Percolating

Been trying (and thus far failing) to tie together a few threads on hospitality, sheep and goats, grace and works, gays and abortion, and the "boundaries of moral obligation."

That last phrase comes from my friend Dave Gushee's book on The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust. The term "righteous gentiles" refers to those who helped rescue Jews. The most important fact regarding the righteous gentiles is probably this: There were shamefully few of them.

Anyway, re-reading in that book led me to this passage, which is probably better than what I was trying to write anyway, so I'll leave you with this until that other post comes together:

Rescuer research demonstrates that no single moral paradigm accurately captures the conduct or motivations of all Righteous Gentiles. ... One implication of these findings is the need for tolerance in Christian ethics and the church of the different languages and paradigms used to describe the motives or characteristics of Christian action on behalf of others. A kaleidoscope of terms and paradigms is available to describe loving and just treatment of the neighbor. Different paths toward such a just love, and different terminology to describe each path, are appropriate for different historical and corporate contexts. Given the desperate importance of neighbor-love in a world full of suffering and needy neighbors, all paths that genuinely lead Christians in love's direction should be accorded legitimacy and warmly welcomed. Likewise, all paths that lead Christians to hatred, indifference, injustice and exclusion should be rejected. The shadow of death that [the 20th century] casts over our planet's future makes arguments over the superiority or profundity of any particular moral paradigm, term or model seem like a waste of ink and time.

(Abominable apostrophe removed.)

Comments

[Sylocat]

Sort of like what Kevin Smith was saying in Dogma. It matters more that you do good than that you do it for the particular moral paradigm I want you to use to instruct you to do the same good.

Not sure what I can really add to that, but it's worth pointing out...

[lonespark]

Good stuff.

[victoria]

Adding to the random but related comments... I had a moral theology prof who told the story of being asked to assist a parish in writing a "mission statement." They were a bit disappointed when she simply advised referencing the Works of Mercy (Catholic-speak for the Matt 25 Sheep and Goats story). I've since passed on that same advice when asked what I thought a mission statement should say.

(And I'll make a shameless plug for my own attempt at retelling Matt 25)

[Maggie]

I was watching a PBS American Experience documentary on the development of the polio vaccine that made me think of this ongoing train of thought you're having.

According to the documentary, the guy who came up with the March of Dimes (basically inventing the concept of "lots of small donations is as good--if not better than--a couple of big ones"), who got Jonas Salk involved in developing a polio vaccine, and who basically steamrolled the vaccine through production and testing was a man named Basil O’Connor. He'd been FDR's law partner and had taken over the President's Warm Springs Foundation polio hospital when FDR entered the White House.

O'Connor wasn't a nice person. He wasn't in it for the children. According to the documentary, he didn't much care about the children. He took over Warm Springs because of his loyalty to FDR and came up with the idea for the March when donations from wealthy patrons dried up during the depression. He wasn't above exaggerating and intentionally scaring the hell out of the American public if he thought it would get more money put into the cause.

He also secured the money to treat thousands of polio survivors (many of whom could not have otherwise afforded rehabilitation) and got a vaccine for a deadly and debilitating disease to the public at least a decade before anyone thought it would be possible.

Watching that, I couldn't help but think of Fred's "What? Who's this Jesus fellow?" commentary. If you only get points for helping the weak and the needy when you're not doing it to try to get into heaven I can only assume that Basil O'Connor is sitting at the right-hand of god.

[Froborr]

I find myself deeply underwhelmed by that passage. As near as I can tell, it's saying that it's not enough for Christian morality to be Christian, it has to be moral, too. Um... woot?

[Ursula L]

One thing that I've noticed gets overlooked in the discussion of Rightious Gentiles is the role of personal friendship. While some (Corrie TenBoom) helped strangers, others (those who helped the Frank family in The Diary of Anne Frank, the woman interviewed in Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich) helped because they had a personal relationship with the people they protected. They weren't helping generic Jews, they were helping friends who happened to be Jewish.

Which is something that gets left out in discussions of morality. You can't just be ready to step up in a crisis. You have to have the established relationships, so that when someone is in need, they will know you as a person they can trust to ask for help.

And that is something that is in direct conflict with the isolationist tendancies you see in conservative RTC culture. The attempt to protect themselves from un-Christian influences makes them people who don't know their neighbors. Private Christian schools, or home schooling, keeping the church as the focus of their social lives, looking for cultural experiences that are "Like X, But Christian" (TM), business networking such as providing a local "Christian Yellow Pages" so they do their business with fellow Christians, etc. The Rightious Gentiles necessarily had contact with people who wouldn't qualify to an RTC as a "Good Christian" - not just the Jews they helped, but also the black marketeers, ration-card forgers, and others they needed contact with in order to have the resources to provide help.
.

