Barbara: Welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God. I'm here today with guests, Dr. Craig Nessan, to talk about faith and ethics. I met Craig in 2019 at Wartburg Theological Seminary, where he's a professor and Academic Dean. As I've mentioned during previous episodes, it feels a bit odd to address faculty and deans by first name, but that is the Wartburg way.
Prior to Wartburg, Craig served 11 years as parish pastor in Pennsylvania and Missouri. He holds degrees from Michigan State University, Wartburg Theological Seminary, and the University of Munich. Craig, how are things in Iowa these days?
Craig: Well, like the rest of the country, we're suffering from this pandemic that doesn't seem to have any and so it really creates a lot of stress for people in their lives, more than they realize it.
Barbara: And hopefully we can provide some support and encouragement through today's conversation, even though it's not directly about COVID necessarily or illnesses.
Craig: I think it could be in centered in one's faith and one's intention to live an ethical life is the way forward in all circumstance.
Barbara: our Bible passage today is from Genesis, which if you're following along in your Bible is at the very, very beginning, the first book in the Bible, chapter three, verses eight to nine. I'm going to read from the new revised standard version.
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?”
Craig, I have a hunch about why you selected this Bible passage for today's topic about ethics. Could you explain why?
Craig: Genesis is the first book of the Bible. And at the beginning of Genesis, which means beginning, there are two creation stories and this particular text from Genesis three is from the second creation story.
And it's the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. I think it's really important for us to understand that this is not a historical account of the origin of humanity, but rather this is a text that is told in the Bible in order that we can understand ourselves in our relationship to God. And this particular verse focuses on the relationship between human beings and God.
And it focuses on the belief that all of our life is being lived in the presence of God and living our lives in the presence of God is the basis for thinking about an ethical life. That everything that we do really is being done in the presence of God. Now, this was more transparent to people in ancient times than it is for us today in a secular world, we don't have a same sense generally about that God is really involved and active in our lives.
But this text reminds us to really that all of our life is lived in the presence of God. Who's paying attention to us.
Barbara: I had a wonderful challenge when I was thinking about our conversation today because I have pages and pages of notes that I took in the class you taught at Wartburg.
And I thought it's really going to be just about impossible to condense four months of learning into a 40 minute podcast episode, but I've got two previous recordings on a related theme. And then we also have a bunch of resources that we'll be recommending. Back in February of 2021 I spoke with professor Martin Lohrmann in episode 35, we talked about salvation and some of the nuances that will be furthering that conversation today. And then in May of 2021, I spoke with Blake Shipman in episode 50 about theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote about ethics among many other things.
So I recommend listening to those two episodes if you haven't already, because they are related to our conversation about ethics. But one difference that I noticed right at the beginning of the class, we talked about the word freedom, which has shifted - how freedom is meant in the United States these days, or over the past few hundred years, as well as theologically. So I'm wondering, Craig, could you help us understand the concept of freedom from and freedom for what do those mean when we're thinking about ethics today?
Craig: to put it in a larger context in our contemporary society, I think most people, when they hear the word freedom will not at all really in their minds be thinking about what Christians mean by freedom.
I think that in our society, when we use the word freedom, we think especially about lifestyle choices that were free to make. Lifestyle choices that through our democratic form of government, we have political freedoms that are protected by law. We think about our economic system as a free market system.
And we also think about the use of military force to guard and protect these freedoms. This means however that when people hear the word freedom in the Christian sense, that's really what you're asking about, they're not going to necessarily understand the freedom that comes from Christian faith, and that is a freedom that we received as a gift from God because of the love of God in Jesus Christ.
When Christians talk about freedom, they talk about the freedom that we're receiving from God in Christ. And it's a freedom both from anything that's keeping our lives in bondage, God in Christ is setting us free from anything that is preventing us from being the people that intense us to be, but we're also set free for others.
Christian freedom finally is directed toward neighbor love and care for creation. And this two-fold meaning of freedom often is totally lost when we use the word freedom in our society.
Barbara: you basically summarized, some complex language that I was brought up to know as justification and sanctification, meaning that we have a free gift.
And that was part of what I talked about with Dr. Lohrmann as well, that our choices in behavior, when you talked about caring for our neighbor are not done to sort of earn points to get into heaven, but they're a response to this freedom that you talked about. And we'll be getting into some more details as we continue the conversation today.
