1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: 1 PETER 2:9
Questions in This Section:
Why do Christians think they know how other people should live?
Should Christians impose their ethics upon non–Christians?
How can we as Christians ascertain when God’s Word was applicable to a certain culture and therefore may not be applicable to us today?
How do we uphold Christian ethics without being judgmental?
Do you feel more pressure as a public figure to live at a higher level of Christian ethics?
If things are going to get worse and worse until our Lord’s coming, why should we concern ourselves with social activism and political involvement to make things better?
What is the biblical basis for human dignity?
What is our responsibility toward the poor?
Could you give an example of how Christ’s teaching about turning the other cheek applies to today’s life situations?
In terms of the arts, is there a difference between secular and Christian?
Should a Christian attorney defend someone he knows is guilty?
Rahab the harlot, the Hebrew midwives, and others throughout the Old Testament supposedly lied to protect others, and God, in turn, blessed them. Does this mean that Christians today may have occasion to lie with God’s blessing?
The Bible calls drunkenness a sin. What are the dangers of our culture calling drunkenness a disease?
According to the Bible, is there anything wrong with using hypnosis to help people stop smoking or to overcome some other addiction or behavior pattern?
Why is the use of drugs such as crack escalating in our society?
Is it wrong for scientists to engage in genetic engineering?
Should Christians support AIDS research?
Why do Christians think they know how other people should live?
We hear the expression “holier than thou” quite often in our society, and people hate to have religion shoved down their throats. People are willing to let me practice my religion, but they don’t want me hounding them to change their values. Lurking behind all this is society’s tendency toward a relativistic view of ethics; the overriding idea is that every person has the right to do what is right in his or her own mind.
But if God is and if he is the Lord of the human race, the Creator of all of us, and if he holds us accountable to him, then there is an objective standard of what is right in his sight. God reveals very clearly that one of the great symptoms of our human fallenness is the idea that people have the right to do what is right in their own minds. The whole concept of the Judeo–Christian religion is that ultimate righteousness is declared, not by my personal preferences or by yours, but by God and his supreme character. If I as an individual come to an understanding of what God requires of people, then that means I am required to do certain things. I may also understand that he’s requiring certain things of me as an individual and of people as members of community.
>We consider Isaiah in the temple when he had a vision of the holiness of God. He disintegrated before that appearance of God’s majesty and cried out, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips.” And then he went on to say, “And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah recognized that his sinfulness was not unique. The fact that he recognized that other people were also guilty of the same sins did not mean that he was entertaining a judgmental spirit toward those other people. He was simply recognizing the truth of the matter: God was sovereign and holy in relation not only to him but to everybody else as well. In practical terms I could say that, for instance, God not only prohibits me from adultery but he also prohibits you from adultery.
The fact that God’s law extends beyond ourselves is a point that has been recognized by professors and teachers of ethics quite apart from the Christian faith. Immanuel Kant studied this question thoroughly and talked about the appearance of what he called the categorical imperative, the sense of duty that is present in every human being. Every human being has some idea of what is right and wrong. He made a statement very similar to Jesus’: “So live that the ethical decisions that you make would be good if they were elevated to the level of a universal norm.” He understood that no man is an island.
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Should Christians impose their ethics upon non–Christians?
This question comes up every time a moral issue is debated in the legislature or some other government arena. Do Christians have the right to impose their ethics upon those who don’t share the same religious perspective? Well, there are different ways to impose ethical standards upon people. When we talk about ethical authority, ultimately I would say that the only being in the universe having the intrinsic right to impose an obligation on any other being is God himself. Only God is the Lord of the human conscience. We would also have to qualify that and say that God has at the same time delegated certain authorities who have the right to impose ethical obligations on other people. He has delegated the right to parents to impose obligations upon their children. He has also established, created, and ordained governments to impose certain standards of law upon their constituents.
