WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT SITUATION ETHICS

The position I take in this paper is that in deciding matters of right and wrong, which is what ethics is about, one’s decision must take into consideration the circumstances involved or the situation in which the problem is found. This is to say that the right course of action must be decided situationally. Most, if not all, moral problems are solved in part by a reference to it all depends, i.e., it all depends on the situation. Is it right to deceive? Is it right to kill? Is abortion morally justifiable? Is it right to drive in excess of the speed limit? Is it right to break into your neighbor’s house?

To say that responsible moral thinking necessitates a reference to the situation involved is to say that none of these questions, along with hundreds like them, are to be decided arbitrarily. There cannot be a categorical yes or no to any of them. Deception can be both legal and moral, with both the C.I.A. and God himself as practitioner. Justifiable killing is sometimes merciful as well as moral. Abortion is now legal in some states because it is realized that in certain circumstances abortion is the best solution to the problem. And not only do emergency vehicles break the speed limit, but anyone is within his rights to do so if circumstances demand it. Moreover, it would be wrong not to break into your neighbor’s house if in doing so you would save his life or avert disaster to his property.

Yet it is readily agreed that all these things would ordinarily be wrong. It is the situation that makes the difference. Or better said, it is the person in the situation that makes the difference, which means that the view I am defending might better be called “Person-in-the-situation” ethics. This is to say that in any situation that presents a moral problem it is the claim of the person that is greater than the demands of abstract ideas of what is right. Persons are more important than principles. As Jesus said, “The sabbath is made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

We have implied that the question of whether speeding is morally right must be answered with It all depends. There is in moral thought a concept known as “the principle of necessity,” which says that if it is necessary to act contrary to laws that one would ordinarily honor in order to help someone in an emergency situation, then “what is necessary” takes precedence over law. If I come upon you lying beside a road, wounded and dying, it would not only be right for me to break the speed limit in getting you to hospital, but, if necessary, to “borrow” a nearby car in order to meet the emergency. This is why ships at sea, forbidden to enter certain harbors, may enter those harbors in an emergency. It is persons that make the difference. Legally speaking, Jesus violated sabbath laws, but it was always for persons that he did so. Even for a beast one might do so for our Lord taught: “Which of you, having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?”

This raises the question of the nature of right. What do we mean by right and wrong anyway? What makes right right and wrong wrong? Is something right because it conforms to some law of principle and wrong when it violates that law or principle? Is stealing wrong because of the law Thou shalt not steal. or did God give that law because stealing is wrong? If there were no law about stealing, would stealing then be right?

Things are right or wrong, I propose, in reference to their effect upon people. Stealing is wrong because it hurts people, usually. Speeding is wrong because it hurts people, usually. Honesty is right because it benefits people, ordinarily. Getting an education is right because it helps people, ordinarily.

Something is right, therefore, to the extent that it proves beneficial to persons, and it is wrong to the extent that it hurts persons. This is why God laid down such rules as Thou shalt do no murder and Thou shalt not commit adultery. In His infinite wisdom God saw, what man himself comes to see in his own experience, that murder and adultery are an indignity upon man and destructive of his happiness. Murder and adultery are not made wrong by being included in the Ten Commandments, but they are included there because they were already wrong. They were made wrong by the very nature of God’s creation of man in honor and dignity. There is no evidence that Cain had heard any such law against murder when he slew his brother Abel. He knew it was wrong by the very situation of being human and being part of a family upon earth.

This view of the nature of right, that it is that which enhances the dignity of man, has its own built-in implications. If it is right for me to speed in order to get you to the hospital because this preserves your dignity as a person, it remains right only if in doing so I am sensitive to the well-being of other persons. I may be justified in going 60 in a 40 mile zone. but not 80. What is right becomes wrong, if in getting you to the hospital I am responsible for the injury or death of a dozen other people or even of one other person. Right is thus determined by the demands of the situation. Gen. Robert E. Lee allowed his freezing Confederate army to gather firewood by sawing the top portion of fence posts from Yankee farms, thus leaving the fences intact. This was morally responsible, because of the welfare of persons, but it may well have been morally irresponsible had he flagrantly destroyed the fences of helpless farmers, because of the welfare of persons.

