During my freshman year as a student at the University of Minnesota, I moved out of campus in search of cheaper accommodation in the nearby South Minneapolis. Here I found a reasonably good efficiency apartment (one self-contained room) with a fair rent. And I also liked the place because there was a church fifty meters away in which I became a regular attendee.
But after sometime, I realised that no one would sit on the same bench as me even when the church was full. One day, a church elder told me to consider attending another church in North Minneapolis.
When I went to the North Minneapolis church, the following week, I found out that it was a Black congregation. In that moment, it struck me that I was not welcomed at the church I had considered my home church. There was nothing wrong in attending the North Minneapolis sanctuary other than the fact that it was far from where I lived.
It was incredulous that I walked past a church to get on a bus and then travel one hour to attend another church elsewhere because of my skin color. As I struggled to come to terms with what I considered as hypocrisy, I felt that my Christian institution was violating its own ethics. I therefore decided not to attend any church. This was partly because I did not want to accept that race was a basis for discrimination for people with common Christian values.
It is then that I started to ask myself the following question: what are the Christian ethics? Although there is no clear definition of Christian ethics, theologians agree that scripture reveals some of the ethical content. Most Christian ethicists think that by reason and natural law, people should differentiate good deeds from bad ones.
Others are of the opinion that scripture indeed has distinctive features for humanity’s moral and spiritual life. Love for humanity is widely accepted as one of the distinctive Christian teachings. Other norms include discipleship, stewardship to mercy, justice and forgiveness as mentioned variously in the Bible.
There are of course instances of clear rules like the ten commandments, “Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" and emphasized in the Old Testament ("A righteous man hateth lying..." Proverbs 13:5) to the New Testament ("Do not lie to one another...' Colossians 3:9-10).
There are also basic tenets or basic virtues, such as the “fruits of the spirit” as cited by St Paul (Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), some of the virtues taught more by stories than rules.”
Indeed, the story of the Good Samaritan reveals that love for others, even those that you don’t know, is supreme. Among the stories told by theologians on showing love to other, this story seems to stands out: A rabbi asked his students in class: when does one know when the night has ended and the day has begun?”
After listening to many incorrect answers, he interjected saying, “Students, one knows the night has ended and the day has begun when you can look at a face never before seen and recognize the stranger as a brother or sister. Until that moment, no matter how bright the day is, it is still night.”
In accordance with this theological explanation of Christian ethics, we seem to remain in spiritual darkness as Christians because we have failed to embrace strangers in their hour of need as brothers or sisters.
This however is not too distant from what Plato and the Stoics identified as the four cardinal virtues, that is, Prudence (self-discipline or understanding), Fortitude (strength of mind or endurance), Temperance (moderation or voluntary self-restraint) and Justice (fairness or righteousness).
Although much of the Western world still boasts of being “Christian,” its morality is in steep decline. In America for example, the recent election revealed the extent to which the morals of mid-western evangelicals had dropped. These Christians were firmly behind a candidate who many news outlets had concluded as habouring racist ideals. The candidate’s treatment of immigrants was a far cry from the cardinal principle of love.
While the 2019 Pew Research Center telephone survey in the US showed that 65 per cent of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, only 12 per cent answered the question.
On the other hand, “the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describes their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26 per cent, up from 17 per cent in 2009.” We can clearly see that the decline in Christian morals has its repercussions.
The moral ethics considered the cornerstone of Christianity have now become the causality of neglect. We all know that lying is wrong and it undermines our faith traditions. But many Christians nowadays even justify some of the lies.
If we are honest to ourselves and sees ourselves as Christians with ethical morals, there will be no inequalities that exist virtually in every nation.
Closer home, tribalism, just as race, is undermining Christian ethics. Many Christian organisations are embroiled in shameless fights at the expense of love, righteousness, honesty, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
The Christian faith is under intense pressure for change in proportions akin to the Reformation of the 16th century. It demands principled men and women of Martin Luther and John Calvin’s stature to steer this institution back onto the right course.
