Where Does Morality Come From?

During the early part of the fall I read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Formerly of the University of Virginia, now at NYU, Haidt is a moral psychologist specializing in the ways in which we develop our moral intuitions. In this work, Haidt is asking the nearly impossible--for a bit of mutual understanding in the midst of the culture wars; for Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, and Dennis Kucinich to, if not smoke the peace pipe, at least put down the weapons. There are many different aspects of the book I want to jump into, and, with an eye to my prior success in blogging through multiple topics in a single book, I hope to write about a few in the coming weeks.

One of Haidt's central points, and the one he begins the book with, is that humans by nature desire to be righteous. We are not only "intrinsically moral" but also "intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental" (xix). We do not merely want to be right; we judge everyone who might feel differently. These righteous minds of ours make it possible for us to exist in large cooperative groups but also demand that those same groups be marked with "moralistic strife" (xx). In fact, some degree of conflict is what allows societies to flourish.

Haidt's first chapter addresses the question posed in this post title: where does morality come from? Haidt's central claim here is the claim that dominates Part 1 of the book: intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. There are two traditional explanations for morality: nativist or empiricist. A nativist believes morality to be inscribed in our nature, whether by God or by evolution (Christians and Darwin are in agreement here). The empiricist position is that we are born more or less as a blank slate and we learn from our culture and upbringing what is right and what is wrong. 

While Haidt was receiving his education in the field, a third option had emerged and immediately dominated: rationalism, which says that kids "figure out morality for themselves" (6). It is neither innate, nor learned directly from adults, but "self-constructed, as kids play with other kids" (7). We learn principles of fairness by playing games, and we reason to these conclusions in a utilitarian, greater-good mode of rationality. Haidt points out that liberals were quite taken with the idea of children as "moral philosophers trying to work out coherent ethical systems for themselves" (9). Indeed, most proponents of this moral development schema actively argued that "parents and other authorities were obstacles to moral development" (10). Further studies seemed to show that children intuited that rules about clothing, food, and many other things were merely social conventions, which can be changed or modified, while rules that prevented harm of others were moral rules. Thus, morality outside of principles of harm were all relegated to mere social convention, something perhaps valuable but ultimately mutable. 

Haidt felt the instinct to challenge this (liberal) conviction. For him it seemed "too cerebral" and lacking the emotion most of us feel about moral issues. When another child steals a toy from my son, he doesn't respond, "Dear sir, you have violated our social convention concerning property rights and a greater moral issue of harm to my welfare. Do consider returning the stick I am pretending is a sword forthwith." Haidt's research led him to tribes around the globe and over time he developed the conclusion that Western views of morality were almost entirely unique in the world.

Many of the differences in morality between the West and other cultures can be distilled to the intense individualism of the West in contradistinction to the sociocentrism, wherein the group or the tribe comes first, of much of the rest of the world. The liberal theories of western psychologists make sense in a western framework but would be unrecognizable to vast swathes of other cultures. In an individualist culture, anything that assaults the freedom of the individual can be questioned. In a sociocentric culture, anything that assaults the harmony and functionality of the group must be challenged.

As part of his doctoral research, Haidt organized a study to challenge the western perception of moral development. He wanted to pit "gut feelings about important cultural norms against reasoning about harmlessness, and then see which force was stronger" (22). One of the biggest surprises in Haidt's research was the number of people who tried to create victims in a clearly victimless violation. One of the taboo stories he had given was about eating a dead dog:

A family's dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner. Nobody saw them do this.

If harmfulness is the deciding factor in moral decisions, then this scenario should not alert moral alarms for people. But people feel a natural disgust toward dog-eating and tried to explain their revulsion in terms of harm (i.e. many people said the family would be harmed by getting sick from eating the meat). Haidt discerned that these justifications were simply "post hoc fabrications." People knew right away that something was wrong, but after the fact tried to come up with a rational explanation for why it was wrong. They reasoned from their gut and then counted on their brains for justification.

