Kantians, modern consequentialists, and contractualists- living in the tension of right and wrong

Do you believe you should act according to categorical moral principles that you would desire everyone to follow?

If so, you might be a Kantian.

Do you believe that you should act based on what is likely to happen as being a good outcome or a bad outcome?

You might be a modern consequentialist.

Or do you put more stock in doing things guided by subjective principles of what "we owe each other"?

You could be described as a contractualist.

In her New Yorker Magazine article about philosopher Derek Parfit, Larissa MacFarquhar, using the following scenario to illustrate the difference in ideas of right and wrong:

A murderer asks you where your friend is, so he can kill her.

The Kantian would tell the murderer where the friend is.  The consequentialist would not tell because it would mean the possible death of a friend.  The contractualist would base his subjective and practical decision based on what he owes his friend vs. what is owed to society on being truthful or deceptive in this instance: lying or betraying a friend.

Parfit was looking for a way to satisfy all three positions with a convergent principle:

An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific [leading to best results], uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable.

It may the mother of all answers to moral dilemmas but not too helpful in the world of ministry.

The objective in bring people together around ideas probably shouldn't be an answer that satisfies everyone (let's face it, a Sunday school answer).

The objective should be for the consequentialist to understand why a Kantians is so Kantian and what experiences the contractualists had to make her so very...consequentialist.

Maybe then we can start to understand why we do what we do and have such strong feelings about what's right and what's wrong.

How Often Should Community Outreach Announcements Include a Warning?

There are no doubt things going on in the church that might not be ideal for children of certain ages.  We should protect our youngsters, for example, from committee meetings that don't follow an agenda or that don't include follow up with action items after the meeting.

It seems that most warnings, though, should only be included for inside communication with the church family.

I say that because I just received an invitation to an event at a church in town that includes the warning that the event deals with mature subject matter and strongly recommends children under 9 shouldn't attend.

That seems like a strange place to start a relationship.  "Let the little children come to me... unless they are younger than nine and might hear about people they loved are in hell because they made poor choices."

It doesn't seem to ring true.

There are some trainings and some conversations in our churches that children aren't ready for yet and we all understand that.

But it just seems like when we are sending a message to people that we don't know, we should start with something everyone should hear.

God loves you.

Maybe in fact that is a good place to start and to stay.

How making Noah's Ark more plausible doesn't grow your faith

I heard that a group or two is building a full size ark similar to Noah's.

Based on the dimensions from scripture.

It's massive- 500 feet long complete with cages.

It is said to give an idea of how big the original was.

So that you can see: that yes it's possible.  Yes it was big enough and could really hold all those animals and their food.

The builder said that he hoped by doing this he would make the story of Noah's Ark more plausible.

No thanks.

I don't want to have to know that the things my faith tells me are certain.

I don't think a plausible faith is something I'm ready to believe in just yet.

How being a slacker at home can make you a control freak at work

My wife is the engine that drives our family and our household economy.

She gets things done (as well as works a full time job) as far as house chores, a lot of the yard work, and she is the emotional glue that holds our family dynamic together.  I cook the occasional meal, but generate more work than I produce in the order of a messed up kitchen.  I mow the grass, but she has recently expressed interest in taking over that chore.

I feel bad about abdicating most home responsibilities to her.  (But let's face it, not TOO bad.)

She will occasionally ask me to do some things which I most always try to do and sometimes in a timely manner, but often neglect.

So.  I feel really guilty about asking her to help me do anything or ask for a favor in the household economy.  If I ask her to go to the store to get stamps to mail the bills that I'm on the verge of paying too late, I feel bad.

A colleague in ministry told me the other day he felt like I was being a control person about something.

It shocked me.  I have always prided myself in being a decentralized open source collaborator.

I realized perhaps that I have let my guilt of being a slacker at home makes me unwilling to ask others to do things in ministry (aka volunteer to offer presence and service).

I'm not sure exactly what to do about this, but I think I better go look at my to do list and quit feeling guilty about being a slacker at home.

Or quit being a slacker at home.

Or leave home at home.

Or... live my life authentically.

At home.  At work. And in ministry.

The desire to be a hero is killing Adam Smith's invisible hand thing

Ever see a sitcom where a prediction is made and then the protagonist doesn't believe it is going to happen, and sure enough before 30 minutes is over it happens.  Taxi had an episode like this and without thinking about it too much maybe you can think of some more.

God has some things going on.  The question is are we supposed to, like, make them happen or do we make sure to stay out of it so they will happen.

If you are a paid staff member of a church or organization that expects things to happen, it sure is easy to make what is supposed to happen (good numbers, right expenditure, proper amount of applause, good comments on the blog, etc.) happen.

Without any regard with what God will have happen... happen.

The pressure is incredible.

Adam Smith wrote or spoke about an invisible hand of self interest basically making the world go 'round.

My understanding of it has to do with something along the lines of God working for all things to work for good.

Are you willing to get out of the way of it?

How good good becomes may be a function of your willingness to be irrelevant.

Or we can spend more time being sufficiently mediocre.

Either way.

The power of "Do you think..." in keeping people from leaving your discussion group

When considering our faith, that unrealized hope within us, discussion groups can be a pretty cool venue for growth.

We're talking a small (12ish),  consistent (the same people every time) group of people that we can meet with regularly and get to know, appreciate, respect, and eventually love because of (or more likely in spite of) their ideas and beliefs which may even clash with our own.

A group like this sticks to questions like "Do you think..." (and understands the answer can be "no" and is OK with that).

Instead of "Don't you think..."

Or even the lethal "Don't you think people..."

A group that can speak about personal experiences and beliefs without its members attempting to make those personal ideas normative for everyone else has  a chance of doing some thing.

Do you think we get bogged down by trying to get others to somehow come around to the fact that our ideas and beliefs are really the right ones?

I have found (also good language (I think) for creating a healthy discussion atmosphere) that when we share about our personal experiences and say things like "For me..." less people leave in a huff and talk about never coming back to "that group at the church".

I'm not sure why, in my experience,  having a group that:
     shares about personal experiences
     and how those experiences shape each member's individual faith
     and seeing how those individual faiths might shape the community's faith
is so difficult and scarce.

 After all, I think:

"Don't you think.." is really code for "Shouldn't you think..."

And (unless you know the person you are speaking to pretty well) "Don't you think people..." is really code for I'm not going to do the work of getting to know you and there will be some people who are not going to like this and probably drop out of this group.

Don't you think?

How fine is the line between commodification and community?

When you work for a big ole church or organization with lots of resources, all of a sudden you have great tools to make engagement and connection so efficient and frictionless.

You come to realize that people can be involved in your cause without spending much time or trouble at it.

You start to feeling like McDonald's kind of.

You work extra hard to have signage, sign ups, and customer service.

And then you realize no matter how good at that you can be, you're never as good as a memory or somebody else who is actually is good at it.

You also realize that the real problem is that your members or your supporters or your tribe is trying to spend as little time with your organization as possible.  Because that's how you are going about it.

You become commodified.

There is only so much time and energy in a day, so you have to figure out how to spend it wisely.

How do you create space for people to spend not less time with you, but more time with you?

And attention?

Who are the people who really enjoy the experiences you are having with them in service to your mission?

What if we spent more time with them and less time worried about making the purpose less painful?

What's holding us back isn't a lack of time and attention.

I'm convinced it's some sort of fear that once we got to that point, the people we invited in would be disappointed.

We gotta stop that.