Legalism is also a problem if you make a Christian value out of following the laws of the state (give to Caesar what is Caesar's...) or the rules of the Bible (the Ten Commandments). Rightious Gentiles had to break with both.

They broke the laws of the state by hiding and protecting Jews, and also in the things they did to facilitate the help - getting forged ration cards, shopping on the black market, etc.

And they also had to be willing to break the letter of Christian laws, such as the Comandment to not bear false witness. One of the more memorable things from TenBoom's story is how the family systematically trained themselves to be good liars - to lie automatically, even when woken from deep sleep, to lie consistantly, to lie convincingly and to lie deliberately, with careful premeditation of what the lie will be and in what circumstaces it will be told. That's not a skill you have taught in any Sunday School.

[Lynn]

"If you only get points for helping the weak and the needy when you're not doing it to try to get into heaven I can only assume that Basil O'Connor is sitting at the right-hand of god."

Isn't there a Jesus quote that kinda says the opposite...if you are helping with an ulterior motive, you have already gotten your reward?

That doesn't invalidate Fred's "Who's this?" person who genuinely helps for the sake of helping without being in the "right" club.

But aren't we supposed to be asking "Am *I* doing the right thing for the right reasons?" as opposed nitpicking others?
(Though as I type this Zombie Ann Coulter is staring at me from the ad in the sidebar...and I'm having a hard time focusing on the specks in my own eye)

[Jeff]

[[As near as I can tell, it's saying that it's not enough for Christian morality to be Christian, it has to be moral, too.]]

Yes, but the author is saying that many of his faith are DOIN IT RONG. And as posted above, it's hard, especially if you're isolated.

[Spearmint]

I'm not sure it is unprofitable to look at the Righteous Gentiles' motives- as Fred points out, what's interesting about them is that there are so few of them. This means that our methods of instilling morality in people don't work in the vast majority of cases. They're good enough to make people stop at traffic lights and refrain from shoplifting, but they were insufficient to make people protest the deportation and murder of their neighbors. Worse, they were insufficient to prevent people from doing the deporting and murdering themselves. That indicates a deeply broken moral system.

If there's any pattern to the cases in which the system didn't collapse, even if it doesn't explain every case, it seems to me that it would be incredibly valuable to identify it.

(Looking at the countries would also be informative, I think. Why did Bulgaria comport itself so much better than Romania, for instance?)

[karpad]

Isn't there a Jesus quote that kinda says the opposite...if you are helping with an ulterior motive, you have already gotten your reward?

I'm kind of SOL. I make a point of doing good things because they're the right thing to do, and because I would be not able to sleep at night if I didn't.

The depressing thing about the Hassidei Umot HaOlam is not so much the rareness, it's that there are plenty of other people who were perfectly moral people who did not.

morality cannot require heroic efforts, forcing people to ignore their own fear and doubt. While doing so is a great thing, and of course moral, failing to do so is not immoral. And as much as all people would like to think that they would, I myself would like to think I would resist the nazis, I am not really certain. It is a diffferent circumstance, one too far removed from my experience to truly Judge.

Asking if someone would be able to have the same strength of character as Oskar Schindler is like asking if someone would have the same strength of character as Clark Kent. Until you're in the situation to try, you cannot know.

[ako]

And as much as all people would like to think that they would, I myself would like to think I would resist the nazis, I am not really certain. It is a diffferent circumstance, one too far removed from my experience to truly Judge.

I know. I'd like to think I would, and I hope I would, but I can't confidently declare, beyond a doubt, that I'd be as brave as I'd want myself to be.

One big reason for this is my family. I have an easier time risking myself than I do risking other people. And Nazis (and similar regimes) aren't above going after someone's family when they don't like what the specific person's doing.

[Leum]

To link this discussion to Tehran, a lot of Iranian exiles and emigrants are wary of talking to the media for fear that the government will take it out on their families.

[Karen]

all paths that genuinely lead Christian's

Okay, I'll admit that this is really, trivial, but PLEASE eliminate that misplaced apostrophe. I can't read the passage without screaming.

[Raj]

YAY! My friend Karen is back!

I feel the same way about inappropriately placed apostrophes. I also try to carefully avoid splitting infinitives.

During my first year of school in the Yewessay, the lunch menu one day featured "Taco's". Consequently, for several months, I thought "Taco's" was a dish named after someone named "Taco".

