I'm a Capitalist, Am I Going to Hell?

2018 Update: This is one of the more widely read pieces on my blog. I am definitely leaving the piece up as it reflects where I was in 2011. However I am not quite in that same place anymore. I hope to eventually write a response to my own thinking here, but until I do, the summary of my changed thinking is that this piece is built on a belief that rights=goodness. I have come to believe that such an equation is ethically anemic. That is to say I think that a rights-based ethic represents a weak vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. A more fully developed vision of the Kingdom would be based on Love/Justice and would look to that state of affair where (to quote Julian of Norwich) "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". That is not so say that I have quite rejected capitalism or embraced socialism (I am still very uncomfortable with state power over people) but I do think that I started from the wrong place when I was working through these ideas seven years ago and that, as a result, my conclusions were flawed.

Cigars make you rich

I spend a lot of time hanging out with and reading the works of people who are (among other things) united in being anti-capitalist american Christians. This is odd because I am a pretty hard line free-market guy. But I agree with them on so many other points. In fact my worldview seems to have much more in common with theirs than it does with most other Christians, especially with other Christians who tend to hold free-market type views.


Now a when I started to notice this discrepancy I wasn't too worried about it. I just chalked it up to "personalities and preferences". After all, it is an issue of economics, not exactly (despite what some modern theologians want to claim) a matter of deep doctrinal profundity. I didn't see my stance, or the stances of others, as integral to my understanding of what Jesus is like or what it means to be one of His followers.


But recently I have found that my position on this issue does have a pretty big impact on my beliefs about how I ought to live as a Christian in the modern world (for those of you theologaphiliacs, it has substantial implications for orthopraxy). If that is an accurate observation then it would seem that I was wrong to dismiss the debate as unimportant to my worldview. If I find that I disagree with someone about how a person ought to live then it is likely that we have some fundamental disagreement on a deeper level than personality and preference.


So this post is targeted at those of you who really disagree with me about capitalism. I intend to lay out 1. Why I am a free-market sort of person and 2. Why I think that being a free-market kinda person is more in line with following Jesus than opposing it would be. I hope that you will let me know where my thinking starts to diverge from yours and why I am so terribly mistaken.

Also smoke stacks... see... cigars?

Let me begin with some of my presuppositions. I think that Jesus is not interested in having us force people, especially people who aren't interested in following Him anyway, to behave in a "kingdom of heaven" sort of way. So Jesus isn't interested in us passing laws that make divorce illegal in the case of "irreconcilable differences" even though that doesn't look like something He thinks is actually good for people. He doesn't want us to make it illegal to "blaspheme against the Holy Spirit" even though He suggests that doing so will have pretty dire consequences. So it's not good to force someone to do good.


My second working presupposition is that capitalism creates wealth. But let me be clear about this. I'm not saying that wealth is intrinsically good (I see it more as a tool which can be used well or badly) and I'm not saying that there is any particular virtue in a countries acquiring wealth, at least not beyond the capacity required to feed the population. But I do think it's pretty clear from history that the capitalist approach has been more effective in creating wealth in general than any other system we have tried. That doesn't make it good, it just sets up a correlative and assumed causal relationship.

My third presupposition has do do with definition. I define free-market capitalism (the kind I am interested in) as an economic system which guarantees all members the right to make and enforce whatever contract they choose so long as that contract is made in good faith and doesn't infringe on the basic negative rights of anyone else. (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a great article on the distinction between positive and negative rights).


As a consequence of these presuppositions I see free market capitalism not as an established economic system so much as an economic non-system which generally has to be defended from having systems like socialism, mercantilism, or crony capitalism imposed on it. Essentially, free market capitalism is what you get if you just let people do their thing and a)don't force them to be virtuous and b) don't let them violate one another's negative rights. Thus I see it as a system of minimal justice. Free market capitalism is not forcing the kids to share but not letting them steal each other's toys either.


But this is not complete. Surely a  Jesus follower wants people to do more than just "not steal each other's toys", surely it is important that people actually grow into practicing the positive virtues of love, generosity and compassion for others. Of course this is true. But remember my first premise: Jesus isn't interested in having us force our joy on people who don't want to follow Him (another way of saying this is that God's Kingdom grows by persuasion, conversion and transformation not by threat, violence and law). If this is true then following Jesus means living a life of love, generosity and compassion without ever trying to force anyone else to lead such a life.


