Religion and Morality

I think that this is is an interesting issue which often get mishandled. Usually religious apologists who discuss it take a strong meta-ethical line, that is, they make claims about the nature of value and moral truth. The issues at stake are complex, however, and people plunge in without the requisite philosophical sophistication to say anything sensible. The argumentative atheist, on the other hand, often thinks in terms of moral motivation, imagining that the only special motivation religion brings is the fear of hell and hope of heaven, from which assumption he reasonably concludes that the supposed connection between religion and morality is a sham because it’s all self-interest anyway. Additionally, no one likes to be told ‘I’m morally superior to you’, which it is very natural for the atheist to hear once this subject is broached. I will focus on the modest claim that, for any given person, that person would probably be morally better if they were a Christian than if they were an atheist. I will be arguing from presuppositions that (I hope) an atheist can easily accept, but paying attention to what Christianity is actually like rather than what some argumentative atheists seem to think it’s like. I will be focussing on Christianity because that’s what I know; I daresay that some points I make can be transferred to other religions, but others are more specific.

1. Love and Gratitude.

If you like me, you’re more likely to do me a favour. If I’ve done you favours in the past, you’re even more likely to do me a favour. If you love me, and are confident that I love you and would do anything for you, then there’s very little you wouldn’t do for me either. This last is the relationship that a Christian takes herself to have with God. The Christian believes that the love of God is the very reason for her own existence, that God suffered death for her sake, and that, yes, God will bring her peace, joy, and life eternal. This quite naturally disposes her to do what God asks, and what God asks is that we ‘love one another, as I  have loved you’. It’s all very well to read ‘Is not this the fast that I choose:  to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free,  and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover him,and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?’ and think that it represents an admirable ideal, but it’s something else entirely to be convinced that the Creator of the universe, who loves you with an unimaginable love, is calling on you personally to do this for His sake. 

2. Christian Paradoxes

Christianity is riddled and replete with paradox. Fully God and fully man, the first will be last and the last will be first, my burden is light//take up your cross, a person is justified by faith apart from works/faith without works is dead, I am a worm/you are gods, service is perfect freedom, what is impossible with man is possible with God, etc etc. The force of many of these paradoxes, rightly understood, is partly this: not even the greatest saint will ever do all that God asks, and yet what God asks is not beyond the capacity of the meanest sinner. The basis of our relationship with God is not a set quotient of good works, which one person may already have exceeded and another cannot dream of attaining, but an attitude: trust in God, sincere regret for our failures, and sincere striving to do better in His sight. However good or bad we are, then, God calls us to become better by a realistic margin.  Christianity can be for anyone a continual encouragement to self-improvement. More than this, Christianity insists that improvement of the self is never truly improvement by the self: it is always improvement by God. We rely not on our own strength, but on a strength much greater. The effect of this should be a re-valuation of our perceived limits: whatever we think is the best we can do unaided, we should be confident that in faith, with God’s help, we can do better. And if we are confident that we can do better, then we will be able to do better. That’s simply a truism. We will take on more demanding tasks and apply ourselves to them with greater resolve, and so do better than we would have done otherwise, even if no divine interruptions in the order of nature are in fact forthcoming to assist us.

3. Prayer

Argumentative atheists will often dismiss prayer. I’ve always found this puzzling. I suppose people are so focussed on the issue of whether intercession is effective in the double-blind trial sense that they forget the banal but still practically significant ways in which the act of prayer affects the one who prays. First of all, there’s my very first point. Praying daily is a daily reminder of God’s love for us and our reasons for loving Him. It thus naturally increases our inclination to serve others in His name. Then there’s confession and repentance. If we regularly take time to call to mind our failings, and then humbly and sincerely beg forgiveness, we will be more aware of our faults, and give into them less easily, than we would otherwise. Also, there’s petition for virtue. At the very least, this is a continual reminder of our resolve to practice virtue. Moreover, the more firmly we believe that prayer for virtue increases virtue, the more our virtue will be increased. That requires no more than the placebo effect. Finally, I would like to put in a good word for intercession itself. As such cynics as Ricky Gervais delight in pointing out, intercession is not an act of charity in the modern sense. But it is an exercise of charity in the traditional sense. That is, making an effort to bring others to mind, enter their perspective, make their concerns our own, and sincerely will their good, is likely to make us more considerate and more compassionate in our daily life. The heart is a muscle. I don’t dispute that an hour spent feeding the homeless is on balance better than an hour spent praying for them, but setting one against the other misses the point. If the choice is simply between praying and not praying, better to pray. Also, volunteering is difficult, not merely in that actually being in a soup kitchen poses a range of physical, emotional, and psychological demands, but in the trivial sense that you have to be in the right place at the right time and it’s just a hassle to organise. Anyone can pray at any time. If it works, you’ll be more motivated to take on the hassle of active service than you would have been otherwise.