[Karen]

Hooray! Raj is back!

And Raj, how do you know it WASN'T a special version of the Mexican favorite, named after Taco Maria Jiminez, the former head of the school's food service department?

[Carolyn]

A few years ago I watched a bio on Oskar Schindler - beyond what's in the popular movie. He threw away a lot to save jews, and paid for it through his life.

This is what always fascinates me - how someone like him decided at some point to say, no more, where more moral compatriots of his never reached that point. Before and early in the war, this man was not a paragon of virtue you would think would be the one to risk his life for others. He was a profiteer, really. But he did what few others did, and saved so many. Why? I just don't understand people at all.

[Grenadine]

i too saw the apostrophe and wrestled with whether it was bitchy and petty to point it out. but hell! i AM bitchy and petty when it comes to the mother tongue! except for capitalization, obviously. but as i am the reincarnation of ee cummings, it's all good.

[Leum]

This is what always fascinates me - how someone like him decided at some point to say, no more, where more moral compatriots of his never reached that point. Before and early in the war, this man was not a paragon of virtue you would think would be the one to risk his life for others. He was a profiteer, really. But he did what few others did, and saved so many. Why? I just don't understand people at all.

Sometimes it is easier to see the light when one stands partly in shadow.

And anyone who gets the reference wins a cookie.

[Daughter]

Maggie, what you wrote about Basil O'Connor reminded me of one of my graduate school professors who had developed a character education program for kids called, "Be Your Own Hero." In the program, he had kids study people who many would recognize as heroes: Gandhi, MLK, Mother Teresa, as well as many less well-known individuals who had had a great impact for the common good or good of others. The program engaged children in deciding for themselves what made these people heroes, and what qualities they had that the kids wanted to emulate. The professor noted most of the kids often identified very different traits (with one exception) in the people they admired, leading him to conclude that the qualities that lead someone to accomplish great things for others can vary widely. The one exception, the trait that seemed to come up most often, regardless of who the hero was? Feistiness.

[Daughter]

Ursula, what you wrote about needing relationships in order to be in a position to help others reminded me of a lesson Shane Clairborne (author of "The Irresistible Revolution" and member of a "new monastic" group) describes that he often teaches in established churches. Invariably, when he talks about Christians needing to do more to help the poor, some Christians will respond that "Jesus said we'll always have the poor among us." Clairbone counters this by saying, "But are the poor among you? The reason so many Christians do nothing for the poor is not so much that they're hard-hearted, but they don't see the needs. If the poor are truly among you, dining with you, worshipping with you, and so forth, then you'll build the kinds of relationships in which you are aware of needs and can't help but respond."

[Raj]

Karen: Hooray! Raj is back!

Actually, I've entered a few posts on the Tony Perkins thread, including a comment on Niezgoda's Lennon/Satan connection (Jun 16, 9:56 AM).

Oh, and I like your flickr pix.

[victoria]

The one exception, the trait that seemed to come up most often, regardless of who the hero was? Feistiness.

That reminds of something I heard at a talk given by Gustavo Gutierrez (one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology). He (only partly in jest) claimed that there was a beatitude left out of the Gospels: "Blessed are the obstinate." Not quite the same as feisty, but I'd venture that the feisty heroes had an obstinate streak.

[Trixie Belden]

And as much as all people would like to think that they would, I myself would like to think I would resist the nazis, I am not really certain. It is a different circumstance, one too far removed from my experience to truly Judge.

I know. I'd like to think I would, and I hope I would, but I can't confidently declare, beyond a doubt, that I'd be as brave as I'd want myself to be.

Quite apart from being brave enough to face possible execution for resisting the Nazis, I found myself sort of disconcerted a while ago when I was reading a story in the paper about a talk given at one of our local historical associations. The subject of the talk was the underground railroad (the area of the country where I live was noted for its strong support of abolition) and at one point the lecturer asked people in the audience how many of them would have been willing to shelter an escaped slave. Every body's hand went up. Then the lecturer asked, "Would you be willing to shelter a slave if it meant spending a year or more in prison?" Some hands started to waver and went down. "What about if it meant spending time in prison and paying a fine of (I can't remember the exact sum the lecturer named, but I do remember it was very large, thousands of dollars, perhaps even over a hundred thousand dollars)?" Now almost all of the hands came down. It was unsettling for me to read this because whenever I read stories about escaping slaves, I had always found them so thrilling and of course, I loved imaging myself as someone who was helping abolitionists and working for the underground railroad.
Suddenly, I found myself taken aback. So much time in prison! Such enormous fines you could spend the rest of your life a pauper! The lecturer pointed out that the Fugitive Slave Act was created by men who were very serious about holding on to their "property", and as such, the law had very sharp "teeth" for people who were caught helping escaping slaves. The fines, when you read about them today, don't sound very large, but once the lecturer showed what a fine like that would mean in today's dollars, you understood that they were huge. The Fugitive Slave Act wasn't a law that the government ignored once it was passed, either. People were prosecuted. I believe one abolitionist family in this area was prosecuted under the Fugitive Slave Act and they ended up losing their home.
So I found myself asking, "Would I help an escaping slave if it meant losing my house and spending quite a while in prison? Sadly, I realized I wasn't sure of the answer. However, I now admire the abolitionists more than ever.