The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (qtd. in Haidt 29). This is a controversial position and I have been in more than one good-natured argument on the subject in the past six months. We want to believe we are rational creatures, driven by our minds to discover truth and make moral decisions reasonably. But the evidence is pointing in the other direction. As Haidt claims, "moral reasoning [is] often the servant of moral emotions" (29). 

Rather than coming from our minds, morality seems to come from our gut.

It Is Well With My Soul

One of the blessings of my job teaching at a Christian school--and one entirely unique in my prior work experience--is the chance to work to glorify Christ as part of my work. This past Monday at our English department staff meeting our department head played the hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" to get the meeting kicked off. There is something about that song. It stayed with my all day; I have been singing it in the shower all week.

Many of you know the backstory. Horatio Spafford, the hymn-writer, and how he came to write the song. Spafford was heavily invested in Chicago real estate and was nearly bankrupted by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Distraught, he scheduled a family vacation to Europe to relieve the stress on his family. Delayed by business, he sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him. On their Atlantic crossing, the ship carrying his wife and daughter was struck by another ship and most of the passengers, including Spafford's four daughters, were killed. Spafford's wife, Anna, lived and upon arriving in England telegrammed Spafford the haunting words, "Saved alone." 

Spafford left the United States to be with his wife and England and on the voyage across the ocean he penned the song "It Is Well With My Soul." The courage and faith required to write something like that in the face of such tragedy is something I cannot even imagine. 

The third verse of the song is my favorite and the reason the song has been playing on auto loop in my head this week:

My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul

The older I get the more aware I am of my own sin. I do not mean that I told a white lie to my wife last week or that I drank too much while in New York for a friend's wedding or that I swore while watching the Royals lose the World Series. I mean that deep down in my bones I am a sinner. That profound evil and depravity rule my nature. This awareness can easily lead to guilt and often has. But the faith that Christ has taken all of my sin and nailed it to the cross, that the record of debt that could be used to condemn me has been set aside, pulls me out of that despair.

In Knowledge of the Holy A.W. Tozer writes:

“The mercy of God is infinite too, and the man who has felt the grinding pain of inward guilt knows that this is more than academic.  ‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’ Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind. However sin may abound, it still has its limits, for it is the product of finite minds and hearts; but God’s ‘much more’ introduces us to infinitude. Against our deep creature-sickness stands God’s infinite ability to cure.”

What Tozer is driving at here, and what Spafford assures us in his song, is that our sin is weak and empty in the face of what Christ has done. The love and grace of God to us is infinite--boundless--while our own sin and failure and evil is finite--contained. We can only do so much that is wrong, our depravity can only go so far. But the mercy of Christ is contained by nothing, is inexhaustible. Where my sin abounds, his grace abounds far more.

That is why we can say that it is well with our souls.

A Soldier of the Great War

I am currently reading through Mark Helprin's novel A Soldier of the Great War, an epic take on the life of Alessandro Giuliani, the son of a wealthy Roman lawyer who becomes a soldier and then a professor of aesthetics. Beyond that, I am not too sure what happens. I am on page 300 of over 800 so there is still some work to do. 

The book is my sanity read. Teaching can be so all-encompassing that I have to work hard to maintain time for other reading projects. Generally speaking, my brain is also taxed at the end of the day to the point that a theological tome sounds daunting. Therefore, the novel. I also love being swept up in a story, not reading for scholarly ends or to determine What This Means About the World, but simply to lose myself in the story and let the prose wash over me.

Here is an excerpt from the book, a conversation Alessandro has with an unnamed fellow soldier  Helprin calls the Guitarist while awaiting an attack from the Austrians in a trench. They are talking about the prospect of the afterlife, a matter on which Alessandro is dubious:

The Guitarist thought. "You mean, if there's something on the other side of the fence?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. All logic says no, but my wife just had a baby boy--I've never seen him. Where did he come from? Space? It isn't logical at all, so who cares about logic."
"It takes a lot of balls to risk the hope, doesn't it."
"It does. I have the feeling that I am sure to be punished for the presumption, but I've already had the bad luck to have been a musician and a soldier, so maybe I'll get a break. Music," the Guitarist continued, with affection, "is the one thing that tells me time and time again that God exists and that He'll take care. Why do you think they have it in churches?"
"I know why they have it in churches," Alessandro replied.
"Music isn't rational," the Guitarist said. "It isn't true. What is it? Why do mechanical variations in rhythm and tone speak the language of the heart? How can a simple song be so beautiful? Why does it steel my resolution to believe--even if I can hardly make a living."
"And being a soldier?"
"The only halfway decent thing about this war, Alessandro, is that it teaches you the relation between risk and hope." 
"You've learned to dare, and you dare to believe that someday you're going to float like a cloud."
"If it weren't for music," the Guitarist answered, "I would think that love is mortal. If I weren't a soldier, I might not have learned to stand against all odds." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's all very fine, but the truth is I just don't want to be killed before I see my son" (283).

The Guitarist died when Alessandro's position was overrun by the Austrians at the end of the summer.

Mark Driscoll Steps Down

The Christian corner of the internet has no doubt been buzzing at news of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll's resignation from Mars Hill, the church he founded and which grew to encompass large parts of the Seattle area and spawned a church-planting movement that today is doing fantastic work. I say "no doubt" because I refuse to read anything about this situation.

I am sad about this, and I imagine others are using the opportunity to gloat or feel vindicated or otherwise coat themselves in smug self-righteousness, and I just don't want to read their thoughts. 

I am sad because Driscoll is something of a hero of mine. He was the man who almost singlehandedly introduced me to the Reformed faith, if only by introducing me to the work of others who claim that proud tradition. I remember well the first time I heard one of his sermons. I was living in New Orleans in that city's post-Katrina malaise, and a friend at my house was watching a video of a Driscoll sermon. I was enthralled. This guy had, for want of a better word, balls, a quality generally lacking in many pastors. He was bold and brash, but seemed to really love Jesus and want to make him known. It was immensely attractive to a 21 year-old kid turned off by the effeminacy so prevalent in much of the church. I was hooked. Returning to Colorado, I had a 2 hour round-trip commute every day and I filled a good chunk of the listening time with Driscoll sermons on my trusty iPod (that thing still works!). We were in Seattle a few years ago for a backpacking trip and Clara and I attended a Mars Hill service at their flagship location in Ballard. The church wasn't really my cup of tea, but it was great to get to hear Driscoll live. 

I have fallen out with Driscoll in recent years. Some of his alpha male bravado wore on me and I didn't appreciate the book he and his wife wrote on marriage (though not because Driscoll cheated to get the book turned into a bestseller). And I am not writing here to defend him necessarily, or even to say that he shouldn't have stepped down. Who in the world am I to make that judgment? He did and said some detestable things and in this culture where people love nothing more than to be offended, that type of personality is always going to have issues.

But I will say in his defense, that he has never backed down from his own sin or made light of his shortcomings. He has always been forthright in asking for repentance. That is an admirable quality. 

Also in his defense I will say that God, scripturally and anecdotally speaking, seems to love to use brash, arrogant men whose hearts are softened by the gospel of Jesus. It is rare indeed that a pusillanimous people-pleaser comes to lead a revival. Those guys make excellent critics, though.

I am not saying this to suggest that we sweep everything unseemly a successful pastor does under the rug. The problems with that approach are manifold, and well-illustrated by a take-your-pick glance at recent church scandals. I am saying that I don't think God is done with Mark Driscoll. I am praying for him now, that God would take those great gifts he has given the man and continue to refine his character. That he would surround himself not with the sensitivity crowd, but with people full of grace and truth that want to see him be used and God be glorified and not strike a point for their pet cause. That as the gospel grows in Driscoll's heart he becomes the type of man he always showed signs he could one day be. I do also pray that there would be healing where there is hurt he has caused, genuine healing, and true repentance from Driscoll, but that his critics who were not directly involved in any of these events have the humility to recognize their own sin and pray for their brother.