When we live in a free society where the democratic process is functioning, the majority of people in the society are given the right to vote. That vote involves an exercise of one’s will that ultimately will become the law of the land if I am voting with the majority. One of the things that very much frightens me is that I hear very few Christians and non–Christians who seem to be aware of the weighty responsibility that is involved in casting a vote for something. When I am voting for a law, for example, what I am asking is that if that law is passed, then obviously that law must be enforced. I am voting that all of the power that is vested in the government of the United States of America—or in the state of Florida, or in the city of Orlando, wherever we are—be marshalled to enforce that law. Anytime I do that, I am imposing some kind of restraint on other people’s freedom. That is a very weighty responsibility.
For Christians who have pet projects unique to Christian enterprises, to use the law and law enforcement to get their way in a public arena may be an exercise in tyranny. Of course, we have been victims of the same kind of tyranny when other people have become the majority and have used laws that are unjust to discriminate against us or other people. I think that Christians ought to be keenly protective of the First Amendment not only for ourselves but for everybody else out there. So I would be very hesitant before imposing uniquely Christian principles upon non–Christians.
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How can we as Christians ascertain when God’s Word was applicable only to a certain culture and therefore may not be applicable to us today?
The real question here is, Is everything that is set forth in Scripture to be applied to all people of all time and of all cultures? I don’t know any biblical scholar who would argue that everything set forth in Scripture applies to all people at all times. Since Jesus sent out the seventy and he told them not to wear shoes, does that mean that evangelists today would be disobedient unless they preached in their bare feet? Obviously that is an example of something practiced in the first–century culture that has no real application in our culture today.
When we come to the matter of understanding and applying Scripture, we have two problems. First, there is understanding the historical context in which the Scripture was first given. That means we have to go back and try to get into the skins and into the minds and languages of the first–century people who wrote down the Scriptures. We have to study the ancient languages—Greek and Hebrew—so that we can, as best as we know how, reconstruct the original meaning and intent of the Word of God.
The second difficulty is that we live in the twentieth century, and words that we use every day are conditioned and shaped by how they are used in our here and now. There’s a sense in which I’m tethered to the twentieth century, yet the Bible speaks to me from the first century and before. How do I bridge that gap?
I also think we need to study church history so that we can see those principles and precepts that the church has understood as applying across the centuries and speaking to Christians of all ages. It helps to have a historical perspective. You’ve heard the cliché that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. There is much to be learned through a serious study of the history of the world and the history of the Christian faith, and how other generations and other societies have understood the Word of God and its application to their life situation. By doing that, we’ll readily see elements of scriptural instruction that the church of all ages has understood not to be limited to the immediate hearers of the biblical message but to have principle application down through the ages.
We certainly don’t want to relativize or historicize an eternal truth of God. My rule of thumb: We are to study to try to discern a difference between principle and custom. But if after having studied we can’t discern, I would rather treat something that may be a first–century custom as an eternal principle than risk being guilty of taking an eternal principle of God and treating it as a first–century custom.
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How do we uphold Christian ethics without being judgmental?
One of the principles of Christian ethics is that we are not to manifest a judgmental spirit. If we are judgmental in our attitudes and in our spirits, we’ve already violated the Christian ethic. The Christian ethic has something to say about how we respond to other people’s sins. We are not to whitewash other people’s sins. We are called to demonstrate discernment, to be able to recognize the difference between good and evil.
I’ve often said that every nonbeliever in America knows one verse that’s in the Bible: “Judge not lest ye be judged,” and they appeal to that by saying that nobody ever has the right to say that anything they do is wrong. For a judge in a courtroom to declare an accused person guilty of a crime is not judgmental. For a Christian to recognize sinful behavior in another Christian or non–Christian as sinful is not judgmental.
To be judgmental in the sense in which it’s prohibited in Scripture is to manifest a censorious attitude, a pharisaic attitude of condemning people out of hand and consigning them to utter worthlessness because of their sin without any spirit of patience, forbearance, kindness, or mercy.
