Author's Note
Inspired by Situation Ethics by Joseph Fletcher.
Today, I wish to talk in part about loving those you don’t like, about love itself (but a particular kind of love), and most about situation ethics using some ideas and examples from Dr. Joseph Fletcher’s book by that name.
First, there are other reasons for doing things than ethical reasons. They may not be unethical but may have little to do with ethics. We may do things for the sake of beauty or in the name of faith (which may or may not be ethical). We may do things out of psychological motivations which we do not understand. We may strive for money. And so on.
We may also obey laws, for laws and rules we find necessary for ordering society and institutions, and the laws may be ethical or not.
But today I am concerned about how we decide what is right or wrong for us as individuals. What is my ethic?
Recently, I heard a professional man say something interesting about himself. He said that last year was the first year he could remember that he had been absolutely – that is absolutely – honest in filling out his income tax. He said he had always been almost entirely honest, except he had allowed for a few rationalizations in the gray areas. This time, however, he was completely honest, to the penny – not because he feared being caught cheating but because he had discovered he felt better that way. A lot better.
He then told me about other personal decisions he has made about how he was going to live.
This man made his decisions about right or wrong not so much based on laws or external rules – not based on commandments from the Bible – but based on what he knew was best for him and those around him – based on inner rules.
One can make decisions about behavior and live by them. This man’s motivation was personal, thought through on a personal basis but related to others and to society.
Dr. Fletcher attempts to take ethics a step farther to give ethics a grounding in love, something larger than the individual and more than personal. One is to make ethical decisions based on love, while any specific decision may vary according to the situation, since it depends upon the situation. What may be right in one circumstance may be wrong in another, but, in any case, love must decide.
He sets the mood of his book with an anecdote which might apply to a member of either political party. In this case, of course, it was one rather than the other.
He said: “A friend of mine arrived in St. Louis just as the presidential campaign was ending, and the cab driver, not being above the battle, volunteered his testimony”
“I and my father and grandfather before me, and their fathers, have always been straight-ticket Republicans.”
“Ah,” said my friend who is himself a Republican, “I take it that means you will vote for Senator So-And-So.”
“No,” said the driver, “there are times when a man has to push his principles aside and do the right thing.”
That St. Louis cabbie is the hero of Fletcher’s book about Situation Ethics. In other words, in making any decision to do the right thing one must consider what will be best for all concerned under the circumstances and not just decide automatically on the basis of what he has always done in the past.
There are at least three approaches to ethics. One is antinomian – against the law. It is a form of libertinism – just do what you please without regard to the consequences. It leads to random, erratic, unpredictable decisions.
Another approach to ethics is the legalistic approach. It deserves much more consideration. Out of it came the Ten Commandments and all the laws pertaining to behavior regarded as right or wrong.
The criticism of this approach is of the extremes to which legalism goes. For example, and this is an extreme one cited by Fletcher, a few years ago, an English court, sticking solidly with a law that says a marriage must be validated or consummated by sexual union, made a consistent decision in a case of a young wife who had conceived a son by means of artificial insemination from her husband. The husband was suffering, at beginning of their marriage, from temporary erectile failure.
Subsequently, the husband’s problem was corrected and the marriage consummated, but the conception of the child occurred through artificial insemination. The court, however, being faithful to the law, ruled that the son was illegitimate, “the mother an adulteress or fornicator, the wife husbandless when her child was born, the father without a son and heir, and the child an outlaw.” All of this, even though the child of this marriage was of the father’s and mother’s own flesh.
Obviously, this is an extreme case. Probably, most often, a law would serve the interests of justice and rightness for the members of a society at a given time. The point Fletcher makes, however, is that it depends upon the circumstances.
The trouble with Fletcher’s view and that of other situationists is that one may tend to rationalize whatever he is doing and say, “In my case, this is right because my case is different.”
No doubt some pretty shoddy behavior, and sometimes downright criminal behavior, is justified with such rationalizations. Those who fear situation ethics see this human tendency to “fool ourselves” as too serious to allow people to decide for themselves what is right or wrong, even though they use “love” as the criterion.
Well, situation ethics does represent a difficult approach. It is open to rationalization. But, though it is difficult, it may be the better way. Where we may fool ourselves, perhaps it is worth that risk. We are called upon to make our inner rules in an honest way. This way means freedom based in love, and that, it seems to me, is very close to what we hold up as our Unitarian way in this free faith.
Let’s go on with this then.
I recall years ago while studying several courses of Bible in graduate school, one of my professors said: “The simple gospel is not so simple as some simple people think.”
Fletcher feels that way about ethics. Once we have cut loose from simple black and white “pre-tailored” rules, “nothing is as complex and difficult as ethics.”
He reminds us of Shaw’s Major Barbara where Undershaft speaks to his son, Stephen, who has just said, “I know the difference between right and wrong.”
There was young Stephen, unemployed, superficial, self-righteous Stephen saying, “I know the difference between right and wrong.”
To which his father replied, “You don’t say so! What! No capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists; the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you’re a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!”
Stephen might have accepted simple legalisms as his basis for right and wrong, but he was too naïve to know right and wrong in depth. Being good requires knowledge, judgment, even calculations. It is not enough to be innocent.