And now I bring the two together. Free market capitalism leaves everyone free to do what they think God wants them to do with their money without forcing anyone. I am in favor of free market capitalism specifically because I see it as the economic system of maximal freedom. All the other systems I know of either force people to do what others think is right (socialism), or force people to contribute to specific injustices (mercantilism, crony capitalism, feudalism).

Apparently Jesus doesn't like flappers... not sure why.

I want to end by heading off a couple of objections by adding a couple of clarifications. First, I do not think that this country does now or ever has practiced free market capitalism. We have been both closer to it and farther from it in the past but we haven't ever fully practiced it so I am NOT arguing for the status quo or the "system that created the current financial crisis". Second I am not arguing that free market capitalism with it's at least tacit approval if not outright benediction of greed reflects the way we would go about dealing with possessions in a perfect world. And I am not saying that capitalism is a necessary evil. I don't happen to believe that there is any such thing as a necessary evil anyway. I am only saying that free market capitalism is the only system a Jesus follower can advocate for in the world as it is because it does not, of necessity, cause us to act in ways that are contrary to the life Jesus calls people to (though it does allow such actions to occur).

This visual pun is supposed to be
"The Communist Party"

In case this last point is unclear let me make an observation. In a society which restricts itself to enforcing only free market principles (a capitalist society) it is perfectly compatible with that societal structure for any given person or even for every person to behave in an economically socialist manner so long as they do not try to impose their socialism on anyone who doesn't accept it. Thus in a free market society I would be free to throw my income into a pot along with a group of friends or an established community and then distribute that wealth to each person according to their need. But the reverse is not true. In a socialist society, no person is free to behave in a free market manner distributing wealth to each person in accordance with a pre-defined, mutually agreed upon manner; instead all people are required to dispense with their incomes according to the direction of the state. Thus free market capitalism allows for socialistic behavior (so long as it does not force itself on anyone) while socialism does not allow for capitalist behavior. I note that this relationship does not exist between free market capitalism and several other economic systems (feudalism, mercantalism, crony capitalism) because they are integrally dependent on suppression of human rights.

So where have I gone wrong? Are my premises false? Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Have I overlooked some key fact? Please let me know.

You Take the High Road, You Take the Low Road and I'll Take Whichever One Gets Me There Faster.

I just got back from attending my sister's wedding in Ankara, Turkey. which is not an excuse for my blogosphere absence, it's the background for what I want to talk about today. My family has lived as expats in Turkey for twenty one years now and I lived in Ankara for ten of those years (1990-2000). So going back for the wedding was going home in many ways. We stayed at my parents house and the whole week was something of a mini-family reunion for us all.

While we were there I spent a good deal of time walking around the city and just enjoying Turkey and it's culture; the good, the bad and the ugly. Which got me thinking about the way we approach culture here in the US. Generally it seems as though the typical American (if there is such a beast) will adopt one of two views towards foreign culture: ethnocentrism or multiculturalism - the pedant in me is insisting that I apologize that these are not strictly antithetical terms what with one having "ethnicity" as its root while the other centers around "culture" - But I don't really like either of those approaches.
Let me do a little defining. As I see it, ethnocentric Americans are generally convinced that America has already arrived at the cultural peak of human existence. Our culture is the best there is because... well... it's ours, gosh darn it! And anyway, look at all the things we have been able to do because of it. Am'rcan culture landed a man on the moon, won two world wars, and spent the Soviet Union into a not-early-enough grave. Ethnocentric Americans do sometimes show and interest in other cultures but usually this is done either to study them as curiosities, to mock them as bizarre and inferior, or to figure out how to gain some sort of edge (these days usually educational or athletic) over them.

Multiculturalist (spell check says I coined a word there) Americans are much more humble. They will be the first to tell you (and tell you, and tell you, and tell you, and tell you) that American culture is just one culture among equals and that all cultures are their own beautiful selves and that they cannot really be compared in any qualitative way unless of course you are willing to admit that American culture is the worst possible because we have lots of nasty, racist, oppressive tendencies so that, come to think of it, you can sort of rate cultures as being better or worse in so far as they differ from ours which is clearly at the bottom because all those ethnocentric Americans clearly want nothing more than to rise up and conquer the whole world under one vast red-white-and blue golden arch, riding wiener mobiles and throwing cold pepsi cans at defenseless, illiterate, two year old shamans in the heart of Papua New Guinea just before we force them to watch 48 straight hours of Saved By the Bell.