All this is to say that value is not in abstractions, whether in the form of rules or principles in a book or laws in a constitution. Value lies in what happens to people. This is why the Bible is not to be viewed as inherently good, or any law of man as good per se. The Bible has value in that something important happens to people when they are influenced by it. There is, for example, no inherent value in the principle of freedom itself, however much the Bible teaches it. It is only when freedom happens to people that there is value. It is so with all human laws. The authority of a police officer is not a value in itself, but only as that authority leads to good things happening to people or averting the bad things that might happen.

This is to say that God acts for man in reference to man’s situation. God never acts arbitrarily, but meaningfully, in view of what is best for man. This is love, and this is religion, for religion is a love story of what God has done for man. All that God demands of us, all that He has commanded, is an expression of his love. The Bible, therefore, rather than being an arbitrary collection of laws and principles, is a testimony of God’s love for man. Its ultimate design is to show how God loves us through Jesus, and to teach us that through him we are to will our neighbor’s good.

And here we have the key to situation ethics. In every situation I am to will my neighbor’s good. The Bible, through its laws and principles, provides near-absolute guidelines as to how I can best will my neighbor’s good. I say “near-absolute” because of the contingency of situations, man’s predicament being as varied as it is. The Bible speaks to man in the normal, ordinary pursuits of every day life. It is important, therefore, that we realize that underlying all biblical law is the duty to will my neighbor’s good, to love him as myself. The Bible teaches us how to do this most of the time or nearly all the time, but we welcome legalists when we forget that even in the Bible persons come before principles. It is conceivable, therefore, that we would bypass a biblical principle in order to honor the one law that is the basis of all the principles, and this is the law of love. This is what it means to be free, free to do the loving thing, and this is the freedom that Jesus himself practiced.

When the Pharisees criticized his disciples for plucking ears of grain on the sabbath, pointing out that it was unlawful, Jesus did not counter by contending that it was lawful. Rather he said: “Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?” As with David so with the disciples, people were in need, and in that situation principle yielded to personality. Notice that Jesus goes on to say, drawing upon biblical principle, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is lord of the sabbath.”

I desire mercy and not sacrifice means that in any situation where sacrifice (or keeping of law) interferes with the showing of mercy to people in need, then sacrifice must give way to mercy. Jesus is lord of the sabbath! This does not mean that he ignored the sabbath and all such laws, but that he made them his servant in showing love to man. As fellow heirs with him, you too are made lord over law, not that you are to flout law, but you are to used law in service to yourself and others. Law serves you as you will your neighbor’s good. But law is not your master, causing you to neglect mercy in order to fulfill its demand.

God is himself a situationist. While it would ordinarily be wrong for a man knowingly to marry a prostitute and to continue living with her in her harlotry, God instructed one of His prophets to do that very thing. To Hosea the Lord commanded, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry.” If that shakes you up, then I should not point out that once Hosea had married this bad woman, the Lord told him to turn right around and marry still another harlot!

In that situation it was the right thing to do, for in this way God could dramatize, as He could in no other way, the great love He had for His adulterous people.

God also proved to be a situationist in regard to the keeping of the passover in the time of Hezekiah, the reforming king of Judah. Even though it was not celebrated at the legally specified time nor with the proper priestly cleansing, Hezekiah nonetheless urged that Israel and Judah gather in Jerusalem for a great unity meeting and eat the passover together. As is often the case in regard to unity meetings, the well-meaning king was laughed to scorn by many who were invited, and the clergy offered little encouragement. But when the rank and file of God’s people began to gather in Jerusalem from both Israel and Judah and began to tear down false altars and make preparation for restoring the passover, the priests and the Levites were put to shame and proceeded to lend a helping hand even though they were ceremonially unfit to do so. The record says in 2 Chron. 30 that “they ate the passover otherwise than as prescribed.”

That would settle the matter once and for all for the legalistic mind, for it it were “other than as prescribed” it could not possibly be right. But Hezekiah saw it otherwise, believing that what was happening in people’s hearts was the important thing, and so he prayed to the Lord that He would pardon the people and cleanse them, even though the ceremony was not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness. “And the Lord heard Hezekiah, and healed the people.”

That is not all. The restoration of the passover was such a joyous thing to the people that they resolved to keep it for an extra seven days, again going beyond specifications.

