Taking Pascal's Wager: Faith, Evidence and the Abundant Life by Michael Rota

Author:Michael Rota [Rota, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2016-05-20T23:00:00+00:00

Love as the Key to Life

If someone wanted to know what you believe in, what you value, how you think human beings should act and what you think is most worth pursuing in life, she could ask you and then listen to what you have to say. But there is something else she could do: she could observe what you do. Often our actions reveal our deepest convictions more accurately than our words. If I say that I value my family over my career, but I spend little time with my children and use all my spare moments to get ahead at this or that office task, perhaps I’m deceiving myself about what I really value. If I say I care about morality but spend more of my money on entertainment then on sharing with the poor, perhaps my words don’t tell the full story. Suppose we try to take an objective perspective and look at human beings from the outside, so to speak. What should we conclude about what people value? Clearly, much of what people do is aimed at maximizing pleasure and comfort. And much of what people do is aimed at success or achievement and at gaining the approval of others (social status, popularity, prestige, recognition). These are all good things, but if one values only one’s own pleasure, success and social status, one has neglected something. How about . . . other people? It’s possible to view one’s relationships with others as, at the end of the day, mere means to the end of promoting one’s own personal satisfaction. But this is an impoverished view of human relationships. How much nobler to care about the well-being of another person for his or her own sake and to consider the well-being of the other as an end in itself. One’s own pleasure, success and social status are goods worth desiring, but the objective well-being of others as well as oneself should rank higher on one’s scale of values. And what about moral goodness? Where does that fit in?

There is a distinction sometimes made between two approaches to ethics: an ethics of minimal obligation and an ethics of moral excellence. The ethics of minimal obligation asks, “What must I do to satisfy my moral obligations?” And one answer to this question is that I must never violate the human rights of other people, but other than that I can pretty much do as I please. Taking this as a starting point, it’s easy to think that the goal of my life is my own personal satisfaction, and the requirements of moral goodness are a sort of constraint on how I can pursue my personal satisfaction. By contrast, an ethics of excellence has a very different flavor, because it starts with a very different question: “What can I do to become a morally excellent person?” The teachings of Jesus exhibit this second approach to ethics. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). And at the

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