[WTF?]

I remember, a few years back, seeing an interview of motivational speaker Tony Robbins – or at least I think it was Tony Robbins – conducted by Larry king on CNN. Robbins said he believed he was incapable of ever becoming an Osama Bin Laden – that he simply didn’t have that in his character.

I never thought I had it in me to be a “perpetrator” either, until I became one. Once I realized how easy it was to fall into the trap of dehumanizing other people, I sort of stopped believing that character-training could make heroes, since it had no apparent power to prevent the making of monsters.

I most certainly have the ability to empathize with other people; to feel compassion for those who're suffering – except there was, maybe always, too sharp a limit on who I accepted as being enough ‘like me’ to deserve that kind of sympathy: It’s plenty easy – frighteningly easy – to draw a distinction between “people,” who deserve mercy, and “savages,” who do not.

All I can think during those times when Fred (or anyone) meditates on what it means to be good person – and more; a hero – is that I wasn’t one when it mattered. Maybe if I’d believed from the beginning that I was capable of evil, I’d also have had some proof against it.

Or maybe not.

[Pope Easier Rhino I]

"It doesn't matter why you do it, as long as it's good," smacks a bit of ends-justifying-means to me. I'm not saying I disagree, I'm simply wondering where to draw the line between motivation and process. In other words, if you do good solely because it makes you money, how different is that from making money and using some of it to do good? In the first case, the money is the motivation, whereas in the second, it's the process. Is "why you do it" that divorced from "how you do it?" Moral pragmatism (or is it pragmatic morality) is definitely a gray area.

[nationElectric]

Thank you for this blog, Fred. Not just this post, but the whole thing. It is wonderful to have your powerfully pragmatic, compassionate, and fundamentally moral voice in my regular reading.

[Randy Owens]

@Pope Easier Rhino: That thing about the ends not justifying the means is an overused bit of dreck. Its raison d'etre is because some would use ends to justify any means, which they don't. But ends can most certainly justify means; otherwise, for example, you wouldn't drive anywhere at all, ever. It's only justifiable by the fact that you need to get somewhere, i.e. an end.

[Isis-sama]

When I read this post the thing that first sprang to mind for me was an article I read a while back about a large Christian outcry against ads an atheist group had put up across a city that said 'You can be good without God.'
Many religious people, fundamentalists of all stripes, seem to believe that there is only one way to do good and anyone who does it any other way is in fact doing evil, despite all evidence to the contrary. This is something most of you have probably already talked about a lot, nor is it by far the only notable instance of the double standard of many Christian beliefs, it was just something that jumped out in my mind and makes me think that having the writing of people like Fred is very important now.

Oh, and Sylocat, I've seen Dogma several times, and I can't remember any of the characters saying anything to that effect. Not that I disagree with the sentiment either in general or in the movie, I'm just saying.

[Jeffrey Bard]

Hi Fred,

I have to thank you for the way that you express yourself. I'm an agnostic who happens to have a fundamentalist for a mother and a brother. There's a rationality in your blogs that hits home in a way that I can't. I don't hate religion in the way my family believes I do, which makes it tough to have meaningful conversations about it. Forwarding your blog to them has given me a way in, without seeming disrespectful or argumentative, which makes me incredibly thankful.

I always believed there was a way to be intellectual and faithful, and you've shown me how to do it. I only hope that I can do the same.

Regards,

Jeffrey Bard

[Josh]

My take is to emphasize an intentional intellectual disjunction between Christianity and morality. That is, I don't think that specific moral behavior is what differentiates Christianity from any other worldview. What makes Christ different is certain Principles of Being that you won't find anywhere else in any way that is nearly as distilled: things like Grace, Love, and an obsession with the Upside-Down Kingdom. What I mean is that while I believe that saving Jews from Nazis is something that comes straight from the big J-Man Himself, it does so obliquely, through Common Grace, and not through some mental acceptance of certain propositions regarding the nature of Reality.

