How do we know what the "right" thing to do is in a given circumstance? How do we make decisions when we're faced with an ethical or moral dilemma? Philosophers and theologians have struggled with this question for centuries. This Sunday it can be our turn! Rev. Peter offers his thoughts (but no easy answers).
Reading
Rev. Howard Thurman “Every Man Must Decide” from Meditations of the Heart, pp. 79-80
The ability to know what is the right thing to do in a given circumstance is a sheer gift of God. The element of gift is inherent in the process of decision. Perhaps gift is the wrong word; it is a quality of genius or immediate inspiration. The process is very simple and perhaps elemental. First, we weigh all the possible alternatives. We examine them carefully, weighing this and weighing that. There is always an abundance of advice available – some of it technical, some of it out of the full-orbed generosity of those who love us and wish us well. Each bit of it has to be weighed and measured in the light of the end sought. This means that the crucial consideration is to know what is the desirable end. What is it that I most want to see happen if the conditions were ideal or if my desire were completely fulfilled? Once this end is clearly visualized, then it is possible to have a sense of direction with reference to the decision that must be made...
Is my decision right or wrong, wise or foolish? At the moment, I may be unable to answer the question. For what is right in the light of the present set of facts may not be able to stand up under the scrutiny of unfolding days. I may not have appraised the facts properly. My decision may have been largely influenced by my
desires which were at work at the very center of my conscious processes. In the face of all the uncertainties that surround any decision, the wise [person] acts in the light of his or her best judgment illumined by the integrity of his or her profoundest spiritual insights. Then the rest is in the hands of the future and in the mind of
God. The possibility of error, of profound and terrible error, is at once the height and the depth of our freedom.
Sermon
What would you do to save this animal? What would you do to save his entire species? This is the Scimitar-horned Oryx. A full-grown Scimitar Oryx stands about 3 ? feet tall and weighs in at around 400 pounds. Their long, slender horns resemble a curved sword; hence their name. The horns, which both male and female grow, can reach lengths in excess of four feet. Some speculate that this animal is the inspiration for the mythical unicorn. The Scimitar-horned Oryx is native to sub-Saharan Africa, but due to both climate change and overhunting, they are now extinct in the wild. But captive breeding programs have kept the species alive, and the largest population of Scimitar-horned Oryx now resides in Texas. That’s right, Texas. Let’s learn a little more about conservation efforts in the Lone Star State. [Watch YouTube video: 60 Minutes "Hunting to Conserve"]
You can watch the full episode of this program on the CBS News website, but I think this gives you a flavor for what it’s all about. Watching this program, my mind became completely captured, and confused, by the moral question it raises: Is it acceptable to raise endangered animals so that they can be hunted and killed if, by doing so, you are saving the species from extinction? And that got me to thinking about how we make moral decisions and how we resolve moral dilemmas. Because, frankly, I haven’t yet figured out how I feel about this particular issue.
Any philosophy major worth his or her salt will tell you that we’ve struggled with making moral choices since the time of the ancients. From Aristotle to Kant we’ve attempted to devise strategies and approaches to reaching the “right” answer to complicated ethical questions. And just so that you don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going to give you the right answer to how to arrive at the “right” answer in the next 15 minutes or so. But just because there’s no one clear resolution to this issue isn’t a reason not to consider the alternatives. So, using this question of whether we should be killing the Scimitar-horned Oryx to in order to save him, let’s see what we can learn.
Since it’s Sunday morning and we’re here in church, perhaps we should first turn to sacred texts for some direction. There is certainly lots of killing in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew Bible, but that seems to be primarily the provenance of God himself. It’s God who floods the earth, killing all living things not saved by Noah, and it’s at God’s direction that Abraham sets out to kill Isaac. Moses meets with his maker on Mount Sinai and brings down the tablets containing the 10 Commandments, one of which is “Thou shall not kill.” Yet we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes that there is both a time to kill and a time to heal. And if we’re to believe that Jesus died for our sins, that we have been saved by his suffering, then perhaps we might find some redemption in death.