Now, situational ethics makes love the arbiter of right and wrong in any specific case (and the case must be specific, not general or abstract). Immediately, though, we are confronted with a fuzzy word. What in the world is love? Fletcher gives some examples of the way the word love is used. Let me give some additional ones:
It is easy to see how open to rationalization an ethic based on love could be. But it does not have to be. It is a particular kind of love that is described here. It is the “love thy neighbor” kind of love. It is what is called “agape” in the New Testament.
The love ethic is not based on erotic or romantic love. Nor is it based on philic or friendship love. It is not based on affection or feelings, pity or sympathy. Rather, it is what would be called, in the New Testament tradition, Christian Love, or, from the Old Testament moving into the New Testament, “the decision to love one’s neighbor – to love one’s enemy – to love the one who persecutes.” It is the love that is useful to the most people in any situation.
The love which is the basis of decision-making in situation ethics might better be described as active concern for the welfare of all concerned.
Thus, there are some things such love is not.
It is not sentimental. This love or active concern does not see it as a kindness to prop up a person who is only hurt more by not learning how to help himself.
This love is not based on emotions or sympathy or affection, but on choice for a greater good.
Romantic love and friendship love are based on feelings, but the kind of love put forth here is based on results, choice, hard-headed acceptance of what is best for those concerned. So we have to get rid of the idea that love is emotional if we are to use this approach.
We cannot stop feelings, not easily anyway. We have them. They come whether we like it or not. We like someone, or we do not. We hate, or we feel warm affection. We do not give orders to our feelings. They come upon us or sweep through us. They are hard to control.
We do not stop feelings. It is what we do about our feelings that count.
But to love as agape – to love as active concern –we can give orders. We can decide to act according to its wisdom. We can decide to do it – to be actively concerned even about our enemies and, thus, to love them.
One can decide to love those he does not like.
Another professional man I know, a Unitarian minister and my mentor years ago, repeated an old idea when he said of congregations, “You don’t have to like them all, but you have to love them.”
That idea applies to anyone who decides to take situation ethics seriously. You do not have to – indeed you cannot – like everybody, but you can be a people person. You can love everybody in the sense of acting out of concern for the greater welfare of all concerned in any particular situation.
We can love the unlovable, meaning the unlikeable.
Besides, many who think they are unlovable, who believe they are unworthy or not worth anything are underrating themselves. In fact, sometimes the more one can admit his unlovableness and begin to act out of humility, the more lovable he becomes.
But the point here is that this love is not a feeling thing. It is a thing of the will. One can decide, in ethically motivated love, to care about those even who admit no faults, those who are petty and arrogant, those who are phony, those who claim to know-it-all, those who are opportunists. They can be loved. And they need it!
It is easy to love those we like. It is not so easy to love those one does not like. But it can be done.
Think of children for a moment. Probably our children need our love most when they are most disagreeable, most unlovable, when they act up or are in trouble, when they have problems that aggravate us. It is just at such times that they need our loving care most.
We have two only children in my family – an 11 year old daughter and an 18 month old son.
When our son was very new – I guess it was the first visit to the pediatrician – the doctor gave us various instructions and a prescription. On the prescription, he had written a note and ended it with an exclamation point.
Give him “copius amounts of TLC!”
TENDER LOVING CARE.
Well, the idea is to give loving care even when the child is acting in an unloving way.
In situation ethics, the idea is the same: act from loving purposes toward all. Does this mean that we let someone abuse us? If someone socks us on the right jaw, are we to turn the other jaw and let him hit it too? The situationist would say probably not – though it does depend on the situation.
The pacifist might say one should always permit the abuse – or only oppose it non-violently. The situationist would say it depends upon the circumstances. If violence serves more good for more people in a situation, then one must choose violence.
For example, the mentally ill person who is about to harm himself or someone else may have to be violently restrained. This is an act of love for him and others. The defense of innocent life is more loving even if, in some circumstances, it means killing. This is more loving than sitting back and watching the murder of innocent people.
But it still depends upon the circumstances.
If love were being treated here as an emotion, its opposite might be thought of as hate, but the opposite of love as active concern is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference or total unconcern.
This ethic leads one to give with no thought of return, yet, and it may seem paradoxical, it also requires self-esteem, self-love for the sake of others. This is not a love in which one demands having his own way. Rather, it is a love in which one has enough self-regard to be able to forget self.
After all, if you know someone who thinks very little of himself and seems to be asking for someone to punish him all the time, that person’s neighbors would be a lot better off if he did not do unto them as he would be done unto.
This is old hat by now, a kind of truism that if we love ourselves (that is have a healthy and realistic regard for our own worth) we can then best love and have an active healthy realistic regard for others.
Furthermore, under this ethic one does not always sacrifice himself for others. It depends upon the situation. We only let concern for others override concern for ourselves or our families if more good is served that way.
If self-concern now and the withholding of a loving act from someone else in the present will eventuate in serving that person better in the future, or if more people will be better through serving oneself, one should serve himself.