I guess I had to come to this viewpoint because I noticed not only that a lot of people can be Good Without God (as God has come to be violated into a box of conception by RTCs), but also that a lot of people I knew who were claiming to be With God were doing some God-Awful things. I had to either reject Christ, Christians, or the RTC conception of morality. I chose the latter.

I believe in objective moral truth, I do. I just think it's difficult to grasp as it manifests itself through culture in vastly different ways. I also find that people are less interested in suggestions that only God can make them good (which, while perhaps true, is not true in the way RTCs mean it and implies that all non-RTCs are Totally Depraved, which I consider to be Despicably Bad Theology) than in the idea that God is Good, and has done Good things for them.

Oh, and finally, to quote the guy with the whip and the fedora: "Nazis. I hate those guys!"

[Emcee]

WTF? I never thought I had it in me to be a “perpetrator” either, until I became one. Once I realized how easy it was to fall into the trap of dehumanizing other people, I sort of stopped believing that character-training could make heroes, since it had no apparent power to prevent the making of monsters.

My apologies if everyone else knows this story, but I'm a relative newcomer here. But would you mind elaborating, WTF? In what situation did you become a "perpetrator"? If you don't want to talk about it, I understand, but I am curious and would like to hear if you don't mind. Thanks.

[Kit Whitfield]

You can't just be ready to step up in a crisis. You have to have the established relationships, so that when someone is in need, they will know you as a person they can trust to ask for help.

Though the relationship can be tangential. I met a 'righteous Gentile' once, a woman who'd saved several people from concentration camps. She'd been working in the house of a camp commandant and had hidden some prisoners there; he found out, and she had to keep sleeping with him to dissuade him from turning her in. So she sacrificed herself, and the escapees all survived. She was one of the few people I've met who I could really describe as having an inner light - and I don't think that was just because I knew what she'd done.

But she described it rather amusedly thus: she'd offered to hide one of her friends from the camp, and the next minute 'half a dozen people I didn't know' were in her kitchen begging for her help. Total strangers she had to decide whether or not to lay down her life for. They were friends of her friend, but the way she described it didn't sound like that was her deciding factor.

It was interesting, anyway, that this was how she described it: 'people I didn't know.'

"It doesn't matter why you do it, as long as it's good," smacks a bit of ends-justifying-means to me.

I think you have that backwards. I'll try to be schematic:

Why you do it = ends. You do it because you're trying to achieve a particular end; the intended end is your 'why'.
What you do = means. It's the stuff that actually gets done that may or may not achieve a particular end but has consequences and knock-on effects either way.

So "It doesn't matter why you do it, as long as it's good," parses as "It doesn't matter what your (personal) end is, as long as the means (you personally employ) are good."

This is the opposite of saying 'the end justifies the means'; it's saying, more or less, that the means justify, excuse or otherwise trump the end.

I'm not saying I subscribe to either side of this, but I don't think your logic was right.

[patter]

Lynn: But aren't we supposed to be asking "Am *I* doing the right thing for the right reasons?" as opposed nitpicking others?

Actually, I don't think so, simply because (a) it leads to excessive navel gazing and (b) we don't know ourselves well enough to make that judgment. (I think The Guy in question even had something to say about "Judge not..." that could be applied even to judging ourselves.) If there's a need in front of you, and you can help meet it, do it.

My spouse just returned from a mission trip to Kenya. Anybody there who has any property, and this includes the [Christian] missionaries they visited, has a fence and paid guards to "keep the beggars out." That made me sad to hear that, in light of this discussion.

[Karen]

Today is Juneteeth! I have a day off of work! For once, Texas does something noble and progressive, even if it's only allowing state and county employees a freebie.

Thanks for the kind words about the Flickrs, Raj. I'll have some more when my son gets back from Boy Scout camp next week. (Waaaahhh!! My baby is gone for a week, having massive amounts of fun, learning to tie knots, seeing Pike's Peak, and all WITHOUT ME!!!!)

Also, muchas, muchas gracias to Fred for removing The Abominable Apostrophe, and for coining the phrase "abominable apostrophe."

On ends and means: There is a school of thought called "consequentialism," which I have read somewhere condemned as a heresy. Thing is, in actual real life we analyze means only by referring to ends constantly. Business types call this a "cost - benefit" analysis. The law defines whether or not something was negligent by referring to "foreseeability;" could a reasonable person have figured out that a particular bad thing would result from a particular act or omission? Lack of malicious intent may get a person out of criminal charges (sometimes), but she's still stuck with a judgment for negligence if reasonable people would have acted differently.