That’s why Jesus warns us about noticing the speck in our brother’s eye when we have a log in our own eye. The person who is running around examining specks is a person who has this judgmental spirit that Jesus found absolutely abhorrent. That doesn’t mean that we are to be loose on sin or to call good evil or evil good. Judgmental describes an attitude.
When a woman was brought to Jesus because she had been caught in the act of adultery, how did he deal with her? He didn’t say that she wasn’t guilty; he didn’t explain away her sin, nor did he endorse or encourage her sin. He said to her, “Go and sin no more.” He asked, “Where are those who condemn you?” They had all departed out of embarrassment moments before, and Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go in peace.” He dealt with that woman. Though he rebuked, admonished, and corrected her, he did it gently and with a concern to heal her and not to destroy her. It is said of Jesus in the New Testament that a bruised reed he would not break. A judgmental spirit breaks people who are bruised. There is to be none of that present in the church or among the people of God.
Do you feel more pressure as a public figure to live at a higher level of Christian ethics?
Yes, I do. I realize objectively that every Christian is called to the same standard of righteousness. God doesn’t grade on a curve; we all have the [p. 405] same law to which we are called to conform. At the same time, we recognize that the New Testament gives specific warnings to those who are in positions of leadership in the ministry or in teaching, as I am. I tremble at the New Testament warning: “Let not many become teachers, for with the teaching comes a greater judgment.” That greater judgment is not due to our having a higher law but rather due to the advanced level of knowledge and understanding we are expected to have about theology (including the laws of God) and the Christian way of life.
To whom much is given, much is required. The more we understand and are aware of what God requires, the greater our culpability is when we don’t maintain it.
Also, Jesus warns that it would be better for a person to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the abyss than to lead any of the little ones astray. God takes very seriously the responsibility a teacher has to be accurate and disciplined in whatever he teaches. If I teach falsehood, for example, and use the position I have as a teacher to influence and persuade people, that means trouble for me on the Day of Judgment.
Even though there is no double standard ultimately, certainly there is culturally. We’re all acutely aware of it. Whenever a minister is involved in some kind of sin, it becomes a public scandal. It brings a blemish to the whole community of God because of the office that the minister represents.
It was scandalous in the Old Testament when the priests were engaged in corrupt practices at the temple. God dealt at times very harshly with the priests who had violated their office and that sacred trust they held. It’s a frightening thing to think about.
I can remember when I moved to Boston twenty–some years ago. The first night we arrived, our clothes had not yet arrived. The only thing I had to wear out to dinner was one of those clerical collars and the black vest. I didn’t even have a shirt to wear underneath it. I know that when I was driving my car down Route 128 in Boston and somebody cut in front of me and I had the impulse to blow the horn, I hesitated because of that which clearly revealed that I was a clergyman. So, yes, there is that pressure. That’s undeniable.
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Given the great apostasy in the world, many Christians consider these to be the last days. If things are going to get worse and worse until our Lord’s coming, why should we concern ourselves with social activism and political involvement to make things better?
This question assumes several things. It assumes that we are in that period that the Bible designates as the great apostasy. I’m not sure that we are in that period, though we may well be. In the last two hundred years, for example, we’ve seen a serious decline in the world influence of Christianity, particularly its influence on culture in the Western world. We’ve seen things take place that were unheard of in the past. The death of God was proclaimed not by secular philosophers or by atheists but by self-confessed Christian theologians. So we have seen serious manifestations of departure from classical Christian orthodoxy, which leads some people to conclude that we are in an age of great apostasy.
On the other hand, it could be said that we are in an age of unprecedented renewal. Those who are more sanguine about reading the signs of the times would have a more optimistic view of the present state of affairs.
I don’t have an inside view of God’s timetable concerning the consummation of his kingdom. I’m hoping he will bring the kingdom to pass soon. It may very well be that we’re in the last hours of the last days. I certainly hold that as a very real possibility.