Naturally, this is a place where we must watch our motivations, but it becomes obvious in specific cases. For example, the leader of a group whose skill is needed on some perilous expedition to keep the group alive must keep himself alive rather than save one endangered person if that attempt would mean the loss of his own life and thus the loss of all the lives.
It depends upon the situation.
Two more things about this kind of agapeic love.
It can be angry. Sometimes one acts in anger for a loving purpose.
And this kind of love makes judgments. It doesn’t give drugs to the drug addict unless that be a part of the cure. It doesn’t give sex, food, alcohol, anything merely on the basis of pity or sentiment.
Any parent knows this. We do not give the child everything he asks for. It would be irresponsible and unloving to do so.
Only if an act meets the requirements as a genuine active concern for the welfare of the other does one do that act.
One problem we have is that we must act in the present. We have to act in love in the here and now. We cannot be positive about the outcome even though we use our most disciplined judgment. We act, in love, responsibly, for that is the best we can do.
Remember, a year ago, the lady who wanted to have an abortion – I believe she was from Phoenix – because she had been taking thalidomide? She had to go to Sweden to get the abortion because our laws are not loving ones.
She made the right decision because the fetus was hopelessly deformed. But she had to decide that without knowing for sure. Situation ethics would say she made the right decision, the loving decision, and it would have been so even if the unborn child had been normal. She acted out of a loving purpose on the best knowledge available for the greater good of those involved.
Fletcher tells of families moving through Cumberland Gap westward in the 18th century. Many lost their lives in Indian warfare.
One woman saw that her small baby, sick and crying, was betraying her and her three other children. Still she clung to the child and all were massacred.
Another woman, in similar circumstances, seeing how her crying baby was endangering another trail party, strangled her baby with her own hands to keep silence so that all those remaining could reach the fort.
Which woman made the right decision?
A doctor is rushing to help many people hurt in a bus accident and sees a single driver smash into a wall. The doctor continues on the bus accident without stopping. Was that an ethical act?
As Fletcher puts it, “Nothing justifies an act except a loving purpose.” One must choose sometimes between two or more evils. Then, in each particular case, the right thing to do will depend upon what is most loving in that case.
Again, what is right in one case may be wrong in another.
Lending money to a man who needs it for his hungry family may be right. But lending money to a man who needs money for a hungry family if the man is a compulsive gambler may not be right at all.
It depends on the situation.
Here is an ethic that is relevant regardless of theology, regardless of statements of belief about God or not-God. The key is the human ability to act with good will.
It is an ethic based on the dignity of persons on fairness, a decision not to exploit feelings.
So, if we were to take it from here, to take it seriously, to take it off to work or, daily, wherever we go, we would do this:
We would make our decisions in particular concrete cases and make them pragmatically.
We would decide out of active and loving concern.
We would think hard about the good toward which any particular action was directed, realizing that, in reaching that goal, it then becomes a means toward later goals.
We would consider the means carefully and full of care! How do we get to the good which has a loving purpose! We would be very careful about our motives. Avoid rationalization and see that it is an honest goal we seek.
And, with calculating intelligence, with a giving love as its foundation, we would consider the consequences of any particular action. What will achieving a specific end mean? Who will be served and for what reason?
This is a difficult way but a realistic one.
It might mean that any act, if it would not hurt oneself or others, and if it did not exploit others, would be all right. These are big “ifs.” Loving concern for another’s welfare might make an act all right, but mere liking or loving the other person with our feelings and emotions does not make any act all right.
I have heard young people say, “If we love each other (meaning if we have real affection for each other) it’s all right.” Not so, says situation ethics. It has nothing to do with love as affection.
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From Situation Ethics by Dr. Joseph Fletcher
A macabre tale is told of the god, Moloch. He came down to earth to the premier of one of the new nations in Africa, with an offer: “I will provide you with a modern highway network if you will sacrifice 45,000 people to me every year.”
The premier, aghast, cried, “No! Not a single, solitary soul!”
“Phooie,” retorted Moloch, “that is what I get in the U.S.A. annually.”
Actuaries know in advance how many men will be killed for every 50 mile of new roads built or every 10 floors of new buildings. By reducing the speed light on our highways to 15 miles an hour we could save more than four-fifths of the lives that are lost in accidents. We don’t do it, though. Why?
It is sentimental, simplistic, and romantically backward to “feel” that love cannot or ought not calculate; that it is either demeaned or diluted by having a memory, making future references, counting people, trying to figure the angles, finding its mix of alternatives and trying to win the game of optimum choice. Very much to the contrary, love grows up, is matured and actualized, when it permits a reasonable fire to warm its work but seeks more and more light, less and less heat. The heat it can leave to romance.
Love’s business is not to play favorites or find friends or to “fall” for some one-and-only. It plays the field, universalizes its concern, has a social interest, is no respecter of persons. If we could ever claim that disinterested love is anything real at all, then it cannot mean that in such an ethic the lover is quite forgotten and only the loved remembered, i.e., that love is self-emptying. Disinterested love can only mean impartial love, inclusive love, indiscrimination love, love for Tom, Dick, and Harry.
This is possible, such a disinterested love, because, as we say, love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not.
Here ends the reading.
Let us pray.
© Robert Mabry Doss