Even if we limit the analysis to whether or not good results can justify evil actions, it's still not a simply answer. I don't think even the best and most holy intentions can justify, say, killing the entire population of a city, but even then I can imagine wild-ass, college-bull-session-and-drinking-game scenarios where that might be better than some equally remote alternative. Keep those things to movies, drinking games, and neoconservative editorials, because in real life it's almost never that extreme. We revere Righteous Gentiles and the Underground Railroad because their heroism is very, very rare. To paraphrase "The Incredibles," if everyone has to be a hero, then no one is. If we want people to be good routinely, then we have to make a world where being good isn't particularly costly.

Also, I think the final word on ends-and-means should be "by their fruits ye shall know them."

[Ursula L]

This means that our methods of instilling morality in people don't work in the vast majority of cases. They're good enough to make people stop at traffic lights and refrain from shoplifting, but they were insufficient to make people protest the deportation and murder of their neighbors. Worse, they were insufficient to prevent people from doing the deporting and murdering themselves. That indicates a deeply broken moral system.

Well, teaching morality is generally about teaching rules - principles which, if you stick with them, will guide you to correct behavior 95-99% of the time.

Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't steal. Obey the law. Avoid being with people who don't also follow the rules. Stick up for your friends. Don't put your friends/family in danger.

The catch is, in the 1-5% of the time where you're facing a potential "Rightious Gentile" threshold moment, you've got to know when to throw the rules away, and put people ahead of principle.

From the examples I've seen, there seem to be three ways in which a Rightious Gentile reasoned their actions.

1. People of high/advanced moral study (e.g., Corrie TenBoom and family) who made a principled decision that this was the time to throw away the normal rules, to protect human beings. The TenBooms didn't just hide/protect people they knew, they became deeply involved in the resistance movement, and in helping organize others for protection-work. This is morality that can be taught, but it is also "advanced study" morality - it requires mastering "basic morality" of following the rules, and extensive study to decide when it is or isn't right to break the rules (without the benefit of hindsight that we have to know that the TenBooms made the right choice), and most people don't have the time and energy in daily life for this level of study.

2. People of more typical morality, (e.g., those who helped the Frank family) who were friends/family with people at risk, and who followed the "take care of your friends" part of the rules, and selectively broke other rules to help their friends, but didn't take the next step of becoming active in a larger protective effort for strangers. People with strong in-group loyalty, who had an in-group that included friends in the at-risk population. This is the group where "teaching morality" might have an effect - focus the teaching more on protecting others, making friends, expanding your "in-group" and being loyal, rather than on following a list of rules.

3. People of low conventional morality (e.g., Oscar Schindler, a gambler and war-profiteer, who got into the "protection" part of his life via the exploitation of the very people he would later save) who was used to breaking the rules when he saw advantage to it, and who found it exciting to take risks and break rules. No one would make Oscar Schindler a Sunday-school teacher, or consider him a good role model for their kids. He was a scammer, and his biggest and best scam was pulling the wool over the eyes of the Nazi authorities to save the people on his List. A gambler, whose biggest bet was his life and fortune for the lives on his list. Teaching morality would be counterproductive in this group - if anyone had managed to teach Schindler morality, he would never have made such a gamble, and the side-effects of teaching people to take high-risk chances would probably do more damage in the 95-99% of the situations where conventional morality is a good guide than it can do in the rare cases where a great gamble is justified. From what I remember, his post-WWII life was something of a disapointment/failure for him - there was no greater gamble/scam available to capture his attention and give him an adrenaline rush.

Schindler is, ethically, probably the most fascinating of the three examples. He isn't an example of great morality. He's an example of glorious immorality. He isn't someone who decided to be good, he's someone, who, like Huck Finn, decided "fine, I'll go to hell" rejecting the rules of conventional morality to the point where he could easily break the rules in furtherence of a great good deed.

[random atheist]

"This is morality that can be taught, but it is also "advanced study" morality"

I don't know, I would argue that it couldn't be taught. I mean, yes, you can teach someone that there are times when the rules must be broken for the sake of a higher good. But I don't think you can, simply by teaching someone a particular moral system, instill in them the courage, determination and clear-sightedness that it would take to be willing to put yourself on the line like that. Yes, there are healthy and unhealthy moral systems. But the best moral system in the world is going to have to interact with the personality of the person who's responding to it; and also with their cultural background, which is another factor.