And another really important concept that you talked about during the class that I took with you was our baptismal vows.
And I have talked about baptism in other episodes as well, but could you speak for a few minutes about why is baptism important when we're talking about ethics and what if you're not baptized?
Craig: to dismiss one thought that a hearer might have is that baptism is a gift and not a requirement. And it certainly my theological understanding that baptism bestows God's connection with us in Jesus Christ. God's love and forgiveness, but I'm not of the opinion that those who are not baptized are necessarily excluded from God's love or salvation.
So that may not be the typical view of many Christians in the United States, but I think that God's love shown to us in Jesus is bigger than baptism. Now that being said, baptism is very important for our affirmation of who we are in relationship to God, a faith relationship to God. And baptism begins with God's work and God's promises in Jesus Christ who receives us unconditionally in love.
And also aligns us with the death and the resurrection of Jesus so that our lives can be lived like Jesus life for the sake of others. And part of our calling as the baptized is to live out our faith in daily life that we as Christian people share this faith in words with other people, but we also live it out in terms of our commitment to striving for peace and justice in all the earth.
Just daily kindness that we show to people in our world. A lot of times the church has been too focused on its own internal agenda. The church can become what I call churchified. And that is, it thinks that we're only living out our faith when we're doing it inside a church building or for the sake of churches and institution.
And I think our time, like the time of the early church is a time for breaking this open and understanding that the life of faith really is primarily lived out in what we do 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And not just the few hours or hour that we might spend in a congregation during the week.
Barbara: the words that you had mentioned, the affirmation of baptism that's part of the Lutheran faith tradition. I know also the Episcopal tradition. Probably others as well, but I always strive to be inclusive. Have people really feel welcome as part of this conversation and knowing that love of neighbor, maybe part of our baptismal vows, but that there are also other people loving their neighbors without that first and yet knowing that the invitation is always there as well.
What specifically about our baptismal vows are related to ethical behavior?
Craig: what we do when we gather together for worship services is a kind of formation for how we live our lives out day by day in the world. So the practices of worship are aligned with life practices that the holy spirit is seeking to instill in us so that we would live our lives in conformity to the way of Jesus Christ.
So some of those worship practices include learning to confess our sins and receive absolutely. I see this as a kind of learning to tell the truth about ourselves and learning to trust and even deeper truth that we are loved and forgiven by God. In spite of our sins, in spite of our shortcomings. Worship teaches us to live life as a life of praise teaches us to be peacemakers.
It teaches us to trust in God's word, above all the other words that are racing around in the airwaves and our world. Teaches us to be generous, teaches us to care about the things for which we pray. And in the holy communion, it teaches us to welcome all people for Jesus' sake and to work for an economy where everyone has what they need.
Barbara: I just want to verify my understanding of the word that you used, absolution, is a synonym for forgiveness. Are there any other nuances to the word absolution?
Craig: that's the formal language used in many worship services, confession, absolution, but really it's about confessing our sins, our shortcomings and receiving forgiveness.
Barbara: I do tend to stay away from politics in general through this podcast, but another important term during a faith-based conversation is religious identity politics. What does that mean in contrast to the phrase neighbor politics?
Craig: I really see these as two different ways that Christians are seeking to live out their faith in today's world. First to your comment about avoiding politics, I think that's very difficult to do because politics are about how we work together in our world to strive for the common good.
I think Jesus had a politics. I think the Bible has a politics and there are many politics in the Bible, not just the one, but I think Jesus had a politics and it was under the rubric of the kingdom of God or the reign of God. Your listeners might notice that in our world today, not all Christians have the same agenda in terms of what they're trying to accomplish in society.
And as I interpret the various strains our religious identity politic is a religious agenda that is working to impose or to accomplish that their particular religious beliefs become established as the law for all people in the country. And there are certain litmus test issues that often accompany a religious identity politic in our world today.
And those issues relate to things like abortion or the teaching of evolution or homosexuality. How we conduct our international politics in the middle east. All of these things are an agenda by religious people who are trying to have their religious convictions legislated for everybody, Christians or non-Christians.
I contrast that in my book, Free In Deed, with a neighbor politic. And this is what I think Jesus was teaching us in the story about the good Samaritan, where the Samaritan was beaten up and lying on the edge of the road and the priest and the religious church member passed by on the other side. And it was the stranger, the foreigner who came and ministered to this man who was beaten up on the side of the road.