In case you haven't noticed, I don't really identify with either of these approaches. I am what anthropologists call a third-culture-kid. I grew up as an American in a foreign culture. The result, at least for me, has been that I like to cherry pick cultures. As I grew up, Mom and Dad would tell me that certain practices, tendencies and assumptions were either American or Turkish (or from one of the scores of international students I went to school with). I would then decide whether or not I liked that particular aspect of the given culture and either reject it as a bad idea or try to adopt it. And I have maintained that practice to this day: When I run into a new culture or cultural practice I usually do my best to understand it, appreciate it and then throw out everything I think is bad or damaging about it, recognize the beauty of the practices and attitudes that are left and then try to find a few "gems" I can harvest from it and incorporate into my own worldview and family culture.


Thus I really appreciate and try to emulate the American "can do" spirit along with the western "protestant work ethic" and the importance of taking responsibility for my own actions. I have a huge admiration for Turkish concepts of hospitality and friendship which go far deeper into a person's self-image and worldview than the more American versions of good manners and acquaintanceship. At the same time, I am perfectly happy insisting that the Turkish cultural understanding of fate and it's twisted concepts of male sexual honor, are disgusting and have no place in a healthy person's worldview. American consumerism and the value we place on things over relationships are disgusting and damaging as well.

This all feels very freeing to me. I see what multiculturalists call the tapestry of cultures as something more like a gold mine. There are so many ways of seeing the world and doing life out there and the world has become so much smaller in the last hundred years, that we now have this exciting opportunity to evaluate cultures, process them, harvest what is good, beautiful and helpful, and get rid of what is evil, disgusting and hurtful (female circumcision anyone?). While my ethnocentric friends frustrate themselves trying to defend every piece of America as "vastly superior to anything they have" and my multicultural friends tie themselves in knots trying to explain that it is right and proper for some cultures to treat women like property, I get to step back and condemn what is evil and enjoy what is good.

What do you think? Is my approach worthwhile or am I committing terrible, intolerant act here? I am particularly interested in hearing from any other third-culture people who read this; have you had similar experiences?

Sex and ....Great Books and..... Thomas Aquinas?

Dr. Kreeft. Lookin' all awesome

I recently read a Peter Kreeft essay on sexual morality and the liberal arts. Given that those are both matters of some interest for me (my grad school gets mentioned in a particularly positive light in the piece) and that I think his ideas are thought provoking at the least (and possibly quite illuminating) I thought I would give a brief summary and some of my own reaction to it here at heaven and earth questions, send y'all over to Dr. Kreeft's site to read the actual essay, and invite you back here to comment.

Quick note for full transparency: I am generally a big fan of Dr. Kreeft and most of his writing. His modern scholar class on St. Thomas Aquinas is great, and I have not found a better C.S. Lewis scholar.

Alright, with the disclaimers out of the way, lets charge ahead. In this essay Dr. Kreeft points out that the sexual revolution in the west was generally concurrent with a decline in appreciation for what we generally refer to as "liberal education" and specifically for the study of the great books. He recognizes that correlation does not equal causation and so He argues that both of these events are results of a common cause: a decline in our cultures tendency to value truth for it's own sake.

I went to school here. You should too.

As I understand him, he is arguing that when a person (or culture) values truth and the discovery of truth as an end in itself—a value he identifies as being at the core of a liberal arts education—that person or culture is much more likely to see other things, especially the good and the beautiful, as ends in themselves. Thus if we value truth for it's own sake, not as a means to some other end, we are also likely to value other people, sexual partners and even sex itself as distinct metaphysical entities which we will then value for their own sakes rather than as means to some other end (generally our own pleasure or fulfillment).

These are books

Now I am somewhat exited about this line of thinking because it would fit really well with a thesis I have been working on wherein I want to argue that we need to return to a pre-modern paradigm wherein we begin with metaphysics, asking what things are before we ask how they can be used or how we can know about them. So if Dr. Kreeft is right, then the reason I am so drawn to Liberal Arts education and so "squeemish" about newer sexual ethics, is that I want to discover the truth of what things are, to value things for their own natures and not as means to some other end.

But what do y'all think? Does Dr. Kreeft have point? Is he just dead wrong about everything? About some things? Does his approach to these issues fit more into a pre-modern paradigm? Is a pre-modern worldview worth pursuing?

2018 Update: I still really like the basic thoughts here that liberal arts teaches us to value the three transcendentals and that a premodern meta-philosophical framework is the way to move forward in this postmodern moment. My views on sexuality are, however, significantly different from those of Peter Kreeft (who remains an excellent C.S. Lewis scholar in my view).