After the Praying, I'm Still a Bastard

In my junior classes we just wrapped up a unit on faith poetry. We surveyed a broad range of poems, ranging from atheist screeds against belief to faithful endorsements of God's power and beauty.

My favorite (new) poem from the unit was "Unholy Sonnet: After the Praying" by Mark Jarman. I will reproduce it below and then explain what I loved about the poem:

After the praying, after the hymn-singing,
After the sermon's trenchant commentary
On the world's ills, which make ours secondary,
After the communion, after the hang wringing,
And after peace descends upon us, bringing
Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary
And how the light swords through it, and how, scary
In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging
There is, as doctors say about some pain,
Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers,
Your listening and your rejoicing, your small part
In this communal stab at coming clean,
There is one stubborn remnant of your cares
Intact. There is still murder in your heart.

Ah! That last line. But to begin at the beginning, it took me awhile to move past a bit of a superficial interpretation of lines 2-3. I had read it fairly straightforwardly as the "world's ills" being stuff like poverty and pain and war and how our own ills are "secondary" in the face of the overwhelming suffering in so much of the world. However, Jarman isn't making a surface-level comment here, but indicting the preaching in both conservative and liberal churches for being too outward in their denunciation of evil. In both places, the world's ills are emphasized to the point that our own fallenness, our own depravity, somehow becomes secondary.

For conservative churches the world's ills are gay marriage or cohabitation or wealth redistribution, so as long as you aren't living with your gay partner and voting Democrat you are doing well. For liberal churches the world's ills are poverty and conformity and capitalism, so as long as you are against poverty in the abstract, heterodox in your religious beliefs, and can go on a good rant about the evils of major corporations you also are doing well.

This is a caricature, of course, and painting with too broad of a brush, but I think the point holds. The churches that appeal to me, the ones that will last when the liberal or conservative topic du jour has lost its intensity are the ones that speak to me not about how bad stuff is out there and how messed up other people can be--be they communists or capitalists, homosexuals or homophobes--but about the murder in my own heart. In other words, I need to be reminded regularly how big of a bastard I am. I can always readily nod along to condemnations of evil in others. Who can't? Part of being a really big bastard is that it is easy to see how other people are bastards. What I need when I sit before the word of God is to hear how bad I am and how good Christ is to me. Despite my bastardness. 

I love how Jarman forces us to consider the question of the efficacy of church: does church work? There is violence in this poem. The light swords through the sanctuary. The dust motes are scary in their sheer number and cling to the air, which for those paying attention is impossible to do. We make a stab at coming clean. And for our efforts we leave and feel better, but there is that unsettling small voice when we leave reminding us that this did not do the trick. What ruins us is not on the outside, but on the inside. Despite the prayers and the sermon and singing we are still murderers.  

My students seemed to view this as entirely cynical and hopeless. I let them think that for awhile. I try not to be too directive in guiding their interpretations. After their frustration mounted, I told them that this is the gospel. This is who we are. Murderers. Adulterers. Thieves. Greedy. Covetous. Blasphemous. There will always be murder in our hearts. No communal stab, no sermon, no song will cleanse us. In Christ alone our hope is found.

The Word of God and the word of God

As most of you know, this is my first year teaching high school and thus the past two months have been chaotic. We are settling in to a new house, and both Clara and I to new jobs. Roots seem to be sinking, some traction digging in.

I do not have many preliminary reflections on teaching. Most of the time I still feel as if I am trying to keep my head above water, but the schedule seems to be coalescing and I am hopeful to have more time to read, write, and reflect about other matters tangential to my job teaching. My hopes might be misplaced; it certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I did want to make one comment about teaching, though, one thing that has surprised me: I enjoy teaching grammar. Grammar instruction is a huge component of our curriculum, especially at the freshman level and one of my favorite parts of the week is teaching that week's grammar lesson. I have never been anti-grammar, whatever that might mean, but I have respectfully ignored spliced commas, dangling modifiers, unclear pronouns, and their brethren in bad grammar. In fact, while teaching writing at the collegiate level I was explicitly instructed to ignore grammar errors. I could mark them on the page, but errors could not be punished in lowering the student's grade.