And if that is the case, how would that influence the agenda of the church? I’m of the opinion that even if we were in the last fifteen minutes of redemptive history and if we knew Jesus was coming in the next quarter hour, we still would have the mandate to do those things that he told us to do until he returns; that is, to be his witnesses, to manifest his kingship, to show and to illustrate what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like—and that includes giving food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, and clothes to the naked. The church’s agenda has been established by Jesus between the time of his departure and the time of his return. Regardless of how soon or how far away that return is, we are called to active involvement in the goals and the mandates of the kingdom.
Sometimes I become so discouraged by the opposition of the world structures to Christianity and the lack of influence we seem to have in the culture that I find myself falling back into a “snatching a few brands from the fire” mentality, just trying to reach an individual here and there and abandoning the larger tasks given us by Christ. I have to resist that, and I urge every Christian to resist that temptation.
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What is the biblical basis for human dignity?
As a Christian I do not believe that human beings have intrinsic dignity. I am totally committed to the idea that human beings have dignity, but the question is, Is it intrinsic or extrinsic?
Dignity, by biblical definition, is tied to the biblical concept of glory. God’s glory, his weightiness, his importance, his significance, is what the Bible uses to describe the fountainhead of all dignity. And only God has eternal value and intrinsic (that is, in and of himself) significance. I am a creature—I come from the dust. The dust isn’t all that significant, but I become significant when God scoops up that dust and molds it into a human being and breathes into it the breath of life and says, “This creature is made in my image.” God assigns eternal significance to temporal creatures. I don’t have anything in me that would demand that God treat me with eternal significance. I have eternal significance and eternal worth because God gives it to me. And not only does he give it to me but he gives it to every human being.
That’s why in the Bible the great commandment not only deals with our relationship with God but our relationships with human beings. “Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might, and with all your strength … and your neighbor as much as you love yourself,” because God has endowed every human creature with value.
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What is our responsibility toward the poor?
If you do a word study of poor as it appears in Scripture, you will find that four categories emerge.
The first group consists of people who are poor as a direct result of indolence; that is, these people are poor because they are irresponsible. They are lazy. They refuse to work. The response of God to that particular category of the poor is one of somewhat harsh judgment and admonition. “Consider the ant, thou sluggard.” Go watch the ant and learn how to live. Paul takes a strong view in the New Testament: “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). So the basic posture toward that group of people is one of admonition and a call to repentance.
Sometimes, however, people will oversimplify it and say that the only reason people are poor is because they are lazy. That’s just not true. There are a lot of people who are poor for reasons that have nothing to do with being sinful or lazy. So we come to the second group of the poor identified in Scripture, those who are poor as a direct result of calamity, disease, accident, and that sort of thing. Scripture tells us that it is the responsibility of the church and of Christian people to pour out their hearts in compassion and to give assistance to those who are suffering through no fault of their own, as a result of natural calamity.
The third group is comprised of those who are poor as a result of unfair exploitation or tyrannization by the powerful, those who are victims of corrupt governments or are the almost incidental casualties of war. In that situation, you see God thundering from heaven, calling for justice to be given to these people, and God pours out his indignation against those who would sell the poor for a pair of shoes and who would [p. 409] tyrannize them through illegitimate means. In that sense, we should be advocates of the poor and defenders of the poor.
The fourth and final group of the poor that we find in the Bible are those who are poor voluntarily; that is, they are poor for what the Bible calls “righteousness’ sake,” willingly sacrificing any worldly gain as a personal commitment on their part to devote their time to other matters. Those people are to receive our support and our approval.
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Could you give an example of how Christ’s teaching about turning the other cheek applies to today’s life situations?