I'm so Sorry for what Bob did to you!

  So today is America's Independence day and I imagine that there are thousands of blog posts going up with an independence day theme. I suspect that most of these posts will be either patriotic or political. What I am thinking of as patriotic will probably be reflections on the benefits and responsibilities of being American or will be a sort of anti-patriotism wherein people bemoan the many atrocities and injustices our country has committed.  The political posts will be just that, political. They will be making use of the day to push some agenda which will be backed by a sort of mild-jingoistic sentiment. And I actually have no problem with any of these approaches; I think that today is a good day to reflect on our country. It is a perfectly worthwhile topic, it bears thinking about, and the holiday celebrating it's birth is certainly an appropriate occasion. But that's not quite what I hope to do with my post today.
  Earlier this morning, I read C.S. Lewis' essay:  Dangers of National Repentance from God in the Dock. What he said there really struck home with me so I thought it might be worth discussing here, echoing the points as I understand them and then throwing the question out to y'all to see if you have observed similar things.
  Lewis wrote the essay on an occasion when England was considering the the idea of repenting (basically saying they were sorry and accepting some of the guilt for) their part in causing the war. His basic message in the essay is that the problem with national repentance is that the wrong people are doing the repenting and the wrong people are resisting the repenting. He points out that the demographic most strongly in favor of this national repentance is the group of young intellectuals and religious/spiritual types. The problem, as he sees it, is that this demographic had nothing to do with causing the things they are so eager to repent of. Recognizing that this may not seem to be much of a problem at first glance (it's not really the end of the world for me to say sorry for something I had no part in; a little foolish or insensitive perhaps but not intrinsically catastrophic), Lewis points out that because these people had nothing to do with causing the war since they were to young to vote or influence popular opinion at the time, when they "repent" they are really blaming other people. He argues that this will cause them to look down on the people who really did have something to do with England's policies leading up to the war while simultaneously being able to veil their scorn with a sort of solidarity of regret. Thus they get to sound very pious and ethical by saying "we were wrong" while at the same time they escape any actual uncomfortable guilt because they can only mean by it "they were wrong".
  I found this pretty convicting. I am inclined to wonder how often I have tried to apologize (in the new sense, say I am sorry for) something I am not responsible for and in doing so have only been scorning (either purposefully or in ignorance) the people who were genuinely responsible for the acts I am apologizing for.
  Now, I realize that this interpretation of corporate repentance requires a decidedly individualistic approach to the concept of guilt. In fact it seems to deny corporate guilt in all circumstances other than when all members of the group are actually guilty of the relevant act. What do the rest of y'all think? Is corporate guilt a real thing? Can I really be guilty of or repent for things that other people who are associated with me by nationality, religious conviction, ethnicity, gender, or even family ties  have done? Is it actually wrong for me to try to repent for someone else's wrongs; in those terms it certainly seems ridiculous?
  Finally, how would you take it if I did it "for" you? Say you practiced some form of what you thought of as tough love on a mutual friend of ours. Then say I went up to them an apologized on "our" behalf for what you had done without consulting me. Would you be offended? Would you feel betrayed? Is there any way in which you think my doing that might be helpful to you, the mutual friend or to the situation as a whole? Would it make things better or worse if you thought you really had done something wrong? 

Let's Talk about....

I have found myself thoroughly immersed in a conversation about premarital sex this week. Which is not normal for me. Most of my life can be divided into two sets of conversation on this topic: a) the set of conversations with conservative Christians who like to say "premarital sex (and most other kinds as well) is bad, the Bible is very clear about this" and then never want to explain why; and b) the set of conversations with everyone else which generally revolve around how nice it would be to be having more sex with very few holds barred (point of order - I have discovered that it is flatly impossible to write or talk about sex without using an obscene number of accidental double entendres; so enjoy them, they aren't on purpose). This second set also only rarely talks about why sex is so great, they just assume it is.

Not the Religious Type (where I have been getting so much of my jumping off point material of late) just posed a question about sex, namely "How do you Navigate Sexual Ethics". The discussion has been so fascinating, and dovetails so well with my recent post on morality that I thought it would be worth bringing it over to heaven and earth questions to see how y'all feel about the issue. So, while this is, in itself a relatively short posting, it requires a bit of background reading since I would ask you to go check out the original here.

I am personally really interested in your takes on the threads of conversation I have been having with Bill Sergott, Otto, and Jane. Specifically, do you think that there is a good reason that Christians are so generally down on sex outside of marriage? And do you think that all sex has intrinsic metaphysical significance?

