The Sophistry

A new friend of mine, who specializes in religion and politics, got into a discussion recently over lunch.  The question is to what extent a Christian’s religious beliefs ought to control his conduct in the secular world, especially as it pertains to work.

The example used is close to my day-job: Should a Christian marketer refuse to use the Beijing Olympics as a venue to market his product to the masses?

Her argument was that he absolutely should, and is in fact under moral compulsion as a Christian to do so.  Since China is a repressive community nation that is currently in the process of brutally cracking down on Tibetans, she reasons that it is un-Christian of a marketer to take advantage of the Beijing Olympics to promote his company’s products.  It is, in her view, supporting evil.

My take on it was a bit more… nuanced?  tortured?  Whatever.  But here it is.

I believe that the Christian marketer may refuse to “support evil” if it conflicts with his conscience, but if it does not, then there is no moral compulsion to refuse.   In fact, I would love to go work for Phillip Morris marketing Marlboros, and I consider myself a Christian.

How exactly does this work?

Well, my reasoning is that we live in the Real World, even as we hope for a different one.  Our thrownness is complete; we are each one of us in-der-Welt-Sein.  To reject promoting a product at Beijing Olympics, or refuse working for Phillip Morris as a result of Christian belief is, in my view, a rather selective application of the moral rule that one should not support evil.

Merely living in the world itself is supporting evil, because one cannot live in the world without becoming involved in, and supporting both actively and passively, all of the infrastructure and systems that make evil possible.  For example, banking: if you keep your money in a bank account, then your money is part of the global capital markets that may make loans to Phillip Morris, or to weapons manufacturers, or increase the M1 money supply such that drug dealers in Miami have more customers.  The minute you buy something to eat, you have made financial contributions not just to the store where you bought your sandwich, but to the farming cooperative, to Archer-Daniels Midland who made the corn starch, to the plastics manufacturer who made the wrap for the sandwich, to labor unions whose workers get paid by ADM and others, etc. etc. etc.

Not to mention payment of taxes, which Jesus himself discussed, that may be used to buy guns and tanks and nuclear weapons.

If Christians are forbidden from “supporting evil”, then we are essentially forbidden from living in this world.

I see no real qualitative difference between being the Director of Marketing coordinating a campaign for Phillip Morris, thereby “supporting evil”, and being a depositor at Citibank that loans money to Phillip Morris in order to expand cigarette production.  I only see degrees of separation and degrees of “guilt” if you will.  Therefore, an attempt to impose a moral standard that Christians-qua-Christians must follow is both invalid and impractical.

Of course, the trap here is that my standard can very well mean having no standards.  It is logically possible to jump from that to, “Well, in that case, I oughta continue my job as an armed robber” or “Seeing as how my job is to torture dissidents, and I’m thrown into this world, I might as well get with it.”

My take on that dilemma is a bit of a dodge: appeal to conscience.

Christ promised us that he would send the Holy Spirit as a counselor.  Granted, the Gospel of John is a wee bit on the ole mystical side, but even so, I know I haven’t actually communicated with a ghost or such since becoming Christian.  I do know, however, that I have a conscience.  I choose to equate my conscience as “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  (John 14:26)

If something asked of me actually bothers my conscience, then I will refuse.  Torturing dissidents would bother me.  Armed robbery would bother my conscience.  Cheating on my taxes, as much as I hate to pay them, would bother my conscience — and I’m no fan of government.  I don’t do them.

Thing is, none of these things are a particularly onerous burden.  That I choose not to cheat on my taxes is not something I trouble myself about as an externally imposed moral compulsion by Christianity.  Rather, it is an internally embraced self-affirmation that also, I believe, affirms the moral teachings of Christianity.

I believe this to be at the heart of what I believe is Christian politics: the freedom from external compulsion, even from Christianity itself.  I believe this is 180-degrees from what Christian politics is today, so concerned with other people’s behavior and morality that it forgets the whole concept of salvation through grace.  This is a theme we may need to explore more later.

The wholesale rejection of the ontic Welt is impossible.  Selective enforcement of some moral code or another is just that: selective enforcement.  It is, therefore, arbitrary.  Rather than trying to increase morality, its arbitrary, unjust, selective enforcement itself creates an evil in the world.

This, I think, is the SoCon dilemma.  How to promote social conservatism, socially conservative Christian values, without becoming arbitrary, judgmental, evil people?

I think I have a suggestion, but that will have to wait till next time.

-TS