And that person happened to be a Samaritan. And at the end of that parable, Jesus asks, which one of these was the neighbor. And the hearer has to say the one who showed mercy. And so a neighbor politic in contrast to religious identity politics does not begin with my religious convictions. It begins with the needs of neighbors in our world, and it's very attentive to what neighbors are suffering in our world.
And it seeks to be an ethical life. That's responsive to the suffering of neighbors. And today we would have to add the suffering of creation. It's a politic that seeks to respond to the suffering of others, the suffering of creation, rather than trying to have my religious beliefs become the law of the land.
Barbara: Thank you. That's a terrific explanation. And if anyone wants to take a look at the good Samaritan story, it's in the 10th chapter of Luke, which is in the gospels, and I'm glad you mentioned your new book coming out, Craig, because I didn't have a chance to read it yet. Obviously it hasn't been published, but I’m happy to know that a great deal of the content is information that I may have learned in your ethics class. And I also wanted to give a shout out to a couple of other resources.. I also enjoyed reading another one of your books called the Integrity of the body of Christ, which is about boundary keeping as shared responsibility.
And the coauthor is Arden Malburg. That was one of the textbooks in the 21st century leadership course that I highly recommended. And we have a few websites as well. So thank you for sharing this information with everyone who might not be able to take a full seminary class in ethics.
Craig: Thank you for them.
Barbara: And as we continue to delve into this topic that I learned about in your classes about cheap grace and costly grace, what's the difference between those two things. And why are we talking about that when we're looking at ethics?
Craig: Well, I heard you mentioned that Blake Shipman had been a speaker on your podcast talking about Dietrich, Bonhoeffer.
Yeah. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to remind listeners, was a pastor living during the period of the Nazi reign in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s. And a Bonhoeffer really was appalled that the Christian Church, especially he was talking about the Protestant church, was not at all prepared to offer resistance to what was happening in their country where there were people being identified as scapegoats in the largest number of the Jewish people were being identified.
And Bonhoeffer had to do some self-examination about his own religious tradition and ask the question, why were they not responding? Why were they not protecting the people who were being harmed? And he came to the conclusion that in his faith tradition, his Christian faith tradition that grace had become something that was disconnected from discipleship. Grace was something that became disconnected from the following of Jesus. And so he coined these very powerful terms, cheap grace and costly grace in order to try to wake up the Christians of his time that they had an obligation to live out their lives in discipleship on behalf of the people who were in harm's way. And cheap grace to Bonhoeffer was where God blessed everything simply because God is a God of grace. We do not have to set any limits in terms of wrong behavior getting in the way of our relationship with God. But Bonhoeffer said no, the grace that is really grace is a grace that requires us to die to the things of this world that are harmful and to be raised with Christ, to serve those who are in need, especially those again, who are in harm's way.
And so costly grace was the grace costs Jesus Christ his life on the cross, but it's also a grace that costs us to risk a faith in order to be of service to neighbors, especially those who are again, most in danger. And during the Nazi period in Germany, these were the Jewish people, the homosexual people, the Jehovah witnesses, the gypsies, and many other marginalized.
Barbara: Yes. And I have also mentioned in previous episodes that I had for many, many years, put Martin Luther on a pedestal thinking, he founded this important principles about faith, and then to learn later that Martin Luther did at times speak and write hateful things about other people.
And these days, even we use a different name for Romani people. Even that him calling them gypsies, was maybe not at the time but a form of racism, if you will. So knowing that neutrality is not an option for us. I took that straight out of my class notes. I didn't come up with that, that speaking for people may not be easy, but it is what we're called to do.
Craig: I used the term gypsy because that was the term that was current at the time. So Luther is someone who had a very keen understanding of the great commandment that we are to love God, because God loved us. And we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. But Luther also had some very harmful writings where he did not live out neighbor love in the way that we might have wished that he did.
And particularly Luther's writings against the Jews were taken up in later centuries and used in order to provide rationale for antisemitism. And this was clearly the case again, during the Nazi period where Luther's writings against the Jews the title of one is against the Jews and their lies became evidence that the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust against the Jews were religiously approved. And this is something that the church that I belong to the evangelical Lutheran church in America, reputed these writings of Luther in 1994. And I think it's very important that that we repudiate those writings of whatever faith tradition and repudiate, antisemitic writings and antisemitic rhetoric in its entirety.