[Karen]

Ursula L, that's a fascinating analysis of Schindler. As it happens, I did my honors thesis in college on "Huckleberry Finn" and morality, and one of the points my adviser raised was that the whole point of that book was to illustrate just how immoral conventional society of the antebellum South was. There are number of scenes in the book which connect or refer back to "Tom Sawyer" in a way that tarnishes Tom as well, most notably that unnecessarily elaborate scheme to rescue Jim, where the logical path would be to get the key and let Jim go. Tom preferred pretend heroism to simple goodness, and Twain clearly preferred simple goodness.

[Karen]

Come to think of it, Tom Sawyer would have been an exemplary member of the Tribulation Force or a contemporary RTC -- never actually risking anything but adoring the pretense of risk. Huck, by contrast, engaged in actual bravery and didn't brag about it.

[Hobbes]

@random atheist:

Christianity has always claimed that those things (courage, determination, etc) are kind of instilled in people by the Holy Spirit. God equips his people to face hardship, if they ask him to. We're going to see a lot more of this sort of language as we get into the later books of LB, where people start being executed.

@Karen: That's true! The incident with Injun Joe in the cave is exactly the sort of thing that the Trib Force people and Tom Sawyer would abhor. They want to be action heroes but are afraid of actual action. (They do get somewhat braver as the story continues, though, particularly Rayford.)

[Headless Unicorn Guy]

Which is something that gets left out in discussions of morality. You can't just be ready to step up in a crisis. You have to have the established relationships, so that when someone is in need, they will know you as a person they can trust to ask for help.

And that is something that is in direct conflict with the isolationist tendancies you see in conservative RTC culture. The attempt to protect themselves from un-Christian influences makes them people who don't know their neighbors. Private Christian schools, or home schooling, keeping the church as the focus of their social lives, looking for cultural experiences that are "Like X, But Christian" (TM), business networking such as providing a local "Christian Yellow Pages" so they do their business with fellow Christians, etc. The Rightious Gentiles necessarily had contact with people who wouldn't qualify to an RTC as a "Good Christian" - not just the Jews they helped, but also the black marketeers, ration-card forgers, and others they needed contact with in order to have the resources to provide help. -- Ursula L

Which cuts both ways. Not only won't Christians be on the radar as "someone you turn to when you're in trouble" (pre-emptively negating any opportunity to witness by acts of mercy), if things go homicidally hostile towards Christians (as a lot of RTCs brag about with lip-smacking anticipation), they won't know anyone who could help or save them.

(Though as I type this Zombie Ann Coulter is staring at me from the ad in the sidebar...and I'm having a hard time focusing on the specks in my own eye) -- Lynn

You're right; she DOES look kind of zombied in that pic. Not the best pic to use in a sidebar ad...

[random atheist]

"Christianity has always claimed that those things (courage, determination, etc) are kind of instilled in people by the Holy Spirit."

That's interesting... what would you say happens when someone who isn't Christian displays such qualities? Would your reaction be that they had been affected by the Holy Spirit without realising it, or that they were an exception, or that they would have been *even more* brave or determined or whatever if they'd been a Christian?

Feel free to not answer if this is too personal to talk about, I just do like finding out about other people's belief systems!

[Ursula L]

I don't know, I would argue that it couldn't be taught. I mean, yes, you can teach someone that there are times when the rules must be broken for the sake of a higher good. But I don't think you can, simply by teaching someone a particular moral system, instill in them the courage, determination and clear-sightedness that it would take to be willing to put yourself on the line like that. Yes, there are healthy and unhealthy moral systems. But the best moral system in the world is going to have to interact with the personality of the person who's responding to it; and also with their cultural background, which is another factor.

Perhaps not "taught" but rather acquired by deliberate study. The TenBoom family seems to have made a habit of religious/moral study for decades before the moment of crisis, and have put effort into studying what's right and wrong, and how to act. It isn't something that could be taught easily in a standard classroom. Perhaps more like acquiring a Masters degree or PhD, with some formal classroom study and some effort at independant study and thought development.

[Raj]

But... I saw the Abominable Apostrophe, I tell you! I wasn't imagining it; I really did see the Abominable Apostrophe! It was standing right it front of me: tall and shaggy. What really made an impression on me, though, were those eyes. There was something about those eyes; something almost Human.

As I reached for my camera, suddenly the Abominable Apostrophe was no longer there. I scanned the terrain, but the Abominable Apostrophe had somehow vanished into the snowy white background of the web page.

Say what you will. Call my account a fanciful story if you wish. I know what I saw.

[Lee Ratner]

I wonder if people have problems acting like Righteous Gentiles when they need to is because they were never taught the value of civil disobidience, the idea of breaking an unjust law. Sometimes doing the right thing requires breaking the law and few people are taught that this is okay sometimes.