The point in this case is not that law is unimportant nor that regulations respecting such things as the passover are inappropriate and therefore to be ignored at will. It is rather that with God form is always to be an expression of substance and subservient to substance. It is the heart that counts with God, with form always serving as a means of reflecting what is in the heart. This has to mean that if in any situation the demands of form, such as ceremonial regulations, interfere with the demands of the heart, it is form that has to yield by either being modified or bypassed altogether.

This is why it is ungracious of us immersionists to interpret the introduction of affusion or sprinkling as some diabolical scheme to displace an ordinance of God, for the first instances of pouring for immersion could have been sincere efforts in abnormal situations to conform as nearly as possible to what God requires in terms of form. And who knows but what God in those situations would accept what ordinarily would not be acceptable. The scriptures assure us that “Man looks upon the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart.”

Situation ethics is illustrated in such untoward circumstances as one human being owning another human being, for it says that even here the situation might justify that which is admitted to be both inexpedient and evil. And is there not a difference between something being evil and morally wrong? Slavery was of course an evil institution, but it did not necessarily follow that those involved in perpetuating it were guilty of sin. In the situation in which they found themselves, there may well have been no other morally responsible course of action.

Back in 1845, long before the Civil War, Alexander Campbell in an essay on “Our Position to American Slavery” insisted that “the relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful or immoral,” while at the same time recognizing it as an evil system and suggesting ways by which it could eventually be eradicated. Campbell was of course criticized for this position, a position that was indirectly responsible for his being imprisoned while visiting in Glasgow years later.

But let’s look at the situation in 1845. If a master freed his slaves, he was required by law not only to provide a living for them, but he was also responsible for all their conduct, being liable for any crimes they might commit. It would also place the freed slave in a precarious position, turned loose in a society unprepared for such a thing. It would have also threatened the economic stability of the country, imperiling the blacks and the whites alike.

This is why Campbell concluded that it is morally right, in this situation for the system of slavery to continue for the moment. But he insisted that the nation should appoint a date after which all children born in slavery would become free, so that in due time slavery would be eradicated in a way appropriate to the demands of civil society. In the meantime the Christian master is to love his slave, provide well for him, and educate him morally and spiritually.

War is like slavery in that it is a social evil, and sometimes a necessary evil. But this is not to say that participation in it is a sin. The situation that calls for one nation taking up arms against another may be such that the morally right thing to do is for a man to take life that he would not take under any other circumstance. Quite obviously it is the situation that makes the difference.

Wise old Socrates was a situationist in weighing moral action in that he associated right with conduct appropriate to the circumstance. What is right in one instance or with one person quite clearly might not be for the next person, or even the same person might be right in doing something in one instance but wrong in doing that same thing in a different circumstance. All values, Socrates believed, are what they are in view of their appropriateness. Gold is beautiful on the arm of a lovely woman, but less than beautiful on a swine’s snout. So to be beautiful gold must be appropriately displayed. This is why he saw no beauty when he looked upon the Parthenon, adorned with gold facings, since it was in adoration of gods more immoral than the men who worshipped them. With Socrates, therefore, the situationist sees right conduct as that which is appropriate to the situation, appropriateness depending on what enhances the dignity of man as a creature of God. And this is where the commandments of God come in, for they show us what is appropriate in our dealing with one another. It is evident enough, we now presume, that the commandments, which were hardly calculated to anticipate every possible circumstance of life, must be applied situationally.

So whether it is killing, kissing, or karate, right or wrong depends on the situation. When killing is inappropriate it is murder and of course wrong. And there are different kinds of kisses and for different purposes. It may sometimes be inappropriate for a man to kiss his own wife. When the school kids ask about whether they should kiss on dates, I like to ask what kind of a kiss they are talking about? People kiss their hand, their dog, their grandmother, their baby. So kissing is neither right or wrong per se. It depends on the situation.

This means that a controversial practice like abortion can be judged right or wrong only situationally. It could, conceivably, be murder. Or it could be, and often is, an act of mercy, the only answer to an impossible situation.

This reminds us that doing the right thing is not always an easy “black or white” matter. Most decisions, unfortunately, have to be made out in the gray somewhere. They are choices between evils, leaving us obligated to choose the lesser of the evils. It is not a question as to whether abortion is an evil, but whether it is not, like heart surgery, the least of the evil options open to us.