Barbara: Yes, there are a number of documents, which I've mentioned over the months of different episodes on the elca.org website. And I'll have a link to that as well in the show notes, but there are social statements on say church and society and our responsibilities to care for one another and then a whole bunch of other topics, some of which you had previously mentioned.
So there's a trove of additional writing and information out there that are all ethically connected as far as I'm concerned in terms of how we act, like you said, outside the church doors with each other.
Craig: it really connects with the idea about cheap grace and costly grace and some people don't think that the church should take positions the societal issues of our time, but really the ethical life is all about caring for neighbors and seeking to address the things that would make life better for those neighbors.
And so the evangelical Lutheran church in America, like other church bodies, including the Roman Catholic church has social teachings. And the social teachings are trying to guide people to be better educated about the things that can make a better society. Things like education, things like human sexuality, abortion, death penalty, criminal justice system, genetics. There's a whole comprehensive set of curriculum for guiding us to how we might think more clearly about the great issues of our time.
Barbara: Many of those documents have really done the work that I'm about to ask you. When it comes to just regular people, looking to make a decision in our lives, in an ethical manner, it makes a difference what we are paying attention to.
And how do we discern what's reliable. How do we slow down enough to examine multiple sources? And there's plenty of secular decision-making models as well. Perhaps even ethical, but what's the unique Christian angle on ethical decision-making?
Craig: Well, this circles around to the opening passage from Genesis that we began with at the start of this podcast- a working definition of ethics for me, and this would apply not only to religious ethics, but beyond is it involves intentional and deliberate reflection. Together with a community on the decisions that we have to make in living our lives in the world. And there are four different aspects to that definition. First it involves slowing down and thinking about the decisions that we're making moment by moment, day by day and pausing to ask, how does this hold up in terms of serving neighbors and thereby serving God? How can I test my ethical thinking with a community that I trust? A community of others that I trust- because left alone, we may deceive ourselves about ethics and we need a community to hold us accountable. We're making decisions all the time. Each one of us has made hundreds of ethical decisions today, but probably few of us have understood that these were ethical decisions that we were making.
And it's all then contributes to the wellbeing of the whole. It's not just a private ethic, but it's an ethic that has implications and consequences for other people. Now, when you take this definition of ethics and make it Christian, it would be intentional reflection together with the community, the church about the decisions that we have to make and living our lives in the world and that this has done in the presence of God it's done in the presence of Christ.
And so God and Christ are living persons who are asking us, where are you? Where are you in relationship to these decisions that you have to make? How do they align with your own values and how do they align with what's good for others?
Barbara: we may wish for ease, but ease is not promised to us. And that's really not necessarily something to be striving for as much as maybe my selfish self would like to have a life of ease, but God does call us to hard things.
And sometimes these ethical decisions aren't easy. Now, maybe we do have great clarity around a few things, but sometimes there's a struggle and kind of really grappling with who's benefiting and why are we making these decisions?
Craig: I think the most authentic expression of an ethical life is seen in the lives of those who give their life away for the sake of others.
And in the Christian tradition, these are people who we often refer to as the saints, but the saints are not just people in distant times. This week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu died. And he risked his life for the sake of the freedom of the African people. And he risked his life for the sake of the Palestinian people.
And he risked his life for the sake of the gay and lesbian people. And so Desmond Tutu is an instance of the life that risked for the sake of others. In recent history, we would want to include people like Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Among this company, and Dorothy Day and the Roman Catholic traditions and Howard Thurman out of the Black church tradition. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer out of the Protestant Christian tradition and Mohammad Gandhi, Londa Scandi out of the Hindu tradition. These are all people who risked something for others in their ethical lives.
Barbara: I'm curious if there's anyone you can think of when I say whose voice is missing as part of this conversation, how can we be inclusive and welcoming or just to acknowledge anyone's voice missing that you can think of?
Craig: Well, it would be easy to say that the voices of skeptics and doubters and people who claimed to be agnostic or even atheist.
But I think often these are people also have deep conviction. And in some cases they are living ethical lives that are exemplary and maybe even more exemplary than many people who claim to be Christians. And so I think it's important to keep an interfaith perspective when we're talking about ethics and an interfaith perspective that also is broad enough to encompass agnostics and skeptics and atheists.
