Ethics Class Student Submitted Questions

4.30, so it is that time.

Time for us to begin the end.

This is our final class in our introduction to Christian ethics and tonight's class is what we call students choice, which means that each of you had the opportunity to send in a ethical question for me to teach on and I have in front of me seven specific questions that were provided.

Some of you provided them, some of the online students provided them.

If you did not get your question to me or if I don't, if it's not on my list here and you sent it in, I want to begin by saying I apologize.

People sent them in different ways.

Some emailed them, some messaged me, so I kind of got this sort of hodgepodge of having to drag out and look and even you, like we talked the other day, you gave it to me in person and I typed it into my phone.

It's in here though, your questions in here.

So next time I do this, I want to I'll make it more standardized, but I did the best I could.

So I have seven specific questions.

If we did not include, if you're in person and we did not include your question, I'll try to save some time at the end to go over that as well and once we take our break, after we take our break, we're going to come back and talk about the final exam, which is the final project, which is I have a hand or printed copy here.

You still have to do it digitally, you have to do it online, but you can have a handwritten or a printed copy if you if you want to take it home and and and use that to practice with before you take the actual digital test.

So let's begin with a word of prayer.

Father, we do thank you now for the opportunity to be here in this class.

We thank you for loving us and giving us your word by which we can measure all things and come to ethical determinations and decisions.

I pray oh God for clarity.

I pray that this class will have benefited us in how we search the scriptures to find truth and Lord that where those areas are where there are difficulties in finding the right answer, help us to not let us come to the conclusion that you don't know what the answer is, but Lord that we might seek your heart and mind knowing that you always know what is right.

We pray and ask that you be with us now as we study in Jesus name.

Amen.

Over the past seven weeks we have looked at a variety of ethical issues.

In week one we asked the question why do we study ethics? We said it was to help us conform our understanding to the perfect standard of God.

We asked the question what is goodness or virtue? We said good is ultimately God.

God is the standard of all goodness and therefore when we seek to determine what is virtuous it is against him and him being the standard.

We talked about in the second week biblical law and different perspectives on biblical law.

We talked about the Torah observant groups, the tripartite groups, the the Theonomic groups, and New Covenant priority.

We talked about those who would argue that grace is an excuse for sin and we talked about Romans 14 and how sometimes there are cases where certain things are subjective meaning ultimately up to the individual where he has to not violate his own conscience.

In week three we looked at life ethics which included abortion, reproduction, and genetics.

In week four we looked at death ethics which included suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment.

In week five we looked at war ethics which included pacifism, just war theory, personal protection, and defense.

Week six we looked at sex ethics.

A little slip of the tongue there.

We looked at marriage and divorce, fornication, adultery, polyamory, and what's sometimes referred to as alternative lifestyle issues.

And then last week we looked at money ethics.

We looked at poverty as a virtue which some people claim that poverty is a virtue, economic systems, and then work and vocation.

So that leads us up to tonight.

We've covered a lot of ground in only the past two months and I hope that you have not only listened to the lectures in class but I hope that you've also been doing the reading because the reading should be helping you fill in some of the gaps.

We only have an hour and a half in class so reading helps you fill in the gaps and I would I would wonder you know what you thought of the textbook and I'll give you an opportunity if anybody wants to share what what were your any thoughts that you've drawn from the textbook readings.

Did you thought it was helpful? Okay.

Anything specific? Okay.

Yeah.

I certainly present you with a lot of different thoughts on these different subjects and different things you have to do.

Yeah.

Was there any areas you disagreed with the book maybe? That's a good question.

Anybody come did you read anything where you said I don't know if I would go there or maybe found something that was disagreeable? Okay.

Well if you're online listening and you did please leave it leave a message for that.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

I you know when I'm reading through the textbooks for these classes and everything I'm often kind of kind of looking for areas that I might disagree so that I can give warnings.

Well on page this or whatever this is where I may differ with the teacher and sometimes I do.

Yes.

Yes genetic engineering for sure.

Sure.

Sure.

And some of those questions and I agree with you I would I would have strong opinions on them.

Some that these questions are have only been around for a few years in the sense that you know I mean even one of the questions we're going to deal with tonight which is the one of the questions that was submitted by a student deals with in vitro fertilization.

I mean this is only really something that our generation and the generation before us have had to deal with for that's not something that our ancestors had to ask because things that those types of technologies didn't exist and as technologies grow there's going to be more questions and wondering about are we playing God are we are we diving it are we going to an area that we shouldn't go and so yes absolutely and yeah just went dove right in.

Yep.

Well before we get to the seven questions and if no one has anything else from the book I see AJ's looking at and if you have thought yeah yeah yeah yeah as I said the book is short but I think it makes some good points and introduces some good concepts and like like you mentioned Bert there is a larger textbook that is certainly includes a lot more information.

Sure.

