Amoral Christians

I've never cared much for the study of ethics, particularly the brand called "Christian ethics". The problem for me is that every time I've studied the subject, it has been presented to me as a discipline in and of itself apart from theology. For example, for my Moral Theology class I am reading again Robin Lovin's book Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide. He begins by talking about the "good life" and the "goods" that Christians seek to attain. He includes stories of Jesus' life and teachings and how they direct the discipline of Christian ethics. And he suggests that Christians are guided in their ethical decisions by values such as "stewardship" and "community".

Now, I don't disagree with any of this. I just think it's missing the point. It seems to put the cart before the horse. How do we come up with these goods and values? We need Jesus to be more than a model or a teacher. We first must speak of the source and framework of Christian ethics, namely the revelation of the triune God through Jesus who draws us into shalom through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. This is our story, or rather this is God's story that creates a new reality in which we play the role of essential characters. We are the heralds, the newsies, the field correspondents, the play-by-play announcers. We discern and witness the triune God's transformative activity in our world. We anticipate the culmination of shalom by participating in it's inauguration. We tell the story of faith.

The faith we are called to pass on is our witness to Jesus' resurrection, his cosmic messiahship, the in-breaking of his reign. Yet it has been said by some analysts that the "faith" we actually pass on to the next generation of disciples is actually nothing more than deistic-therapeutic-moralism. I think that part of this has to do with the way we understand Christian ethics. Rather than a separate volume or a distinct chapter within systematic theology, ethics should be located throughout each locus of one's system, because each doctrine of the church when properly articulated points to our destiny in shalom in which we are presently called to participate.

In my ministry as a discipleship coach, I am currently wrestling with a practical symptom of this egregious error in Christian ethics. Since I began this ministry in the middle of the year, I inherited some helpful and some not-so-helpful resources for family ministry. One that falls under the latter description was a series of DVDs featuring the youth minister from Saddleback Church called "Revolution". This series has its ups and downs. But overall it presents many of the tough situations with which teens struggle in a moralistic, law-oriented way and applies biblical prooftexts to teach viewers how a Christian ought to handle various situations. Each of the personal testimonies given by young people talk about how they struggled with a serious problem but then got saved or recommitted themselves to God and now everything is hunky doory.

Completely absent from these videos is the story of shalom revealed in Jesus that provides us a framework within which we can navigate the treacherous white-waters of reality. So my task now is to reframe these DVD presentations with the hope we sinners have in the gospel of our cosmic Messiah that refuses to be contained by any moral code. This is what shapes us as Christians -- not rules, or goods, or goals, or virtues, or purpose-driven moralism.

In fact, I think we can go so far as to say Jesus wants his followers to be amoral, to live beyond the realm in which pre-packaged moral judgments apply, to embrace reality without any one particular code of moral conduct equipped only with the hope of shalom yet to be fulfilled but already transforming us all. This is how Jesus formed a community of disciples within Israel. And this is how the Jewish movement sparked by Jesus' resurrection spread the good news to the Gentiles. You say you want a revolution?

Well, this is the revolution the young disciples at St. Stephen the Martyr will come to know. By spending one Sunday a month reframing the "Revolution" DVDs into the story of shalom, we are preparing to launch a monthly Bible study next fall called Revolution that will story people in the revelation of our triune God. Teens will come to see how amoral and rebellious Jesus was and continues to be, and they will be invited to join his Revolution already transforming the world.