The Qur’an offers a qualified exception to the prohibition against killing. It tells us “Do not take life – which God has made sacred – except for just cause.” (Surah 17.33) It’s pretty clear that most religions, and certainly the Western Abrahamic traditions, teach us that killing is wrong, except when it’s not. Turning to the East, we find somewhat less equivocation. The Tao Te Ching urges us to reject violence in all its forms. “Fine weapons are instruments of evil,” it tells us. “They are hated by men. Therefore those who possess Tao turn away from them...” (Tao Te Ching 31)
The Bible is clear on one point, and that’s in its mandate to us human beings that we are to be stewards of the earth and all its creatures. The Book of Genesis uses the word “dominion,” and while some interpret that to mean that we can dominate and control all living things to our own advantage, a more enlightened interpretation is that we are entrusted with the care of God’s great creation. Baha’i’s believe that God is invested in every creature and that humankind is mandated to care for the plants and animals of the earth accordingly. “Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing,” we are told, “He has shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes.” Similarly, Hinduism teaches “Truly do I exist in all beings.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 11.2) Unitarian Universalism teaches us that we are part of the interdependent web of all existence and urges us to affirm and promote this principle through our relationships with all of creation and our actions toward it.
There seems, then to be a unifying religious principle that teaches us that human beings are in a position of special responsibility when it comes to caring for creatures like the Scimitar-horned Oryx. But the world’s religions don’t tell us what’s best to do in any particular circumstance. Is our obligation to care for each and every individual living thing, ensuring its maximum longevity and quality of life? What if that imposes burdens on other living things, or jeopardizes the vitality of the species? When, through human intervention, we’ve taken a species to the brink, are we to do whatever it takes to bring it back at any cost? What’s the right thing to do?
To move us forward in our quest for an answer to our Oryx dilemma, let’s turn now to the teachings of philosophers down the ages. We’ll look at three different approaches to our question. One is focused on the rights of the individual, another on achieving what is commonly called the “common good,” and the third is utilitarianism, or something of a cost-benefit approach. Let’s take this last one first.
As many of us know, utilitarianism is an ethical approach advocated by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the 19th Century. To analyze an issue using this method, we first identify the various courses of action available to us. Second, we ask who will be affected by each action and what benefits or harms will be derived from each. And third, we choose the action that will produce the greatest benefits and the least harm. The ethical action is the one that provides the greatest good for the greatest number.[1] Utilitarianism is also sometimes called “maximizing consequentialism” because it focuses primarily on how to get the greatest good at the least cost or, to use the vernacular, how to get the biggest bang for your buck.
A utilitarian approach to our Oryx dilemma would tell us, pretty clearly, I believe, that hunting and killing a handful of Oryx so that great herds might flourish and repopulate the earth is the right thing to do. If the cost of re-establishing the Scimitar-horned Oryx as a viable species on the planet is that some individual animals must die, then so be it. I have to admit that this is where my mind first went when I heard about the Texas ranchers and their game farms.
The primary problem with utilitarianism is that it takes no notice of, or at least subjugates, the rights of the individual. It ignores what the American philosopher John Rawls calls “the separateness of persons.” Rawls and others argue that using one individual for the benefit of others is detrimental to the overall society because it devalues the individual. Utilitarianism, they say, can be used to justify just about any action taken in the name of the greater good. For example, one could argue that slavery was a moral system because it promoted commerce and productivity, and it raised the standard of living for a large segment of the population.
And so, if we shift our focus to the rights of the individual, we are called to consider two very different, and perhaps conflicting, concerns. First, what are the individual rights of the rancher? We would probably not deny that he has a right to his property. And our economic system confers on him the right to use that property to maximize his personal wealth, provided, of course, that he pays his taxes and is otherwise a law-abiding citizen. What is the difference between raising exotic species like Oryx and gazelle and Cape buffalo, and raising cattle or sheep? Simply that the latter are more plentiful? If we deny the rancher the right to raise and kill Scimitar-horned Oryx, wouldn’t we, on the same principle, deny him the right to raise and kill domesticated animals?