So as we begin tonight to look at the seven questions we're going to address and by the way if we go through these too quickly which I don't suspect we will I also brought the questions from the last class remember I taught this class two years ago and they gave me seven questions no nine questions that I have to add to our seven so if we get if we run through the seven questions and we just get it snappy then we'll have nine more we can tackle but I don't think we're going to I'll be surprised if we actually make it through the seven that we're going to look at yes you don't have to this is it tonight's a free open discussion none of this will be on the test this is for us to have a conversation and try to apply there's like a practice this is almost like a when you take a science class this is like a lab right we're doing the work tonight working out our thoughts and with that being said we have said from the beginning that the foundation for ethics is the character of God Christian ethics the character of God and there are two if you will subdivisions of this that we need to consider and that is the idea of principles and virtues I'm sorry I did that wrong it should be virtues virtues virtues and principles virtues and principles virtues would be that which is that which we see as a good a virtue is something that is a good and a principle is a an ethical maxim based upon that goodness so so these are the maxims that result from the virtues so the way this works and we've talked about this in previous classes but just to remind you so for instance on a very simple basis if we say that life is good I hope we would all agree that life is good from a biblical perspective we certainly know from God because we're saying this is Christian ethics therefore character of God God created life life is good therefore murder is wrong right so that's why you start with the virtue life is good murder is is is a violation of God's character it's a violation of that which is good so another virtue would be something like private property we discussed this last week when we were discussing capitalism socialism and communism we said one of the one of my biggest issues with socialism and communism particularly communism is the is the removal of the concept of private property that everything's owned by the state or everything's owned by the community rather than being owned by the individual and having private ownership and so if private property is a good thing what would be the principle now that's actually pretty funny no well let's do it what's the actual one stealing is bad stealing and we could do this all day we could talk about different virtues you know truth is good therefore lying is bad you know you just make yourself down the list well this is the way that we're going to examine these seven questions we're going to say okay this question asked a question about some virtue we're going to seek to discover what the virtue is and come to a consensus okay what's what's at stake here and maybe it might be more than one thing the first question actually I think has more than one virtue at stake and then you have the question okay so what's the what's the principle that we draw from that what law is does God give regarding this and and what's it based on okay so simple enough let's look then first at question number one and some of these I have reworded slightly some people send in questions they were worded a little difficult a little difficultly so I went in reworded them first one is mandatory military service ethical is mandatory military service ethical first I want to just say the person who gave the question is a military veteran so I I don't know this for certain it was brother Mike Smith he's in he's in Arizona I believe he's gonna still listen to this class him and miss Debra will probably still hear this so hello from Florida to Arizona but I the way that he asked the question seemed to me like he thought mandatory military service was a good thing so I'm assuming that though I could be wrong I'm basing that on just the way the question was proposed and so we want to start with the question of okay what what virtues are are in play here this is a little less this is a little less easy then then you know these this one's a little more thoughtful we have to kind of dig a little what virtues at play when we talk about something being mandatory I'm gonna race give us some room what's what virtues are at play we talk about something mandatory well let's just deal first with that being mandatory and then we'll get to the the idea of ethics of war but just first something being mandatory that that would deal with it what ethic or what virtue choice who said choice that's that's that was what I have I said it deals with freedom choice right so right away when you talk about something being mandatory you're automatically dealing with people's ability to make a choice right and a at least from a simple perspective the Bible clearly teaches that human choice is dangerous but good it's dangerous like we see humans make bad choices but doesn't the Bible call us to make choices right you choose this day whom you will serve right we see that in Joshua we see all throughout scripture the command to make good choices right which means we have the right or the ability at least to make choices and so what's what's at play and I'm gonna put this next to the word choice is the word autonomy which means self-government right the ability to to to choose one's own to will to do what one wants to do one of the most difficult things I have outside of just the issue of private property in regard to communism is the other issue of lack of autonomy freedom you can't just do what you feel called to do or feel led to do you have certain things that you can't do or you have to do based upon government oversight and so this is the issue at play is the issue of choice and autonomy but we said mandatory military service so there's other virtues at play what's another virtue in that question yeah the military is a good thing right we would say the government is called to bear the sword right we read that about Romans 13 so so so the government has a place I would just say under virtues military and I'm so now we have two virtues that are somewhat conflicting to see how this begins to create the issue with how we do ethics right because military is a national defense need that every country has a need for a national defense because if a country doesn't have a national defense what is it going to be not a country very long right because another country that has a strong national power is going to come and overtake that country so a country needs a strong national defense and so if there is no national defense there's probably not going to be a country very long so we have two competing goods the good of national defense and the good of personal autonomy so now we have the concerns that the further questions okay the question of the individual should all people serve in the military some would say yes some would say no but the the should anyone be allowed not to serve by virtue of their conscience and this gets back to just war right what if somebody is and I hate I'm gonna put this under under virtue only because this is what they would see as a virtue not because I necessarily think it is what if somebody saw themselves as a pacifist that had to be a Christian pacifist just a pacifist in general they say I am a person who does not believe in pacifism and there's actually a term that was used in Vietnam when a person didn't want to serve what they call them conscientious objector a conscientious objector meaning they looked at the conflict and based on their conscience they could not support the war and therefore they objected to the war they did not want to serve famous conscientious objector anyone have an idea mr.

Muhammad Ali mr.