There’s much confusion about what Jesus meant in the Sermon on the Mount when he said that when somebody strikes you on the right cheek, you are to turn the other cheek to him as well. Many people have taken that to mean that Christians are to be doormats if they become victims of a violent assault; if somebody punches you in the face, you’re supposed to turn your face around and get punched on the other side. What’s interesting in the expression is that Jesus specifically mentions the right side of the face. The vast majority of people in the world are right-handed, and for somebody to be smacked in the right side of the face, either you have to hit them from behind or you have to hit them with a left hook. If I hit you on your right cheek, the most normal way would be if I did it with the back of my right hand.
To the best of our knowledge of the Hebrew language, that expression is a Jewish idiom that describes an insult, similar to the way challenges to duels in the days of King Arthur were made by a backhand slap to the right cheek of your opponent. It’s not limited to simply a physical attack but rather has primary reference to someone’s insulting you.
The context in which Jesus speaks has to do with a debate with the Pharisees over their understanding of the Old Testament law, particularly that which we find in the Mosaic code that says the punishment for crimes was to be based on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We often hear that expression today as if this were an expression of a primitive, barbaric, and unusual punitive system in the Jewish nation. But I think if we look at it unemotionally, we will see that there’s never been a more equitable and just concept for punitive measures than a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye; it’s equal. But among the rabbis this statement had become an excuse, a justification, for a spirit of bitter vindictiveness and cruel and harsh treatment of those who had broken the law.
This “turn the other cheek” saying is given in the same context as the statement “If your enemy wants you to go one mile, go two. If he wants your coat, give him your cloak as well.” Jesus is saying that we should bend over backward to not be involved in a spirit of bitter vindictiveness. The rest of Jesus’ teaching indicates that it’s not wrong for someone to seek justice in the law courts. If a widow is defrauded of her inheritance, that doesn’t mean that she has to go out and give everything else she has to the one who stole it from her. But Jesus is talking about an ethic here that I believe calls for us to imitate the attitude of mercy and forbearance and patience that is found in God himself.
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In terms of the arts, is there a difference between secular and Christian?
I think there is, although that difference at times is exceedingly difficult to articulate and to pinpoint. Abstractly I would say the great difference between Christian art and non–Christian art would be in perspective.
Art is a means of communication; wherever there is art, some content is being communicated. By “art” I refer in a general sense to music, sculpture, painting, etc. Art can be categorized in terms of form and content, but all art forms communicate something.
There was a famous phrase in the sixties taken from the title of [p. 411] Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium Is the Message. That means that the form itself conveys a message, a nonverbal message, just as the content in a work of art does. In a song, there are not only the words but also a structure, a form of the music that is being played. There are certain kinds of music that are very orderly, say, a Bach cantata. The structure of Bach’s music follows a decisive pattern, and there’s no attempt to be chaotic. Some modern musicians have attempted to create chaos, although it’s an impossible task because you cannot intentionally be unintentional. You can’t intentionally create ultimate chaos. There is still a pattern to this pretended chaos. They’re trying to communicate through a very loose kind of form, whether it’s in painting or in music, a statement against harmony and order and rationality, all of which have theological implications. It’s part of the secular mood of despair that says there is no ultimate coherency.
In the world of the theater of the absurd, actors on stage utter nonsense words, implying that man has come to the place where even his language is meaningless. But even those nonsense syllables are a form of communication, and there is a message there, incoherent as it may seem.
At the other extreme, there’s the attitude that, for art to be Christian, it must include a Bible verse or depict people with halos over their heads. I am convinced that if we look in the Scriptures we’ll see that God is a God of beauty. He’s the ultimate foundation of beauty, and his character is beautiful. Part of the task of man is to mirror and reflect the character of God. That means we are called to produce art and that that art be excellent.
Should a Christian attorney defend someone he knows is guilty?