Let me copy my most recent comment to Otto as a teaser:

 Bill Hoard - I find your distinction on integrity confusing. As I understand it, one of the reasons we ought to be careful about giving our word is the understanding that things (feelings, circumstances etc...) change. Conversely, it is precisely because we recognize the dynamic aspect of reality that we do give our words. What point would there have been in my giving my wedding vows if I expected to always feel towards my wife, all the same emotions I felt on our wedding day? The vows would have been superfluous. Furthermore, if I didn't think that staying together were, by nature now that we are married, the best thing for me and my wife, why would I have said my vows?


  If I understand you properly, you are saying that the "wounds" other people give us are only real insofar as we recognize or "give them power" as being real. But I disagree. When one person (husband or wife) cheats on the other, they genuinely wound their spouse. Treating those wounds as illusion both demeans the value of relationship and, so far as I understand from my psychologist and counselor friends, gets in the way of full healing. One of the first steps to healing is to recognize a hurt as real and then move towards the wholeness that God offers. I do not think that trusting God means seeing ourselves as we are not. I know that I am sinful, wretched and prone to hurt the people I love. I know God plans to make me into a glorious son who will someday be worthy of the grace I have already begun to receive. I know the process of that transformation is often painful. But it strikes me as counterproductive to think I am already cured. A cured person wouldn't do the things I do and wouldn't need the healing and training I still need. How can we receive grace until we recognize that we really do need it?
 
  I do think that divorce may sometimes be necessary, but never for things like "maturing" or "growing apart". Here I agree with a principle you referred to. The "laws" are there for the good of those to whom they are given. (I think this is clearest in Jesus attitude towards the sabbath but it shows up in other places as well) so when some unusual set of circumstances require us to set aside the letter in order to follow the spirit, we ought to be prepared to do so. But I think we are being to quick to claim our "ox is in a ditch on the sabbath". C.S. Lewis gave a helpful analogy for divorce when he called it an "operation" and reflected that "some think it so terrible that nothing can be worth it's terrible cost, other say that sometimes it may be warranted to save the life of the patient but all agree that it is more like amputating your legs than pulling a tooth" sadly I don't think we are all agreed about that anymore.


 If you are using the title "true love" to refer to someone who is easier to get along with, more attractive to and attracted to someone than their spouse, I will be happy to grant that it may occasionally be applied (though there are so many factors involved that I doubt it is nearly so often as people make out). My point was that regardless of any of those factors, it is never OK to break my word and injure my partner just because I have found a "better" one. We are more than breeding animals.


 Finally, in response to your comment that each person is can only be responsible for one person -  themselves; I completely agree. But I want to point out that, contrary to popular assumption, we can each think, pray and reason about what actions are right in what circumstances. Whether the actors are ourselves or others.

What do you Mean by That?

  I have been thinking a good bit about jargon recently. As with so many other things I categorize jargon as neither intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. It is just a thing. Certainly it can be used poorly and it can be used well. My thought for this post is to make some overly broad generalizations about when jargon is helpful and when it can be harmful.

  The really great thing about jargon is that it saves time. Generally, jargon shows up as a way of expressing some relatively complex, recurring thought or statement into a single word or short phrase. In order to be jargon and not just new vocabulary, this has to happen in a somewhat specialized context. If I coined a new word to talk about some aspect of grocery shopping it wouldn't be called jargon; it would just be a new word since everyone goes grocery shopping. On the other hand, if I came up with a term for some arcane literary process, and it managed to catch on in the field of literary critisizm, then that would be a bit of jargon. This is why jargon can be so great. Instead of having to give this long, technical definition or proposition, I can use this one piece of jargon and everyone who is familiar with the concept will immediately know what I am talking about.

  Everyone who is familiar with the concept.

  And herein lies the problem. Too often, we use jargon when our audience is not at all familiar with the concepts it represents. So instead of helping communicate the jargon is a hindrance. This downside is obvious and we see it all the time. Teachers and professors do it, and Christians are terrible about it; but really anyone with any technical expertise can get us with it. Contractors and car people do it all the time too. Of course, depending on the audience's pride, they are generally not going to ask for an explanation because they are embarrassed for not knowing the terms before hand. (Any of you guys out there ever nod sagely when your mechanic tells you that the pifflethwattle is shot and if you don't bananafringe your tintbannder the whole gutrude may have to be replaced?).