Not so here. At my school we aim to produce students who write right, right? There is a precision to grammar that I love--the aim to say precisely what we mean in the most rhetorically effective manner. I found this John Piper quote where he discusses the importance of grammar to a Christian. Read this:

"An evangelical believes that God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common; they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and the prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture."  

Piper is driving at the fact that since God has revealed himself to us through Christ and through the language of Scripture we ignore both to our peril. In the incarnation Christ becomes present to us in our humanity, humbling himself in our form, and God likewise condescends to speak to us in words that are intelligible to us, words meant for our instruction and delight. When we see the syntax and grammar of Scripture we are seeing a piece of the mind of God. Words and how we use them are important if for no other reason than our God has deigned to speak to us in words. The power of words is blessed by the power of God.

Therefore, grammar instruction is not pedantry, precision in language is not becoming a grammar nazi. Caring for words reflects our care for the word-giver. And that is sufficient to make me excited to teach the subject to kids who couldn't care less.

The Guns of August, 2

When war broke out the various nations that would play a part in the conflict began mobilizing their forces. Germany's entire war plan counted on a quick strike. In order to ensure victory, they had to seize victory in the west before Russia could mobilize and strike in the east. Russian mobilization was expected to take longer than six weeks. Thus, Germany's plan called for victory over France in 40 days.

A few obstacles to this goal arose. First, was Belgium. Belgium was a newer nation, small in size and not able to fight against one of the continental powers. Thus it was protected by the other powers, including England. Strategically, Belgium was hugely important to Germany. If they occupied Belgium they could strike directly south to France. The German war plan called for the rightmost soldier to brush the channel with his sleeve. In order for that to happen, Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty would have to be violated. German leaders were not concerned about the military threat posed by the Belgians. If anything they expected them to roll over. The timetable for swinging its right flank through the country neglected to account for any Belgian resistance at all. The problem with invading Belgium, from the German perspective, was that once Belgian sovereignty was violated England would be treaty-bound to enter the war. The British military, especially the British Navy, was of concern to the Germans.

When German boots crossed into Belgium they did not find a compliant people or a feckless king. The Belgians resisted, decimating the German army in an early series of battles. Victory by the Belgians was never a possibility, but their fierce resistance slowed down the German advance. Moreover, it emboldened the world to speak out against Germany's aggression. News of German retaliations against Belgian citizens was broadcasted to the world, and the world turned against Germany. England, goaded by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, declared in favor of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to occupy the left flank of the French forces. Though poorly led and mostly retreating the first month of the war, the French rallied the English to their cause when von Kluck exposed his right flank and the BEF was a key part of the battle of the Marne. 

Another obstacle to the German timetable was Russia. The Russian behemoth mobilized much quicker than was expected. Spurred on by the French, the Russians sent armies into the field that were grievously unequipped for war with Germany but even 1,000,000 poorly-equipped soldiers is something that has to be dealt with. Germany dispatched two key battalions to the eastern front. Russian losses were staggering, but they accomplished the goal of making Germany fight a two-front war. 

In a sense, then, Russia and Belgium are responsible for saving Europe. England might not have entered the war had Belgian neutrality not been violated and popular opinion so enamored of the conduct of the Belgians. If that hadn't happened the Germans would have enveloped France and taken Paris by the middle of September. If the Russians hadn't sacrificed thousands of men in an ill-fated early attack on Germany, the two German battalions called away might have given the Germans all they needed to overrun both the French and the British forces in the west. All of this three years before the U.S. entered the conflict. 

The Battle of the Marne was waged over a week in early September of 1914. It falls out of the purview of Tuchman's book, which keyed in only on the first month of the conflict. In that week, though, 500,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest-per-day battle of the conflict. While it was ultimately an Allied victory and the Germans would never get as close to Paris as they had been in August of 1914, the victory also set the stage for four years of trench warfare and the madness and killing and senselessness of that war. With victories like that, who needs defeats?