Sermon April 3, 2004

“Moral Choices”

This has been a week filled with death. First we had the death of Terri Schaivo, the forty-one year old brain-damaged woman in Florida. Now yesterday, we had the death of Pope John Paul II, the third longest reigning pope in history. There may have been no greater contrast than between these two deaths.

The first, a young woman, struck down in her earlier years, having barely made a mark upon the world. She died surrounded by people who fought for years to prevent her death and she died surrounded by bitter acrimony and vicious accusation. Even now two separate services are planned because those who loved her are still at war with one another. In the end, we may never know whether or not she died as she wanted to.

The second death, an old man who lived a full life, who touched the hearts of millions. He died surrounded by people who loved and admired him and much of the world will gather together today in Rome, in churches across the globe, and in front of their televisions to celebrate his life, to weep over his passing. According to the Vatican, he died the way he wanted.

Perhaps the only thing that joins these to figures together is the controversy they inspired; Terri Schaivo by her death, and John Paul by his life.

Many people had great difficulty with the Pope’s stand on various issues. Certainly his opposition to the ordination of women is one. But most of the disagreement people had with him were over issues of life. They disagreed with his positions on contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. And those who agreed with his positions on euthanasia and abortion (almost no one agrees with his position on birth control) disagreed with his positions on capital punishment and preemptive war.

But there was, at least a certain consistency in the stand he took on these issues. He was dedicated to life and human dignity. And he believed in the sacredness of life, whether it was life in the womb, or the life he himself experienced in his last days; life full of limitations and frustration and pain.

And we can understand his positions when we look at his own history. He lost his mother at age nine. His brother died when he was twelve. His father died when he was twenty. He grew up in a town with about six thousand Poles and about two thousand Jews. And as a young man he saw the Nazis take many of his former schoolmates to concentration camps where they were murdered. He witnessed first hand the slaughter of the Second World War, and knew of the mass murders committed by the Stalinists. Is it any wonder that he reacted against all this, called for a culture of life?

And he didn’t call for a culture of life the way politicians here call for it. He didn’t defend the unborn while ignoring children who are hungry and homeless. He didn’t pass laws to keep Terri Schaivo alive while approving of the execution of children and the mentally disabled, laws that have only recently been overturned by the Supreme Court.

For the Pope a culture of life demanded that the strong care for the weak; that human dignity and the worth of every individual be protected; that compassion, not profit, be the determining factor in our economic decisions.

For John Paul II, a culture of life didn’t mean allowing the poor to slip further into poverty while the rich go from being wealthy to being obscenely wealthy. It didn’t mean having an economic system where millions are added to the poverty roles, while the number of millionaires and billionaires in our society increases exponentially.

Every commentator on TV talks about the Pope’s opposition to communism, but few mention his critique of the inhumanity of capitalism and his call for a new economic system driven by justice.

And you may not have agreed with his stand against contraception, but at least he was consistent in believing that life should always be given the chance to be life, that nothing should limit it. And while we see contraception as a benign, sensible and responsible practice; he saw the International Monetary Fund impose birth control programs on third world countries because it’s easier to tell the poor to not have children than to deal with the economic injustice that drove them into poverty in the first place.

And you may not have agreed with his stand against euthanasia, but don’t forget that he was someone who witnessed the Nazis murder the mentally disabled in order to promote the purity of their race; he was someone who saw the Nazis decide that certain lives were not worth continuing. At least the Pope was consistent when he insisted that even a diminished life is sacred.

Still, the positions that John Paul II took underscore the difficulty inherent in all moral decisions. And our disagreement with them underscores a weakness in how humans tend to arrive at moral decisions.

The basic problem is that we tend to focus on the act itself, as if an action can possess moral qualities. The truth is, for the most part, actions are morally neutral. The morality of a particular act is usually determined by the motivation of the actor.

For instance, is it immoral to steal a loaf of bread if your children are hungry? Most of us would say no. But when one of the young men I mentored robbed a convenience store at gunpoint a few years ago, so he would have money to party, he committed an immoral act. It may not be the act of stealing that is immoral, it may be the motivation.

Is it immoral to use contraception? The Pope would say yes, because contraception prevents life from being realized, because it violates the nature of the sexual act, which he believed was designed to create life. But we might say that it is irresponsible to have eight children in today’s world. That in light of the problems of overpopulation and the strain put on the ecosystem by the ever increasing demands of more and more humans, contraception is the only moral choice we can make.

But what if concern for the environment isn’t our motive? What if we decide to not have children because if we did, we couldn’t afford that new BMW or our annual two week ski vacation in Vail, Colorado? Would that be a moral choice? Is refusing to have children so our life style won’t be effected a moral choice? Or is it just selfish?

The Pope would say that children are not only a blessing, they are the gift we give to the world. In fact, he would say they are the gift we are supposed to give to the world and that we fail in our duty to humanity when we fail to have children.

I sometimes wonder whether my decision to not remarry and have more children was selfish. On the one hand, I’ve done the diaper thing, thank you very much. And I’ve spent half an hour getting my daughter bundled up and in the car so I can drive five minutes to the store and get a quart of milk. Then I’ve spent another half an hour unbundling her when we got home. Forgive me if I don’t want to do that again.

