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<\/p>\nMrs. Dalloway<\/em> is a creative and post-modern presentation of just another day in between-the-wars London through the eyes, stream of consciousness, and thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa is a fifty-something upper-middle class woman who is throwing a party that evening. . Her daughter\u2019s history tutor observes that Clarissa \u201ccame from the most worthless of all classes\u2014the rich, with a smattering of culture.\u201d There\u2019s no particular reason for the party\u2014she just likes planning and hosting parties. Clarissa\u2019s husband Richard and others often ask her why she throws such parties\u2014her reflections on this question raise an issue that was more and more pressing for millions of people post-World War I. As Iris Murdoch phrased it, What can we do now that there is no God?<\/strong> In a world in which it is more and more difficult to believe in a good God, how is one to live?<\/p>\n Clarissa\u2019s short answer to the question about halfway through the novel is that over time she had \u201cevolved this atheist\u2019s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.\u201d She doesn\u2019t need to believe in God in order to recognize the \u201cexquisite moments\u201d that she unexpectedly encounters daily; such moments are sufficient reason to be generous in seeking to create similar moments for others. Later an old friend. Peter Walsh, is thinking about Clarissa and describes \u00a0deeper reasons for her commitment to goodness.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, she was one of the most thorough-going skeptics he had ever met . . . As the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part . . . decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. Those ruffians, the Gods, shan\u2019t have it all their own way\u2014her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting, and spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady.<\/strong><\/p>\n Close to two decades later, as World War II was raging, Albert Camus developed a similar position in his philosophical essay \u201cThe Myth of Sisyphus\u201d (which we will be reading later this semester). How is one to imagine moral behavior and inspiration in a world without God?<\/p>\n Camus argues that the motivation for such a life begins with facing things as they are and accepting no excuses or exits of consolation. We live in an absurd world\u2014but that does not eliminate the possibility of moral commitment.<\/p>\n The absurd man thus catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.<\/strong><\/p>\n One can choose to live without consoling and comforting stories. Toward the end of his essay, Camus imagines Oedipus, old and blind, ravaged throughout his life by forces beyond his control. Rather than despair, Oedipus choose otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cI conclude that all is well,\u201d says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.<\/strong><\/p>\n A central issue in my ethics courses has always been whether moral behavior is connected in any essential way to belief in something greater than ourselves. Many, perhaps, most, people of faith assume that it is. If one believes, for instance, that human nature is fundamentally flawed (call it \u201coriginal sin,\u201d if you like), then moral goodness in a human life must be energized with divine assistance. Yet students, many of whom have been taught something like this for their whole lives, know intuitively that \u201cmoral atheist\u201d is not an oxymoron. Although moral goodness can<\/strong> be placed within a framework of faith, does it have<\/strong> to be?<\/p>\n A Jewish friend and colleague told me a number of years ago that Judaism is the only monotheistic religion in which one can be both a faithful member and an atheist. It struck me as an obvious overstatement at the time, but over the years I have returned to her observation, because it says something very interesting both about Judaism and faith in general. As I\u2019ve learned more and more about Judaism over the years, my friend\u2019s comment has made more sense. Judaism is an \u201corthopraxic\u201d faith, one based on right practice rather than on right belief, on which orthodox religions tend to focus. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth who died in 2020, once said in an interview,<\/p>\n [Jews] believe in salvation every day. We believe that salvation comes through good deeds. Not through faith. That\u2019s not to say that God isn\u2019t the fundamental motivation why you do things. But we believe that we have a personal responsibility for our actions and accountability to God . . . Jews believe that God expects you to do good in the world. That you are His partner.<\/strong><\/p>\n Partnership with God is a significantly different perspective than obedience to the divine. Reflecting on this over time has incrementally changed how I conceive of my Christian faith.<\/p>\n Another twentieth century figure who plays a central role in my classes this semester is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his role in a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The execution took place less than a month before the end of World War II. Bonhoeffer spent close to two years in prison before his execution; his letters from prison sketch a very different understanding of Christianity than the Protestantism that he was taught and that he preached in his younger years. In a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer writes<\/p>\n God would have us know that we must live as people who manage our lives without God. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.<\/strong><\/p>\n Bonhoeffer also writes that<\/p>\n