[Lori]

This is the group where "teaching morality" might have an effect - focus the teaching more on protecting others, making friends, expanding your "in-group" and being loyal, rather than on following a list of rules.

The problem with this is that it presupposes that the rules are wrong and your friends are people who need help. That was true in the case of the Righteous Gentiles and the Underground Railroad. It's not true for most of the adherents of "don't snitch" culture, which is common in many inner cities or of the people who, for example, helped Eric Rudolph stay hidden for so long.

It seems to me that loyalty is less the issue than knowing how to adhere to the principles behind good rules, rather than to some given set of rules.

[Ross]

It seems to me that loyalty is less the issue than knowing how to adhere to the principles behind good rules, rather than to some given set of rules.

More than that, the important thing, i think, is being able to tell whether a set of rules is "good" or "bad".

[Froborr]

Maybe if I’d believed from the beginning that I was capable of evil, I’d also have had some proof against it.

THIS.

Daniel Dennet uses the analogy of Odysseus and the Sirens. Odysseus knows that when he hears the Sirens sing, he will want to go to them, and that this is wrong. So well in advance of hearing them, he has himself tied to the mast so that when they sing, he'll be unable to go to them.

One of the keys to moral behavior (and, indeed, to self-control in general) is to recognize your own shortcomings and take steps to negate them well in advance of their effects.

Each person is subject to (more accurately, made up of) competing impulses. For a relatively simple case, let's imagine a potential Righteous Gentile who has, on the one hand, an empathy-driven impulse to help some Jews, and on the other hand, a fear-driven impulse to do nothing. Both of these warring impulses martial their allies -- fear, for example, musters obedience to the law, tribalism (they're not friends or family, but members of the Other), vivid imaginary scenarios of getting caught and the consequences thereof, a sense of futility, and so forth. Empathy musters moral precepts, common humanity, pride ("I'm better than that!"), desire for acclamation ("I'll be a hero!"), and so forth.

The past actions of the potential Righteous Gentile can have a huge impact on this conflict. For example, if they actually have Jewish friends, or even if they've just gotten accustomed to thinking of Jews as "people like me," that can cause tribalism to switch sides and ally with empathy. Or, if they've spent a lot of time thinking about morality, that strengthens the influence of morality in the conflict. Similarly, if they're used to bucking authority and pulling scams a la Schindler, they can weaken the influence of fear and obedience to the law.

Note that this is a heavily simplified model. Most internal conflicts have dozens of sides which continually shift alliances and strategies. The core point remains valid, however: By anticipating future inner conflicts and identifying probable sides, it's possible to choose to strengthen or weaken particular impulses before they happen. But the only way to do this is through self-knowledge. Otherwise, it's anyone's guess how you'll react.

[random atheist]

"Perhaps more like acquiring a Masters degree or PhD, with some formal classroom study and some effort at independant study and thought development."

Yeah, I can see it's possible this sort of thing would make that kind of behaviour more likely. I do still feel, however, that basic character plays a pretty big part. There is a difference between knowing what the right thing to do would be, and actually doing it when it's your life and the lives of your family at risk.

And I know this is just anecdotal, but when I've seen real-life stories of heroism, the people concerned, when asked about it afterwards, don't tend to say things like, "My years of study on the issue of morality convinced me that this was the right thing to do". They tend to say more, "Well, I just had to. What else could I have done?" It doesn't, in short, seem to be the result of a process of deep thought on the topic, but more of an instinctive feeling that this was what they had to do. And I don't think that instinct of heroism is really a teachable thing.

It would be very interesting to see a scientific study on the matter, though. It's entirely possible such a study would prove you right, and me wrong. The only problem is I can't think of a methodology for the study that wouldn't involve deeply immoral behaviour towards the experimental subjects.

[Ms. Anon E. Mouse, Esq.]

@Ursula L
Your description of the three types of Righteous Gentiles is fascinating. Do you have any thoughts on the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who seems to me to be somewhere between #1 and #3 in terms of his involvement in the plots to assassinate Hitler? I mean, he was someone who's considered to have advanced moral thinking, but he also was quite clear that he didn't know whether God would ultimately praise or punish him if the assassination plot worked. He encouraged people not to follow in his footsteps in terms of trying to solve violence with violence, but he still made an incredible sacrifice trying to end the Nazi regime.

[victoria]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer seems to be a case of increasingly radical acts out of love of neighbor. For example, his first arrest wasn't for the involvement in an assassination attempt, but for getting caught helping Jews escape the country.