In her groundbreaking book, In a Different Voice, Carol
Gilligan asserts that there is a difference in how boys and girls come to moral
choice. Boys, much informed by games in their play, look for the rules which will
govern their interactions with others. Girls, she asserts, will look for the
relationships. Boys will generally correct a situation by finding the right rule
and reacting to it. Girls will look to the essential relationships and change
play to preserve those relationships. Her work, while controversial, proved
groundbreaking because it took seriously how gender and gender formation play
into moral choice. Her observations can be reduced to a notion that when
looking at a situation, men will tend to ask of themselves what is the "right" answer.
They will ask themselves the why, what, when questions. Women, on the other
hand, will tend to solve an ethical dilemma without trying to hurt anyone. I
think it is important to see these as tendencies rather than hard rules. We are
always more complex than our generalizations allow.
So much of scripture centers on moral choice. Ezekiel today is
concerned with who pays the price for poor moral choice. Is it paid by the
current generation involved? Is it paid by our children? Are we paying for our parents and grandparents? What happens when good
people go wrong and morally wrong people go right? Is there favoritism by your
birth or must you earn your own moral stripes? Ezekiel actually advances the
moral high road. He understands God to hold us accountable for our own choices
while holding a core hope for us. If we go wrong we can repent and be held in
forgiveness and mercy. Our lives can grow deep again, find God again. We are not governed by an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth. We are held in a relationship which nurtures and forgives. Has God
changed or has humankind's understanding of God shifted?
Jesus is asked by a young lawyer in Luke's Gospel today,
"Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Luke 10:25
Jesus responds, "What is written in the law? What do you
read there?" 27 The Lawyer answers, "You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
And Jesus says to him, "You have given the right answer;
do this, and you will live."
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who
is my neighbor?" Luke 10:26-29
The issue for this young man was how to tighten the rule. How
to make it clear and manageable. In this neighbor category, who is in and who is
out? I do not think he is ill willed, but he is looking for the rule. What he
gets instead is relationship, which means to reflect God's relationship to us.
Thus he receives a challenge to be more open, more creative, more related. I
cannot say he is being asked to be more feminine because just like boys, girls rule
people outside their play. "In" groups and "out" groups exist for both
genders.
The story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus now tells has so many
nuanced points. We do not know to which national group the beaten man belongs.
The priest and the Levite might well be ritually clean and going to Jerusalem to
do their religious duty; by touching blood and having
to repeat their extended ritual they would be encumbered, thus delaying their duty on behalf of the
Temple. Which is the higher good?
The one giving the aid is outside of the accepted group. The
young lawyer would most likely have expected little of a Samaritan since Jews
viewed them as holding a distorted faith in God, as inferior. Assuming the beaten man is a
Jew, the Samaritan has out performed by much. Not only does he show care, he will return
to restore the inn keeper's loss. So who is the neighbor?
He said, "The one who showed him mercy."
Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." Luke
10:37
My seventh grade English teacher once told a story of the
Great Depression. I don't remember why. Her father was a college professor in
the South. When the Depression hit and his income shrank, he had to tell their
long term cook and maid he needed to let her go. You must understand that she
was woven into their lives, in a "less than" kind of way. Southern folk lore usually overlooks this point. She was under paid as
was the Southern custom. I guess her to be single and living either with them or
humbly. When told there was no money to pay her, she took the professor to a
rug which she pulled back to reveal her savings. "I reckon we are OK for now,"
she said.
The challenge of the story is that our rules often don't work . We
never know who will be the Good Samaritan. We don't know if it will be us. We
don't know if it will be the "other." We only know that it is a sure pathway to the
heart of God.
Go and do likewise.
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