On Being Judgmental

 

Ezekiel 33: 7-9

7 So thou, O son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel: therefore thou shalt hear the word from my mouth, and shalt tell it them from me.

8 When I say to the wicked: O wicked man, thou shalt surely die: if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked man from his way: that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at thy hand.

9 But if thou tell the wicked man, that he may be converted from his ways, and he be not converted from his way: he shall die in his iniquity: but thou hast delivered thy soul.

Matthew 18: 

15: But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother.

16 And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand.

17 And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.

18 Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.

19 Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning any thing whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father who is in heaven.

20 For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

The postmodernists insist we must never be “judgmental.” We must never accuse others of wrongdoing. This Sunday’s readings demonstrate that this attitude is unbiblical and immoral.

We are all the sons of men. Ezekiel makes plain that this gives us an obligation to point out to others when they are sinning. If we do not, we will be held accountable for their sin. We have aided and abetted it. Above all else, we owe it to the sinner to advise them of their sin.

A point it seems lost on Pope Francis.

At the same time, this obligation is limited to the “House of Israel.” There is, after all, no point in trying to help someone who does not believe, in the first place, in right and wrong, in ethical monotheism. They are bound for hell in any case.

This principle is shown again in the second reading: one has both a right and a duty to point out when a fellow Christian has sinned, against us or against another. If he (or she) does not accept this and seek atonement and reconciliation, he has, by this, demonstrated he is not a Christian and not a brother. He is “a heathen.”

A second common distortion is also revealed by the second reading. The last verse is often misquoted as “wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” And this is used to stress the need for community over against the individual conscience, and so demand conformity. 

But the original is “two,” then “two or three.” If “one” is excluded from God’s presence, so too is any group larger than three. The ideal unit imagined is something the size of a couple or family, not even a typical church congregation. 

Accepting the authority of the latter is simply the ad populam fallacy. If a larger group automatically has more authority than a smaller group, Christianity itself is disproven.

The point is the presence of love; which necessarily requires more than one, as in the Trinity. 

Hence too no doubt the reference to a fellow Christian at the beginning of the passage, and in general,  as “brother.” The reference is to brotherly love, filos.

Whoever has such love is your brother. Whoever does not, is not.

Social Scientists Discover Water Runs Downhill!

From the Depasrtment of the Painfully Obvious: social conformists are weak on morality.

This is close to self-evident. If you listen to your conscience, you will often be at odds with those around you. If you always go along weith those around you, you will often be at odds with your conscience.

This points up one fuundamental flaw with social science: it thinks being "normal" is the goal of life.

How Gauche!

Leonardo Da Vinci, left-hander.

I am left-handed. This morning, I had to sign a document. Someone else, watching me write with my left hand, said to another, quite intentionally in my hearing, “can that be corrected?”

An obvious and stupid error: to suppose that doing something in a different way from most people is an “error” or an “inferiority.” Yet it is not just a common misconception; it is the standard assumption in entire fields.

All human progress, and all morality, is based on not doing things the same way everyone else does it.

Kohlberg and the Moral Value of Conformity

The moral beauty of conformity: Nazi Germany

A friend recently praised to me the theories of the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. I was not familiar with him; apparently he studies “moral development” along the lines of Piaget’s theories of intellectual development. Kohlberg posited that morality develops in six progressive stages:

1. Fear of punishment
2. Self-interest
3. Conformity to social norms
4. Deference to authority
5. Social contract
6. Universal ethical principles or conscience

While Piaget’s work was only with children, Kohlberg claimed that these stages of moral development can continue throughout a person’s life span.

I see lots of problems with this theory. Most obviously, since Kohlberg was presumably a human himself, how can he be scientifically certain that he has himself reached the highest possible stage of moral development, and can therefore judge how relatively backwards others might be?

Of course, if he wants to base it all on either a philosophical argument or an established moral code, that is fine. But then it is no longer psychology. It is either philosophy or religion, and must present itself for consideration in these terms.

The moral beauty of conformity: North Korea.

But for now I just want to deal with the implication that step 3, conformity, is more morally advanced than step 1, fear of punishment. That is, philosophically speaking, an abomination.

Fear of punishment is morally neutral. It is neither moral nor immoral to fear punishment. It is, on the other hand, simply good sense.

Conformity, on the other hand, is positively immoral. Given the choice either to conform or not to conform, nonconformity is intrinsically the more moral choice.

Don’t just take my word for it. Pope Francis spoke of it only the other day. As paraphrased:

Today it is thought that we have to be like everyone else, we have to be more normal, like everyone else, with this adolescent progressivism. And then what follows is history: the death sentences, human sacrifices.

Not satisfied? Check the Bible. Obviously, Jesus himself was an extreme non-conformist. So were the apostles, and so were all the prophets. Seriously, going out into the desert in animal skins and living on locusts and wild honey is not the obvious conformist option. Jesus says:

13"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Why is conformity evil? Because society is evil. It is the realm of Mammon, of Caesar, of Babylon and of “the nations.” It is the devil’s domain:

5And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6And the devil said to Him, "I will give you all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.…”

If society is evil, albeit a necessary evil, by its nature, then conforming to it beyond what is strictly required (perhaps, say, for fear of punishment) is evil. Yet even were it morally neutral, conforming to it would be evil, because it is a willful abdication of conscience.

The moral beauty of conformity: Jonestown, Guyana.

Hence we are supposed to be “in the world but not of it.”

Kohlberg's body was fished out of Boston Harbour in January, 1987. Apparently, he had parked his car, waded into he icy waters, and drowned himself. This, of course, proves nothing.