Part of this question is simple to answer. Just because an attorney knows that his client is guilty does not disqualify that person from all of the rights that the nation gives him to legal counsel and a fair trial. It is the [p. 412] responsibility of the attorney to give the best legal defense he can for a client even if the client is guilty. The client may even enter a guilty plea. It may be the task of the attorney to argue for mitigating circumstances or to try to demonstrate through historical precedent that these mitigating circumstances should be taken into account when sentencing comes up. There are many defenses that are still significant—and legitimate—for a person who is clearly guilty.
What if the man is pleading innocent and the attorney knows that he’s guilty? Can an attorney, in good conscience, support something he knows to be fraudulent? Knowing that a person has committed a crime or done certain things does not mean that we know in advance that that man would be judged guilty of a particular crime in a particular courtroom given all the circumstances of the trial. I would think that within the restraints of honesty and integrity, a lawyer could provide a legitimate defense for someone he knows to be guilty. A lawyer’s actions become questionable when he becomes an accomplice in attempting to defraud the bench and to fool the jury into believing something other than what he knows the reality to be.
We see this kind of dishonesty every day in divorce courts. I’ve seen it happen again and again: The man is guilty of adultery and wants to get out of the marriage, so he sues his wife on grounds of cruel and unusual treatment, or something like that. The attorney knows very well that the guilty party in the breakup of the marriage is the husband, not the wife. Yet he’ll continue to represent the husband and get everything he possibly can for his client. I have problems with that. In any profession—medical, legal, and theological—there are people of great conscience and also people who are not all that scrupulous. Their whole concern is with winning or losing the case, and they operate from a foundation of expediency and from the motivation of the best financial solution. At that point we make a mockery out of any quest for truth and justice.
»Rahab the harlot, the Hebrew midwives, and others throughout the Old Testament supposedly lied to protect others, and God, in turn, blessed them. Does this mean that Christians today may have occasion to lie with God’s blessing?
The short answer I would give to that is yes, there may be occasions when God–fearing people are called upon to lie in the sense of speaking something that is not the truth.
There are many Christian ethicists who believe that the prohibition against lying is absolute and that there is never any justification for the so-called white lie. Others point to Rahab and the Hebrew midwives as examples; their lies are reported and later on they’re included in the roll call of heroes. It doesn’t explicitly say that God blessed or sanctified them for lying, but it seems to imply that there’s not a word of rebuke for their blatant dishonesty in these situations.
There are other occasions in Scripture where we see people lying in ways that I think are clearly contrary to the Word of God. For example, some have tried to justify Rebekah’s involvement in the deception of her husband so that Jacob could receive the blessing instead of Esau. She was involved in this conspiracy to deceive her own husband, and some have tried to defend her by saying that if God had willed that the elder should serve the younger, then it was God’s plan for Jacob to receive the patriarchal blessing rather than Esau. All that Rebekah was doing was making sure the will of God came to pass. All that Judas was doing when he betrayed Jesus into the hands of his enemies was making sure the will of God came to pass—and God held him eminently responsible for his treachery. I’m sure that Rebekah, though she may have been blessed of God, was blessed in spite of her lying and not because of it. Some would place Rahab in the same category.
Over the centuries, in the Christian church, there has developed an ethic of truthfulness that is linked to justice. The Christian is always to give the truth and to speak the truth to whom the truth is due. The question now becomes, Is there such a case for the so-called just or justified lie? I would say so, and the situations falling most clearly into that category would involve war, murder, or criminal activities. If a murderer comes to your house and he wants to know if your children are upstairs in bed and you know that it’s his intent to murder them, it’s your moral obligation to lie to him, to deceive him as much as you possibly can to prevent those lives from being taken. I think that would also be true in cases of war. I don’t think a person is required to tell the enemy where his group is concealed any more than a quarterback in a football game is required to announce to the defense what the intended play is. He can use faking and deception in order to execute that play. That’s sort of a war game on the football field. Numerous Christians lied to the Nazis in order to protect Jews from capture and extermination. I think that in cases in which we know that lying will prevent such evil, it is legitimate.
»The Bible calls drunkenness a sin. What are the dangers of our culture calling drunkenness a disease?