  And that leads to the second danger of jargon: jargon can be used to deliberately obfuscate something. I generally suspect that mechanics do this to me counting on my pride to let them charge me for stuff I don't know anything about. But maybe I am just to suspicious. Either way, jargon can certainly be used as a tool to gain an edge of power over a situation or another person.

  But what strikes me as the most dangerous effect of jargon is the way it can obfuscate meaning to the person  who uses it without their ever realizing that they have no idea what they are talking about. If I have any expertise it is in two areas: Christianity and Philosophy. In both of these areas I am forever catching others and myself using terms that we ourselves aren't entirely clear on. Generally these will be terms that we have heard often enough that we understand how they ought to be used but which we have never really investigated. Think about it; do you know what it means to say "I claim the blood of Christ" or "this is a question in Meta-ethics which is linked to the concept of goodness qua positive being"? You tintinnabar needs some real bananfringing.

  I think that this is the worst way that jargon can go bad because it allows for self-delusion. If you are accidentally using language you audience doesn't understand, it is unfortunate but correctable. If you are deliberately obfuscating something, that is a problem but at least you know what you are doing. But when jargon goes wrong in this third way, you might say something completely accurate without having the least idea what the truth is. Students who do this, get A's on tests without being educated and tragically don't even know that they are ignorant. Philosophers who do it miss out on the wisdom they are seeking and, because they used the jargon correctly, they don't know where they went wrong. Christians who do it are probably in the worst shape. They have no idea what they are talking about but they think that their phrase is their answer.

  Let me challenge you to try something I do every so often. Stop using jargon for a while, try a week. Don't use any word unless you actually know what it means and are pretty sure that a middle school student could understand it. Don't ask God for "grace and peace" ask Him for what you want. Find out whether or not you know what you are talking about when you claim that "sanctification is a work of faith". Do you think you could explain the egocentric dilemma to a ten year old? Let me know how it goes.

No More Fun for You! Is Morality Still Worth Talking About?

  Are people really interested in being moral anymore? I taught my first section of ethics at CCBC this last semester and, while the students were great, it struck me that there was not much interest in questions like "how can I be moral? What would it mean to be moral? What does real morality look like?". As I have asked around I have found this to be a relatively common attitude. Some people are generally interested in morality as an abstract concept and are eager enough to compare ethical systems and debate hypothetical moral dilemmas but I don't hear many people at all who are specifically interested in becoming more moral.

  I suspect that there are quite a few reasons for this (if I'm not making it up entirely) and I am positive that I would not be able to identify all of them if I tried. What I would like to do is talk about my understanding of what it means to be moral and why being moral is such an important thing and then ask any and all readers if my thoughts match theirs and what they perceive to be those of their peers. My thought is that one of the reasons for the decline in interest is a misunderstanding of what morality is. I guess I think that if more people defined morality the way I do, they would be more interested in being moral.
  So as I understand it, morality is essentially the road map to living a good life. I pretty much equate "being moral" with "being righteous" with "being holy". Another way to say it would be that morality + experiencing God = Joy. In the same way, I would define immorality as something like "living poorly" or "not living well at all".
  The idea here goes back to a lot of my teleological worldview. I believe that there is an "end" for each and every person, that is, that is that there is a way of being which is fundamentally in line with our own natures. I identify that way of being with tao, the good life, righteousness and of course being moral. I have mentioned elsewhere that I believe this way of being can only be accessed or achieved by joining/submitting our lives to the life of Jesus, but that goes beyond the scope of this post. The point here is that I am keenly interested in morality because as far as I can tell, the "perfect" ethical system would essentially function as a description of the perfect, fulfilled way of being. It would describe the kind of life that anyone in his right mind would be desperate for once he heard it.

  Of course the problem is that we are not in our right minds most of the time. I point out to my students that 99% of the time, the right decision is pretty much obvious. The great peculiarity of human nature is that we are capable of choosing what is not in our own best interest. We are able to, and tragically often do, choose misery over joy. As Dr. Kreeft says, "We are nuts! Were crazy! We have all of these chances to choose Joy and so often we take misery instead; it didn't work out last time but maybe this time will be different".
  But I think most people (at least most of my students and many of the Christians I know) think of morality as a set of rules they have to obey or they will get in trouble. Sometimes the trouble is undefined and sometimes it is basically "God will be grumpy with you" with all that that may entail. I think most people think of morality as a burden to keep them from fun rather than the map to joy. Am I wrong, or have you found that to be the case?