Good People; Eroding Ethics?

Good People; Eroding Ethics? July 6, 2015

eroding eyeIn 1938 Nicolas Winton, a stock broker, took a two week vacation from his home in England to Czechoslovakia. Those two weeks were spent productively. He ended up saving the lives of 669 mostly Jewish children from certain death in the Nazi camps. An apparently humble man, he didn’t even mention the effort to his wife when he married her years later. She found out when, looking around their attic, she found a scrap book that told the tale.

When the story was rediscovered, there were celebrations in London and in Prague, one where many of the children he’d saved, now adults, came to be with him. The Queen knighted him. Then of course he was interviewed and the question was posed, “Why did you do it?” He didn’t seem to have a ready answer. In fact there were moments in the interviews when he didn’t seem to understand why he was being asked the question. “People do things,” was his stab at it. The interviewers pressed just a bit. “Was it a religious conviction? Did it come from your Jewish heritage?” No, that wasn’t it. In fact he was a practicing Christian for a good part of his life, that was until he realized that Christians on both sides of the war were praying for victory. He said he didn’t have much use for religion after that. “No,” he said, that wasn’t it, “It was ethics. I believe in ethics.”

Really? What does that mean? That seemed to be the question on the interviewers mind, so he worked to elaborate saying in effect, “If people just had ethics we wouldn’t have all these problems.” That’s true enough, but that doesn’t answer the question of why he wants to solve “all these problems” in the first place. That’s where the real motivation lies and the answer to that question gets to the heart of life’s meaning and purpose. Those questions are what religion is all about. So Nicolas Winton had little use for religion and yet deep religious conviction shown through his life. He didn’t stop serving humanity in 1938, his whole life was lived in service.

Nicholas Winton was what we’d call a good man, a mensch to be sure, but why? Where did it come from? I suspect that it was formed in this man very early on, long before he was a practicing Christian. It was so much a part of him that he was incredulous at the questions. It was as though he was saying back, “What do you mean, ‘Why did I do it?’ what else would a person do?” What else indeed? It is the sort of thing that is built into your identity. You can build an inner core like that as you grow, but it’s harder if it’s not there to start.

But just as it can be built, it can also be eroded; that’s for sure. Living in a culture that operates without purpose beyond “I want to be as comfortable and entertained as I can for as long as I can,” will erode ethics. We don’t even realize it, but it happens. Crisis can erode ethics. It seems to me that’s what happened in this country in response to the extraordinary crisis of 9/11. So what maintains ethics? When we are faced with a moment of choice, when if we make the unethical move, we will enjoy more “success,” what maintains the necessary, internal conviction that the ethical breach would violate something in our core identity? I really hate to say it, but that thing is religion.

I’m not pointing to any particular religion here and truth be told many institutions that call themselves “religions” have lost track of their responsibility in this regard; they do not provide a plausible framework of meaning and purpose. One wonders if that isn’t why are society is stuck in a cycle where it must respond to each social disease with a new set of rules, trying to impose from the outside what necessarily must be formed on the inside.

I wonder how many mensches who feel the way Nicholas Winton did about religion. A lot I’d say. I seem to meet them all the time. I often wonder what to say to these excellent people. At one level they don’t seem to need religion. Nicolas Winton held pretty well. I’d love to know what the social support structure was around him, but I’m not saying you can’t be ethical without religion; I’m saying it is difficult to maintain in the face of eroding forces all around us. So on the other hand, I think we do need connection to the presence of mystery, the dynamic of love. I think we do need to reflect on our lives in relation to that creative power, to that which drives evolution’s story forward. We need to be sourced in the power of creation and connected to a love so beautiful, so binding that our ethics do not erode. If you can’t find a religious institution that provides that opportunity either keep looking, insist that your local place of worship live up to its purpose, or create your own. (If you do that, let me know; I’d be glad to help.)

Grace and peace,

Sam Alexander

www.gracecomesfirst.net


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