Drunkenness has been referred to as a disease partly out of the motivation to be compassionate toward people who suffer under a very debilitating and dehumanizing problem. Those who have labored through the suffering involved are tired of condemnatory attitudes, and they say, “Hey, look, let’s quit screaming at these people and try to be a little bit more helpful and compassionate. Quit heaping all this blame on them as if they were just immoral people.”
There is also some evidence in the literature to indicate that certain kinds of alcoholism involve genetic chemical imbalances, and so in that physiological aspect there may be some basis for recognizing that alcoholism is not merely a moral weakness. But there are dangers in calling this problem a disease. God does call it a sin. He holds us accountable for our behavior with respect to the use of alcohol. He calls us to temperance, and he tells us that we’re simply not allowed to get into a pattern of drunkenness. God is saying that we do have a moral choice in the matter and that we can’t simply blame our environment or somebody else for this problem.
Even beyond that clear theological difficulty, I see a psychological concern. If I say to somebody, “You have a disease” or, “You are sick,” I may be motivated to say that to take them off the hook, to protect their self-esteem, which is a noble motivation. However, I may inadvertently be crushing their spirit because I’m saying, “There’s nothing you can do. You’re sick. It’s as if you caught the flu or you’ve got cancer. Some kind of foreign antibodies invaded your system. The only way that you’ll ever be cured is if somebody comes up with a wonder drug and cures you.” In other words, we render a person hopeless by telling him that he’s sick—unless at the same time we can offer a medicinal cure. I don’t know anybody who’s able to do that.
I think that the organization that has worked most effectively with this problem is Alcoholics Anonymous. They have that spirit of compassion and gentleness, but at the same time they hold each other accountable, and they encourage one another to work to get out of the situation.
According to the Bible, is there anything wrong with using hypnosis to help people stop smoking or to overcome some other addiction or behavior pattern?
I’m not exactly sure how to answer that question. We have seen the phenomenon of hypnosis being used in what I would call illegitimate ways as an attempt to penetrate areas of the occult. But I’m not sure we understand all of what hypnosis is or how it is or can be used.
To the degree that I understand it, hypnosis involves a kind of intense mental concentration whereby we can focus our consciousness on certain crucial ideas, feelings, or incidents. This could be useful in surgery; it is also used sometimes in therapy to help a person remember a traumatic event, for instance. I don’t see anything intrinsically or inherently wrong from a moral standpoint with the use of hypnosis in appropriate settings for a person who is struggling with an addiction or something of that sort. The therapist talks to the patient and puts him into a hypnotic state. There is nothing magical about that. The therapist continues the conversation with the patient, trying to communicate a focused message, for example, “You do not need to continue the use of this substance. It is harmful for you.” They repeat that over and over so that when the person returns to an awakened state of consciousness, that thought is imbedded in their mind and they will keep going back to it. It is almost like an intensified level of concentration to learn a lesson. Insofar as that’s all it involves, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
»Why is the use of drugs such as crack escalating in our society today?
I can remember when I was in high school being scandalized when one of my favorite movie actors was arrested in Hollywood for smoking a marijuana cigarette. Not that many years ago, that kind of behavior was frowned upon not only in the church but throughout the secular culture.
But now we have gone through an explosive level of upheaval in drug use and abuse. It is even affecting the role models that come from the world of sports, as we’re all sadly aware. The studies that have been done so far in child psychiatry indicate that in children between the ages of thirteen and nineteen years, the greatest single influence in the shaping of their self-image, their identity as people, is not their parents but the peer group to which they are striving to belong. So we have to say that once certain patterns of behavior become acceptable within a particular age group, we see a ripple effect whereby more young people are drawn into them.
One of the reasons for the escalation is the high visibility of drug use in the music culture. That’s one of the earliest places where the use of hard drugs became acceptable. Suddenly the patterns that were taboo in earlier generations had become upbeat, the “in” thing for certain subcultures, and had spread prolifically into other elements of society.
