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Taming the beast within

By Peter Sellick - posted Monday, 1 November 2010


Part of the problem is that our choosing is supposed to come out of a vacuum. Because we are individuals we cannot listen to the wisdom of others, we must make up our own mind, be the captain of our soul, the author of our lives. But how do we do this from a position of unattached freedom that denies all loyalties? This is truly where our lives are threatened by banality, because we only have desire to work on and our desire has not been trained. Indeed, our desires can be legion.

The other catchword that goes along with "choice" is "freedom". The idea is that we choose in freedom, free from coercion from anyone, whatsoever. This can only be true if the understanding of a human being is that of the atomistic self. Of course such a self does not exist outside of the group of people we call sociopaths. But why is this construction of the self the model for modern anthropology and ethics?

The freedom of the atomistic self is the freedom of the vacuum. Or rather it consists of ephemera, half formed desires, compulsions and general neuroses. The self is abstracted from the relationships that make it human. We forget that choice is exercised within extended relationships. That is one of the reasons that abortion is such an affront to our sensibilities, it is a choice isolated from the relations that the foetus already has, the uncles and aunties and cousins and siblings, let alone that of its father.

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Jesus says; "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." Children are significant because they receive. They do not have any pretensions about creating their lives. They do what their parents say, they trust their wisdom and they take life as it comes, as gift and not as their own creation. Adulthood threatens this simplicity of reception. Adam and Eve had to be adults in order to understand the temptation of the devil that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will bring them immortality. In fact it brought them alienation and human history began. It was then that they found that their sins were stronger than they were.

If we believe that the psalmist tells the truth, that our sins are stronger than we are, then we must rethink the basis of modern anthropology and the ethics that come from it. It has amused me that scientific atheist colleagues of mine are often more obsessed with ethics than I am. This indicates a pietism that holds ethical action very highly.

This cannot be the Christian position because we know that sin is inevitable and cannot be avoided. Every action we take has ethical implications. With the discovery of anthropogenic climate change even breathing is a crime against humanity. A pietism that seeks to behave in a sinless way would cripple all action. We would be surrounded by so much guilt that we would become immobile.

The Christian view is that we are all immersed in sin; that is the human reality. We also know that this is not a serious as it may seem, that God will blot out our sins and that we can live free from guilt. Sincere confession and a determination to do better next time opens a future for us.

In the absence of this understanding our community is being bound up with political correctness, the idea that everything can be improved to the infinite degree, that always someone is to blame and must pay the price. In the end public life becomes impossible and private life becomes a labyrinth of ethical decisions from the kind of jam we buy to how many lights we leave on at night.

It is ironic that in an age that compliments itself on its freedom and responsibility that this has led to a lack of freedom and life lived in a maze of ethical dilemmas. This all goes to show that the words of the psalmist are indeed true and that the only freedom that counts is the freedom we do not have to fight to defend but which falls into our lap by the grace of God.

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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