Which leads me to the second question of individual rights: what of the rights of the Oryx itself? Do we believe that each individual Oryx has the right to life? Or is this a right we confer only upon our fellow human beings? Does the fact that the rancher has bred and raised the Oryx make the Oryx his “property” to do with what he wants, or is that right constrained by an inalienable right to life that springs into being when the Oryx is born? While all of us here agree that every individual has inherent worth and dignity, does that include the Oryx? Or does that principle apply only to people? All of us meat-eaters need to consider this the next time we bite into a hamburger.
I suppose if we say the rancher has rights as an individual but the Oryx does not (although I’m not sure on what basis we would reach that conclusion, other than some kind of triumphalism which claims we humans are a species superior to all others), then the answer to our conundrum is clear: The rancher can breed and raise and hunt and kill as many Oryx as he wants, whether or not he’s also saving the species. And if we are Adam Smith types, we’ll trust that the guiding hand of the free market will adequately regulate the breeding and the killing. Presumably, as long as there are hunters willing to pay ranchers to hunt them, the Oryx will be safe from extinction.
If, however, we claim that the Oryx itself possesses the right to life, that as an individual being in creation it should be allowed to live its days seeking out its greatest contentment and satisfaction, then the hunts should end. But, of course, so would many, if not all, the captive breeding programs end, too. And eventually the Oryx will die out as a species. And we’re left with the conundrum of how we differentiate between the Oryx and the Angus.
Our last stop on this brief tour of ethical decision-making brings us to what is called the “common-good” approach. This theory affirms our interconnectedness. It says that, while we’re all individuals, we all live in relationship with each other, and that we must always strive for the best and highest outcomes for all. As one writer has put it, “Appeals to the common good urge us to view ourselves as members of the same community, reflecting on broad questions concerning the kind of society we want to become and how we are to achieve that society. While respecting and valuing the freedom of individuals to pursue their own goals, the common-good approach challenges us also to recognize and further those goals we share in common.”[2]
In the case of the Oryx, the common value we share, I would argue, is biodiversity. We know how intricately connected and delicately balanced our biosphere is. How the loss of a species can have unexpected and sometimes dire consequences on the well-being of us all. To say nothing of the common value of beauty – the very richness we find in diversity itself – and the loss we sustain when an animal as elegant and majestic as the Scimitar-horned Oryx disappears from the planet. The common-good approach would say that we need to do everything in our power to preserve this species and to repopulate sub-Saharan Africa with this indigenous member of that ecosystem. It would tell us that we should be doing this without the need for enterprising ranchers who breed them for the hunt. But, alas, it doesn’t tell us what to think of what’s happening today on those ranches down in Texas.
I said at the outset that I was not going to give you the answer to this thorny question, and it feels good that I’ve achieved my goal in that regard. You may be more perplexed about how to go about making moral choices than you were when you arrived this morning. But that’s a good thing. Because I am not here, we are not here, to tell you what to think or what the right answers are. We are bound together in this religious community by a common value of questioning, and by a commitment, a promise, a covenant to share in the struggle to find answers. Let us walk this path together, that we may nourish and nurture each other in our quest for the right, the good, the true, wherever it may be found, whatever it might be.
This day and every day, I wish you peace. Amen.
Closing Words: Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture movement, has given us two frames of reference for moral decision-making. First, he tells us encouragingly: "The human spirit yearns for goodness as the eye longs for beauty." And then he offers this advice: "Act so as to elicit in others the distinctive excellence characteristic of each of them as fellow members of the ethical whole, and thereby to elicit that excellence more fully in yourself."
[1] "Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making" Issues in Ethics, v.7, n.1, Winter 1996 (Markula Center for Applied Ethics)
[2] "Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making" Issues in Ethics, v.7, n.1, Winter 1996 (Markula Center for Applied Ethics)