But there are much deeper reasons for this escalation of drug use. I think there is a philosophical crisis in our culture whereby we have lost the understanding of what it means to be human. What does it mean to be a person? Historically we saw ourselves as people created in the image of God. But the modern view of man is that we are a cosmic mistake, we’re grown-up germs, and we are insignificant. That’s an unbearable feeling, and any release from the pain—if only for a few moments or hours—is welcome relief from that pessimistic view.
»Is it wrong for scientists to engage in genetic engineering?
I feel hopelessly inadequate to answer some of the very perplexing issues that have arisen because of the explosion of modern technology. In the case of most ethical questions, theologians have had the benefit of two thousand years of careful evaluation and analysis of the moral dilemmas involved, whereas questions of biomedical ethics for the most part have exploded onto the scene in the twentieth century. We’ve been caught with relatively little time to think through all of the ramifications.
An awful lot is contained in the term genetic engineering. Are we talking about the kind of experiments that were made infamous by Mengele during World War II, trying to carry out the unbelievably diabolical plans of Hitler to create a master race through the purification of genes? That kind of thing is clearly evil.
But genetic engineering also involves serious researchers doing everything in their power by examining the genetic code to see if there are ways in which serious illnesses, diseases, and distortions can be therapeutically treated through genetic means. Now, here you’re talking about science’s legitimate task of having dominion over the earth and exercising mercy and compassion toward the ill and finding cures for horrible deformities and diseases. We ought not to say that all genetic engineering is evil. Some of it, I think, has a legitimate use. Individual issues under the umbrella of genetic engineering need to be considered individually as to their moral integrity. And while the engineers, the specialists, and the researchers themselves have the most information by which to make judgments, theologians and philosophers must stay in touch and make their voices known. These issues fall outside the boundaries of mere technology and need to be examined and debated in the realms of religion and ethics.
»Should Christians support AIDS research?
I’m somewhat surprised at the frequency with which this question is being raised within the Christian community.
Of course Christians should support AIDS research. Why wouldn’t we support AIDS research? We’re committed to ministry to the sick and the alleviation of suffering. When we find someone sick, it’s not our responsibility to ask them why they’re sick. When we find someone hungry, it’s not our responsibility to ask them why they’re hungry. When we find someone homeless, it’s not our responsibility to ask them why they are homeless. Our responsibility is to clothe the naked, to minister to the sick, and to visit the prisoners. We don’t say that a prisoner in jail is there because he’s committed some great sin, and therefore we shouldn’t visit him. On the contrary, we’re commanded to visit people who are in prison in spite of the fact that they are there because they’ve done something wrong.
The fact that AIDS is a disease that generally has its roots in immoral types of sexual behavior is no reason for the church to act as God’s policeman and his executioner. We are to work always and everywhere for the alleviation of pain and suffering in this world. I might add that there are many, many people who have become victims of AIDS through no direct actions of their own. AIDS has been transmitted through blood transfusions. Children have contracted this dreadful disease through transfusions in hospitals or through dirty hypodermic needles. It’s been traced to transmissions through tattoos. We can’t just assume that AIDS is a badge of improper sexual conduct. I don’t see any compelling reason for the church to be against research of AIDS.
I’m really trying to say two things here. One is that even if the only people in the world who had AIDS were guilty of gross and heinous sin, that in and of itself would not preclude Christian involvement in seeking a cure and alleviation of suffering for them. That’s principle number one.
Principle number two is that, as a matter of fact, that’s not the case with people and AIDS. There’s really no reason I can think of that a Christian would or should be opposed to research. In fact, one of the great testimonies of the Christian church has been its place on the cutting edge when relief of suffering was concerned as in the cases of the hospital movement and the creation of orphanages. I think the AIDS situation is a marvelous opportunity for Christians to dedicate themselves to human service.
