"Oh yeah?" and "So what"?

Now that the new school year is under way, I am reminded of an experience I had as a classroom teacher.  During one semester a crew-cut boy sat in the front row of desks. Whenever I made an outright statement, he would say in a kind of murmur "oh, yeah?" or else "so what?"

I was startled for the first few times that happened. But as time went by, I learned how important his questioning was. First, could I stand by what I was teaching with authority? Did I know facts to back it up? What references did I have?

The second question asks "Is it important?" and "If so, why?"

I stated at one point that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. And with the "Oh, yeah?" ringing in my ears  I went on to explain Lincoln's determination to set aside compromise solutions to the Civil War despite the awful loss of life being experienced. His Gettysburg address and his second inaugural speech set his presidency in a truly patriotic frame.

Then came the "So what?" query. Despite the antagonism directed toward him, Lincoln's constant insistence that "a house divided cannot stand" and his constant reminder that "all men are created equal" gave a giant start to the civil rights movement. We came to understand that it was not only politically correct but a basic fact that "God made of one blood all nations of men."

So I learned a lot about teaching from that student. When we came to discussing Galileo as the founder of our modern scientific age, I faced the same two queries about the validity and the consequences of that definition. Galileo challenged the ingrained religious belief that the sun revolved around the earth and he was accused of atheism, contradicting so-called "revealed truth." He pursued the method of observation and repeated experimenting that gives us the means of understanding our world today.

In later years I stood in the church pulpit and preached about what Jesus said and did. There I discovered that the same two questions needed to be addressed. It was easy to cite Jesus' call to love our neighbor. He repeated the command and amplified it with parables. But then came the second caution, the "So what?"  Our neighbors surely include the homeless, the disabled, the foreign people in our community. What can we do to love them?  Analyzing their problems is a simple task. But spelling out a solution, answering the "So what?" is a demanding challenge. 

We do not need to be impressed by people who recite verses or even chapters from the Bible, the analysts who quote percentages, the historians who compare today's problems with past situations. They play a part in helping us understand our condition. But the big question remains: how do we give life to these teachings by our actions?  How do we love our neighbors of a different race, a different culture, a different level of society?

 The answer we give to that question is our real religion. 

The Biblical Tree

No matter how the story of the Garden of Eden is told, the focus lands on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that meaning of that phrase (that Adam and Eve must not eat of that tree) is obscure; and it is not related to some translation judgment. The phrase is correctly translated, and  I think there is a profound message here.

The central idea is that having certainty of one's assessment of good and evil is impossible. When a human being defends his acts on the basis of KNOWLEDGE of good or evil, he is falsely judging his choice. The Garden parable suggests clearly that moral judgments may be based on outlook, prejudice, race, ethics, commands.......anything but knowledge. Every decision we make arises from our character; we are responsible; we cannot know that we are making the right choice. 

I think of the assessment of U.S. presidents: "we won't know whether he was a good president or not for fifty years."  Think of the bitter appraisal of  Lincoln's presidency that  prevailed through the rest of the 19th century, condemning his unwillingness to compromise, citing his opposition to the Dred Scott decision, deriding his bias toward Negro rights. It suggests that we are incapable of calculating the effects of our decisions.

In his book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel proposes that we "do what is right."   The writers of the Garden parable would not disagree.  But they would emphatically add, "but don't suppose that you can be certainly right." Every decision is more a declaration of faith than a moral certainty

That is why we have the phrase "have the courage of your convictions." The courage to be is the beginning of our journey. The courage to act is a daily challenge.