I am become a Christian

‘This definitely doesn’t mean that I believe in God’. So I told the Vicar of St. Mary’s Church in Silverton, Devon, when I consented to be baptised. My mother tells me that I was 7 at the time. Now, two thirds a lifetime later, I intend at last to be confirmed. And yes, this definitely does mean that I believe in God (though if my stance had remained the same, I daresay the Vicar of St. Mary’s Church in Oxford would have been quite unperturbed).

What in the intervening time has changed? It was not for any lack of interest that I dismissed God; on the contrary, I have always found Him fascinating. For many years I was determined to justify my youthful dismissal intellectually; I struggled with the basic arguments for and against God, and they were my first engagement in philosophy. I recall with particular fondness my earliest attempts at refuting the ontological argument. My practice, then as now, was to wander the streets of Oxford, synchronising bodily steps with steps of reasoning. The more care I took over my own ideas, however, the more dismayed I became at the careless arguments being offered all around me for the very conclusions I drew so dearly. I saw myself as standing quite apart from Dawkins, whom I had once admired, and all those prepared just to rehearse him. I began to take seriously the more than ordinary stillness that marks out holy places. I held firm to my conclusions, nonetheless, and was able to support them with ever increasing sophistication.

My course turned decisively a little over four years ago. The event displays in retrospect the whole character of a miracle: the Cambridge philosophy tripos rejected me. Determined on Oxbridge, I decided to wait a year and try a new tactic. I settled on the philosophy and theology joint degree at Oxford, and at Oriel College in particular. Remembering last night, which saw the last of three theology subject dinners, I cannot believe that I have made a better decision in my whole life, except perhaps my initial decisions to take up and then to focus on philosophy in Sixth Form.

I suppose I softened myself up in various ways before arriving. I made a study of Eliot’s Four Quartets, and responded with sympathetic awe to their austere intensity. I read Terry Eagleton’s sharp and wise response to the New Atheists, and indeed I even saw Eagleton speak alongside Archbishop Williams, managing to catch the latter for a few words afterwards. When I finally did arrive, two factors were crucial to the shift of my attitudes. The first was the study of theology itself. Here was intellectual work that greatly stimulated and rewarded me. And I felt that this work was important, that there was such a thing as being right and wrong in this discipline, and it mattered which you were. The second factor was Oriel Chapel. Right from the beginning I attended regularly, and was soon established in its small community. The beauty and the mystery of our services, not to mention the warmth of the community itself, attracted me greatly.

Apart from an attack of something like depression during my second year, I have been very happy at Oriel. The people, the place, the work that I do – all have nourished and fulfilled me. And part of what has nourished and fulfilled me here, whether in the theology section of the library or the Newman Oratory,  has been Christianity. The rich and satisfying intellectual system worked out by the Church Fathers, the passionate symbols of John’s Gospel, reading the mystery of the eucharist expounded by Cyril of Alexandria one evening and witnessing the same mystery enacted by Robert Tobin the next – all these things have brought me joy. When finally I returned to my old playground in the philosophy of religion, I was no longer interested in criticising theistic arguments and defending atheistic ones. Instead, I was newly sensitive to a different kind of argument, the idea that someone’s warrant for a religious belief is not necessarily a function of the power of the philosophical arguments they can adduce in that belief’s favour. After all, I had at the start of the course tried cobbling together arguments for the belief that I have a hand, and they had not been especially compelling either.

After a marvellous carol service at the end of Michaelmas, I returned to Cambridge with what Brendan Harris would call my soteriological imagination aflame, fully intent on finding a church in Cambridge to claim for my own. So far I have been happy at St. Benet’s. I have only attended two services, but was made very welcome from the first and over the course of the vacation spent several hours there alone in fruitful prayer. Since starting this term, I have also spent much time alone in the Newman Oratory. Intellectual scrutiny can only take one so far. Either you make a serious attempt at personal prayer, and so find the living God, or you can wait to search out where He is hiding before you start to pray, and neither start nor find. Still, until the last week or so there had been a gap between private prayer and public profession. For closing it, I have primarily to thank the earnest evangelicals of Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union and their mission week. Their friendly zeal for my soul brought me focus and courage. I may not be about to accept penal substitution or a pre-Exilic audience for ‘Comfort, O my people…’ any time soon, but today I proudly say that they are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anyway, that’s quite enough spiritual autobiography for one night (and for all my high sounding words about personal prayer and the living God, I haven’t prayed yet and would probably fall asleep the moment I tried). I’ll doubtless get around to topics of less import than the origin and end of all things eventually. Till then, may the loving power of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, or just have a secularly nice day, as you please.