Family Ethics: Practices for Christians

Conclusion

Conclusion Practices of Resistance as Ordinary Morality I began this book by talking about the marginalization of ordinary life in Christian ethics. The gap between issues taken up in theology journals and those discussed at dinner tables, coffeehouses, and parish socials is overly wide. When families struggle to decide how to allocate their time, where to buy a house, or what job to take, they are on their own, because few theologians have addressed these sorts of concerns. These mundane choices seem too minor to merit theological analysis. However, I have argued that ordinary moral dilemmas are worthy of sustained ethical reflection. Decisions about how to spend time, money, and energy are the most fundamental moral decisions most of us make. These choices provide the framework within which we enter into relationship with God, engage the world around us, pursue friendship and intimacy , raise children, and respond or fail to respond to the suffering of other human beings. Through our everyday choices, we construct our lives. We choose worthy and unworthy pursuits. We make time for the people we love or continue to find ourselves too busy. We contribute or fail to contribute to social change. It is important to know where we stand on complex issues such as endof -life care, torture, abortion, humanitarian intervention, globalization, and capital punishment. But thinking through the implications of our smaller, daily choices is, I submit, our primary ethical responsibility, because it is with these choices that we will have our largest impact on both those nearest to us and society as a whole. Each decision may seem minor when considered in itself, but when repeated over and over, decisions form significant patterns. Through the life patterns of millions of individuals and families, society itself takes shape. When couples choose to take time for intimacy, they build their relationship. When they eat together at a table where all are welcome, they extend their communion to their children and others around them. When they buy sustainably grown food, they help to slow environmental destruction. When they give a portion of their income away, they limit consumerism and create new opportunities for those in poverty. When they give a portion of their time to service, they have the chance to change the lives of others and be changed in their own hearts. When they claim time for prayer, they open themselves to God and one another. Small decisions matter. Yet seeking answers to the problems I have addressed in this book is difficult because the details of individual lives are so different. Sometimes we simply will not find specific practices that bind everyone in exactly the same way. The recommendations I have made are flexible and open to adaptation . They may not work for every family all the time. This does not mean, however, that we should give up the process of moral discernment regarding ordinary choices. Living a moral life is not primarily about rules or norms but about striving to become better persons through responding to God’s calling. There will be differences among us, but being able to rely on Christian community and tradition for wisdom as we make decisions is a great gift. In this struggle, we are not alone. Practices of resistance are necessary if Christians want to avoid the very real problems that are pervasive in middle-class American family life. Only intentional practices can enable the majority of Christians who live in families to value both relationships and social change, to connect love and justice, to live up to the best of the Catholic tradition on marriage and its social teachings. Without them it is far too easy to give in. Even with them Practices of Resistance as Ordinary Morality 243 we will, of course, fall short. Human beings, as Flannery O’Connor so vividly showed us, are limited, but we can remember this and still strive to become better. Struggling to live well and do what we can to improve the lives of others is what being a Christian is all about. It is, as Mev Puleo said, “the same struggle for life, against death in all its forms.”1 Surely this struggle is worth all the time and energy we have to give it. Note 1. Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation (New York: SUNY Press, 1994), 5. 244 Conclusion ...