Scott Rae - Doing the Right Thing: Making Moral Choices in a World Full of Options

R OBERT P. G EORGE AND M ELISSA M OSCHELLA

B e ready always with an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15). The apostle Peter addressed these words of exhortation to the Christian communities of Asia Minor living in the midst of a hostile pagan culture. Their salience for Christians in America today could not be greater. We too live in a culture starkly at odds with Christian values, and ever more aggressively so. We too are called to give witness to our faith not only with words but also with upright moral conduct even when that conduct clashes with the relativism and hedonism that surround us, and even at the risk of persecution. And we too are called to play our part in transforming our culture, bringing our laws and customs into line with the deep truth that each and every human being has inherent and equal dignity a truth revealed by God but also accessible to human reason.

To be able to live as coherent Christians in todays world, we need the intellectual tools that will enable us to determine what the right thing to do is in complex situations. Moreover, to be able to explain and defend moral truths in conversations with relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues, and also in discussions and debates in the public square we need to speak a language that everyone, including nonbelievers, can understand. For both of these tasks, reason is indispensable. That is why this book, and the DVD series that it accompanies, are so valuable. They approach morality primarily from the perspective of natural law that is, from the perspective of what reason can tell us about which choices, actions, attitudes, and habits respect and promote human dignity and genuine human flourishing, and which do not.

Natural law is, in its most basic outlines, written by God on the human heartthats why at some level, everyone understands that things like murder, rape, and slavery are wrong. Yet not all of the requirements of natural law are so obvious. The natural laws prohibition on killing innocent human beings is evident to all but the psychopath, but the application of that prohibition to the unborn, to human embryos, and to the severely debilitated is not. Careful study and reasoning are necessary to understand and explain why abortion, embryo-destructive research, and physician-assisted suicide are wrong, reasoning of the sort found in chapter 4 of this book. Most people who accept these forms of killing as legitimate who have bought in to what John Paul II called the culture of death have simply never heard or given serious consideration to the opposing arguments. Informing ourselves and then speaking out respectfully but boldly can have a powerful effect.

Doing so, of course, requires not only knowledge, but also courage, along with a host of other virtues. Morality is not only about rules or norms although norms of upright conduct are among the most important moral truths but also involves the cultivation of a virtuous character, the formation of good habits that train our will and emotions, enabling us to know and do the good and live by valid norms that specify what it means to respect the integral human good in a constant and reliable way. It is within the family that this training in virtue primarily takes place. As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, It makes no small difference whether we form habits of one kind or another from early youth. If we are concerned about moral decline within our cultural and its devastating effects economic collapse, political corruption, juvenile crime, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, etc. then we need to be concerned first and foremost with strengthening the institution of marriage as the foundation of healthy family life. And here too is another area in which it is crucial that Christians be capable of giving reason-based arguments to defend this vital yet beleaguered institution.

In a 1953 letter, C. S. Lewis proposes the following line of attack for the moral and religious decay he perceived in the culture of his time: For my part I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also at a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God. For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism. If these words were true in the 1950s, how much more so in our own day! Christians must fight doggedly against the moral relativism that saps the vital energy of our culture. This book and accompanying DVD series are powerful arms for the battle.