The ongoing argument about effectiveness vs. faithfulness in Christian ethics is a tough one. Should our ethics be directed toward getting things done, toward advancing the kingdom, increasing shalom on earth? Or, should we be concerned with being the church and faithfully living eschatologically – no matter what the results are? To me, this is a question of the ends and the means. If our telos is to end injustice on earth, then perhaps a little injustice now isn’t that big of a deal – if in the long run it ultimately decreases injustice (assuming we could measure such a thing). In this scenario, there is a discontinuity between the means the end. On the other hand, if the end is the Kingdom of God on earth and the means to achieve such an end need to be reflected in our action, then surely no amount of injustice could be used with good conscience. Here, the means and the end are in deep continuity with each other.
But there is something more than the relative effectiveness of our ethics that we must take into account. That could be called the positive responsibility. There is also a negative responsibility which must be accounted for:
If Christians do not live out of what Christ has given them to live out, we do not merely have their own disobedience but also an absence, void, or lack which affects all men. (Ellul, Ethics of Freedom)
Perhaps an example of this – overused, maybe – is the lack of Christian resistance to Nazi ideology. When both Catholics and the German Christians, in a desire to gain political acceptance and power, worked on behalf of Hitler, they were no longer living as free Christians. And, as history showed us, the lack of this resistance produced a void into which a very dark power came to rule. On the other hand, the Confessing Church – who’s material effectiveness is questionable – lived out their freedom by resisting evil to the death. What they were resisting was this kind of Christianity:
Positive Christianity is National Socialism … [and] National Socialism is the doing of God’s will…. Dr. Zoellner … has tried to tell me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh … Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle’s Creed …. [but] is represented by the Party …. the German people are now called … by the Führer to a real Christianity …. The Führer is the herald of a new revelation.
But maybe this is just one extreme that is unrepeatable.
In our world today, Christians have neglected to take up their freedom and have therefore created a vacuum into which Technique – among other idols of freedom: politics, capitalism, sex, etc.– has come and taken power. The negative aspect of freedom, for Ellul, is why he can write a book with the title The Subversion of Christianity, which is devoted to an analysis of the numerous amount of subversions which have perverted Christianity from its original revolutionary message: “We may thus say that in every age, the modern age more than ever, the church has betrayed its mission on earth.” This betrayal is specifically an ethical betrayal, a failure to live in freedom for God, and from the powers.
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