There have been a lot of recent stories surrounding the launch of the PlayStation 3 and the various attempts people have made to get one before anybody else does. Today I came across a story about a dentist who hired 60 temp workers to stand in line at various places to ensure that he would get a PS3 (actually, 15 PS3s is what he was aiming for). What interests me is the comment in the story by somebody who was in line themselves trying to get a PS3:
"I only want one, but I know there's other people that are going to want them, too," said Williams, who has a 7-year-old son. "I just don't think it's right that you are paying people to stand in line for you. You're using your money and authority to pay people for what you want, and that's wrong."My question is on her last statement, the one where she says, "You're using your money and authority to pay people for what you want, and that's wrong."
I'd like to know why, and where does such a moral judgment come from, because make no mistake about it, that is exactly what such a statement is, a moral judgment. I get the feeling a lot of people would agree with her, though, which I find troublesome given the environment we live in now. Strangely enough, we now live in a society that doesn't care at all if you live together before marriage and get repeatedly divorced, but there is a big problem if you "use your money and authority to pay people for what you want." Why? Because we all know, "that's wrong."As I've stated in various other ways, people who are atheists can think this way, that is fine. They can invent moral systems out of whole cloth because they aren't trying to found their claims on anything but themselves. Christians have a harder time doing this, in my opinion, or at least they should, because the Bible should be our source for a moral compass and the Bible just doesn't have an opinion on whether or not you pay other people to stand in line for you to get a PS3. There are a lot of things like this. Take drinking a single glass of wine at home once a week as an example. The Bible clearly talks about drunkenness, but it does not address drinking in moderation. It is silent on this. I should point out here that I am a teetotaler. About 6 months ago I had a little sip of red wine at my in-laws house because I wanted to see what it tasted like. I didn't think it tasted very good. That is, literally, the only taste of any alcohol I have ever had. For me, however, it has less to do with a moral consideration than with the fact that I have never wanted alcohol and I figure that if I don't want it then why should I make myself want something which just isn't all that good for you? The way I see it, I'm a leg up on something that gives a lot of people a bunch of problems, which is a good thing. I don't need any extra temptations. When I was growing up, though, and this subject came up at home my parents would make the case that even buying alcohol to drink in moderation at home would fall under the rubric of an "appearance of evil" and violate 1 Thessalonians 5:22, which says (in the KJV), "Abstain from all appearance of evil" because the person at the checkout stand would judge that drinking was evil and therefore you would appear evil. I have to admit that at one time such reasoning made more sense to me than it does now because in the past 20 years the US has so warped its value system that if you tell somebody that you do not support homosexual marriage then there is an ever-increasing likelihood that they will judge you as evil (a "bigot" - which is one of the great evils to many Americans). Therefore the real problem, in my mind, with such an understanding is that it ties a Christian's concept of morality to that of their society and the society's concept may be completely anti-biblical (calling good, evil, and evil, good). I think a better idea is to reduce our set of moral judgments to what the Bible says is actually immoral. Things like whether or not you want to pay people to stand in line for a PS3 are exempted from this, as is drinking in moderation. How do we interpret 1 Thessalonians 5:22, then? I think we have to apply practicality to this. I believe that we know what an "appearance of evil" really is and we can make that judgment call ourselves intelligently or we can get silly about it. However, I also believe that the other translations help here in that they almost all go along the lines of, "Avoid every form of evil" which ties the judgment of what is evil back to a Biblical understanding of what evil is, rather than linking it to society's definition (which changes constantly and which can very quickly become something that the Christian cannot follow without violating the Bible, which is unacceptable).I realize, after saying all of that, that there is still subjectivity in what we decide the Bible is teaching us from a morality perspective so reducing to the Bible is not something that is a simple choice. There are things that are obviously wrong in the Bible (adultery, murder, etc.) but there are areas that are harder to discern and then we have to make some judgment calls, but there are things that are simply not in there at all and I think we should purposefully abstain from making a moral judgment on such issues because otherwise we confuse our moral compass with the subjective inputs of society and I for one don't need anything confusing me about something as complex as morals already are.