But I wonder sometimes if that’s just not selfishness on my part. After all, I’m a good father, in my own mind, anyway. Maybe I’m supposed to bring more children into the world. Maybe I was supposed to bless the world with more sons and daughters who would do great things. Or at least good things. And maybe I missed part of the reason I’m here when I declined to remarry and have more kids.

But I’m not sure a rule that requires people to remarry after three years of mourning would help. Perhaps the best I can do is to examine my own heart and try to be aware of what motivates my decisions. When I do that I realize that part of what motivates me is that I still love my wife. That to find someone new would mean that I’m over her, and I never want to be over her.

I don’t think it’s wrong to continue to love someone that way, even years after they have died. But maybe it is wrong, maybe it’s a denial of life, a stubborn refusal to go on. I have been known to be stubborn.

But when I look in my heart I also feel that there are other things I’m supposed to do now; that the time in my life when I was supposed to be married is over, that I’ve reached a different stage in my life, with other tasks to accomplish.

Among the Hindus it is understood that there are several stages in life. Young people pursue pleasure, and that’s okay. That’s what they are supposed to do. As they grow older, they turn their attention to family and business. But when those tasks are behind them, they seek to grow spiritually. Maybe I just got to the third stage a little early.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe I am just selfish. That’s the problem with looking into your own heart. We are capable of such self-deception. But the alternative to examining your own heart and taking a chance on being wrong, is to settle for a bunch of rules that focus on our actions, not our motives.

And rules that focus on actions can be just as wrong as self-examination. While it may be immoral to force poor nations to institute rigid population control so we can avoid addressing economic injustice, it may be just as immoral to tell some poor person that they can’t use birth control when they are too poor to feed the children they already have.

And there is a moral difference between waiting a few years after marriage to have children because you want to build your own relationship and life together, and deciding not to have children because they can be such a bother. To not recognize that difference, to focus attention on the nature a particular act, and not the motive behind it is the great failing of most ethical systems.

And to base any ethical system on analyzing the nature of a particular act is to fail to see that the same action can sometimes be right and other times be wrong. The Terri Schaivo case is a good example.

Was the Michael Schaivo right to insist Terri be allowed to die? Was this a proper moral decision? On some levels we would have to say yes. After extensive hearings, the courts decided that Michael was right when he said that Terri would not have wanted to live that way. We can’t know what his exact testimony was, or judge it for ourselves, but court after court agreed that she did say she didn’t want to live this way. Further, the law is clear. As her husband Michael had the right to remove the feeding tube and let her die. Common law and two hundred years of constitutional law agreed that his rights took precedence over the rights of Terri’s parents.

But what makes Michael Schaivo’s decision morally right or wrong lies on a different plane. Did he stick to his decision out of a moral conviction that this was what Terri wanted, or was he just stubbornly reacting to the animosity her parents expressed toward him? Was he acting out of love for her, or out of spite against her parents? Only he can know that.

And although he was still legally her husband, and legally entitled to make this decision, was he still morally her husband? After all, he has been living with another woman for ten years and has two children by her. It is certainly possible that he still loved and cared for Terri as a husband, while needing companionship and seeking a new life. But it’s also possible that in his heart, he really wasn’t her husband any longer; and that he should have relinquished his right to make this decision for her. Did he continue to insist upon his legal right to make the decision to end Terri’s life in anger against her parents or because he still felt like her husband and felt bound by his husbandly duty to fulfill her wishes? Only he can know that.

It is just as hard to decide whether Terri’s parents acted morally when they sought to keep her alive. Did they really feel that she was responsive and wanted to live? Or were they just unable to give her up; unable to face the reality that she was gone or that she would prefer death to being with them in her condition? Only they can know that.

And the truth is, neither Terri Schaivo’s husband or her parents may be able to know what was in their hearts. Sometimes it’s hard to know, sometimes it’s hard to face your own self. And while the world was busy proclaiming which side of this controversy was making the correct moral choice and which side wasn’t; the fact is that both sides may have been making a good moral choice, and both sides could have been making an immoral choice and we will never know.

That’s why it’s easier to have rules about what is right and what is wrong. And that’s why some people want rules about what is right and what is wrong. It’s easier and we don’t have examine our own hearts.

The funny thing about morals is, we can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons and turn moral choices into immoral ones.

For a number of years I administrated a social service program in Passaic County in New Jersey. It was obvious from the beginning that there were two groups of people on the staff. Some were there because they cared about people. They acted out of genuine concern and I would say were acting morally.

But there were also some on my staff who were there because helping others made them feel important, it filled a need in their lives. The clients resented their condescension and their need to control the clients’ lives. They were competent enough, but it was obvious to everyone, that they were focused on meeting some need of their own; and that our clients were a just a means to reaching that end.

Now we all have needs. We need to feel like we are somebody, like we belong somewhere, like we have a purpose. Most of these needs are met by our family; by growing up and living in a supportive surrounding where we are loved, respected, and can feel good about ourselves. But sometimes families fall short and sometimes life shakes our sense of self-worth. The danger comes when filling those needs becomes so important that others become nothing more than a means to that end, when they become objects to be used. And in the end the outwardly moral act of helping others, becomes immoral.

The truth is, we can give money to charity to help the poor or to make ourselves feel good. We can run for president of the church board because we want to be of service to others or because we need personal affirmation. And we can love someone because we want to meet their needs, or we can love them because they meet our needs.

And while some things are always wrong, and some things are always right; the moral value of most of our actions is decided not by what we do, but by why we do it, by what is in our heart.

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