I have said little about sex, and it is here that the situationist is considered most vulnerable. It is supposed that if one judges sexual relations situationally, this gives license to all that the carnal mind hopes for. But how else can sexual relations be judge except situationally? Sex is not appropriate between persons just because they are married, just as eating is not appropriate only because one has an appetite. It is the legalist who is vulnerable regarding sex ethics as he is in all ethics. Judging situationally, a young lady will not only choose not to sleep with a boy, she’ll choose not even to keep company with him. Not only will she not dance, she’ll not park!

College girls have a special name for a certain type legalist - hypocritical virgins. These are the girls that will do anything except commit the act itself, including spending the night with a boy. This illustrates the price of legalism. If one can deceive without actually speaking an untruth, it is adjudged morally right. If one can avoid an equitable tax by some loophole in the law, this too is right. If one avoids the specific act of adultery itself, then he is not guilty.

The situationist is more discriminating and as a consequence his decisions are sometimes difficult to make. I recall a case of a girl who was due to graduate from Texas Woman’s University. A job awaited her. Her parents, now both old and ill, were in need of her support after having helped her for so long. But she could not graduate, I learned, due to scoring too low a grade in one of my courses. Her record revealed that she fell short by only a few points of scoring the C that she had to have to graduate that year. She was a student who had applied herself and who was improving in handling material difficult for her. In her case I did something I do not recall ever doing before, something I consider to be academically irresponsible as a rule. A few points cannot be all that important, I figured, so I recalled my grade sheet and raised her grade by reshuffling the criteria I had used, which caused several others to get higher grades also. It was a situational decision.

And yet the instances have been legion in which students have pled for a higher grade for this or that reason, all in vain, lest I lose my academic self-respect. “You should have become concerned about your grade a little sooner, don’t you think?” I usually say to these kids that want something without working for it, “I don’t change grades unless a mistake has been made.” I don’t most of the time, that is!

There is a grave moral risk in suggesting that adultery may sometimes be all right, that Thou shalt not commit adultery “usually” applies. And yet my position implies this or seems to, doesn’t it? Yet I am not sure I am saying this, for I am at a loss to think of adultery as ever right. It is like thinking of murder as right. I can think of killing as sometimes right, but that is not murder: Murder is already wrong in that it is unjustifiable killing. Just so I can conceive of sexual intercourse outside wedlock as justifiable, but this would not be adultery.

We all agree that the woman who is raped, which is sexual intercourse outside marriage, is not guilty of adultery. This is because it was not her will, that she was forced. St. Augustine is more particular here than most of us, for he raises the question as to whether the woman enjoyed the act, whether it might have become her will even though her will did not initiate it. The question is not so easy after all, just what is adultery? Is the woman forced by impossible financial circumstances into prostitution an adulteress, while one forced physically is not? A woman who is starving for food may give her body for the sake of survival without giving her will. Is this adultery? Jesus must have had good reasons for being not so judgmental of prostitutes. He thought they might make it into the kingdom ahead of the Pharisees who so readily condemned them. It wasn’t that he in any sense approved of the prostitute’s way of life, but simply that he made a difference in the judgment of people, in view of the situation.

Many are the examples regarding sexual transgressions in the discussion of situation ethics. The C.I.A. asks a woman to give her body in an espionage plot, just as the army asks her brother to kill his fellow man on the battlefield. If one, why not the other? A German woman in a Russian prison gets herself pregnant so that she might be released and returned to her family and sick husband. A couple decides to go on and live as husband and wife secretly rather than risk all the attending evils, including disinheritance from unreasonable parents should they go on and get married.

The situationist does not suppose he has ready answers for all such problems. He only says that a difference has to be made in our judgments, based on the individual situation. He asks for a less arbitrary and dogmatic interpretation of what we label as sin. What is lying? Did Tom Sawyer really lie when he took the blame in place of Becky Thatcher? If so, was it different from ordinary lies and should it not be judged accordingly? Was Doc Thatcher right when he referred to what Tom did as “a noble and glorious lie.” What is stealing? Is a man really stealing when he takes milk for a starving child? What is adultery? And on and on it goes.

What I believe about situation ethics is that no moral decision is truly ethical if it is not made in view of the situation. For a decision to be moral it must consider what helps or hurts people, and this requires a close look at the circumstances involved. As Jude 23 instructs, the situationist learns to make a difference in looking at people and their problems.

“Some of these men you can feel pity and you can treat them differently. Others you must try and save by fear, snatching them as it were out of the fire while hating the very garment their deeds have befouled.” — the Editor