Nobody told us it would be easy. Despite my best intentions, it is still possible for me to inflict great damage on other people. Despite my declarations of ignorance in many moral matters, I know more about right and wrong than I admit. Most of the time, I dare not act on what I know. The right is no less right because it costs me something. So call me to account, correct me if you can, and urge me to be bold in living out my vocation. That would be kindness indeed.
If kindness alone were enough, there would have been no cross. Jesus would have formed a sensitivity group and urged us to share our feelings, or a support group where we could affirm each other. Knowing full well the limits of humanity, the seriousness of our sin, and the depths of evil, he formed the church and charted a different way.