And I think there are core ethical convictions that transcend religious traditions. And in my work, especially in another book called Shalom church, I hold up four basic ethical convictions that I think are universal to human beings, regardless of faith, regardless of their place and time. And those four convictions have to do with a deep commitment to peacemaking.
That means peaceful a peaceful resolution of conflict. Second core theme has to do with social justice. That is that all people have enough in order that they can live decent lives in this world, enough stuff, and enough protection that they can survive and that they can even have fulfillment in their lives.
A third conviction is the protection of human dignity. This relates to the universal declaration of human rights and that all people are intrinsically worthy and of intrinsic value. And that we're committed to the intrinsic value of all. Who are made in God's image and that is everybody. And then the fourth conviction I think, is acute in our time.
And it has to do with eco justice and care for creation. We need to hold up the wellbeing of creation because we are totally dependent and interdependent with everything that exists and everything that has been created, everything in nature. And so these four values, peacemaking, social justice, human dignity, and care for creation.
Barbara: Thank you. I often ask if there's an elephant in the room when it comes to the conversation of the day, and I think ethics is there just a herd of elephants tromping around, but anything in particular that you'd like to lift up as we conclude our conversation today around any sort of glaring elephants, nothing against elephants, of course.
Craig: I would like to hold up the phenomenon of scapegoating as something that I see happening throughout our world and increasing the intensity in our society.
I think that human beings have a way of dealing with their own stress, their own anxiety and their own fear. And the way that groups deal with their anxiety and fear is that they find somebody to blame. This is what I mean by scapegoat. And the scapegoats are usually identified as being different than I am in some regard.
And I see really that this is happening on every level in our society. It happens in homes where there is someone in the family who is set apart and blamed for being the problem in our family. You could see it in schools with the phenomenon of bullying. You can see it in a gang violence in the streets.
And you can see it really in every level of society, including international politics. And one of the things that is very important is for us to recognize this this tendency, we have to identify somebody else to blame for our problems to scapegoat somebody else. And one of the things I think is really a gift of the Christian story about the crucifixion of Jesus is, is that when we look at the crucifixion of Jesus, what we see is here is somebody who was scapegoated, but did not deserve it here as someone who was blamed by the society.
But I said from the cross, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. And I think that this message from the cross by Jesus. Can have great significance, not only for Christian people, but for all people that we would begin to recognize when we are scapegoating others and curb resistant saying there has to be another way.
There has to be a peaceful way to resolve this without any more blaming or any more scapegoating.
Barbara: Do you have any particular resources in mind for those strategies? We have some websites, currents journal, which isn't necessarily only about ethics and life of faith.info that you're involved with. But is there anything else that you recommend that somebody take a look at if they'd like to delve a little bit deeper?
Craig: If I could revisit those four themes, let me mention something related to each of those. With regard to peacemaking and what I just said about scapegoating, the work of Rene Girard is very important and he has many interpreters such as Gill Bailey and others who have written about the significance of Girard's work and kind of trying to help us recognize when we're scapegoating.
The work by the organization, the fellowship of reconciliation for peacemaking that is trying to advocate for nonviolent resolution of conflict with regard to social justice. I think that the work of Jesus on kingdom of God and those who are interpreting what kingdom of God means for our time could be very useful for the listeners.
I think of the work of Walter Wink and the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether and others. With regard to defending human dignity, I encourage people to take a look at the universal declaration of human rights and to hold that up and to see how it is deeply rooted in a conviction about the worth of every person.
And with regard to care for creation, I think of the work of my colleagues, Larry Rasmussen and Lisa Dahill among others and the organization Lutherans restoring creation.
Barbara: Thanks.
Craig: I want to thank you for the invitation to be a part of this broadcast.
Barbara: Of course, thank you so much for your time today.
Resources:
Genesis 3:8-9
Luke 10
Free Indeed: The Heart of Lutheran Ethics (2022) by Craig Nessan
“The Integrity of the Body of Christy” by Craig Nessan and Arden Mahlberg
Rene Girard
Fellowship of Reconciliation https://forusa.org
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America www.elca.org
Walter Wink
Rosemary Radford Ruether
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Larry Rasmussen
https://lutheransrestoringcreation.org
Lisa Dahill