Rising from the floors of morality
By BRUCE BRADSHAW
Pastor, Zion Mennonite Church, Elbing
The news media have given considerable attention to the alleged sexual misconduct of three young men on the Duke University lacrosse team. This story follows a rash of allegations of the sexual misconduct among clergy, and we can only imagine how many stories are not reported.
These stories grieve me. As a parent, pastor, and teacher, I think of the love and support that the families and communities of the young men at Duke University invested in them, confident that they will become persons of high professional competence, if not high moral character.
Our legal system is capable of rendering justice, but issues concerning sexual misconduct call us to go beyond justice. Legal debates focus on the floors of morality, discerning whether the behaviors were at least minimally acceptable expressions of conduct in our society, asking: Did the young men descend below our moral floor, into the basement of morality?
Moral floors are defined by what we can do and cannot do; and they have given religious education a bad name. How often have we heard people say they do not want religious leaders — or anyone else, defining what they should do and what they cannot do? I fully agree with them; when we focus on the moral floors, we are tempted to descend into the moral basements. That is not what church leaders — or anyone else, want to do.
Perhaps the time has come for us to reach for our moral ceilings. We need to focus on our moral aspirations, the behaviors that embody our highest moral ideals. What would happen if we defined our moral aspirations by considering that we are bear the image of God, and that we, ourselves, are the temples of God's Spirits (I Corinthians 3:16). I know this sounds pious, perhaps drastically pious. However, lives are being destroyed as we flirt with moral floors and basements, reducing the profound dignity of human relationships.
The trial of the young men at Duke is going to focus on some values that are central of our society, including the value we place on wealth, education, social class, race, ethnicity, and gender; the moral characters of everyone involved will be scrutinized, and the most powerful arguments will undoubtedly prevail, whether or not they are true; power has never been capable of producing truth. The trial might define the do's and don'ts of our morality in finer detail, exposing the minutiae of our moral floors; but we must rise beyond the floor and reach for the ceiling. The central issue is not what we can or cannot do, but how we engage the profound dignity each other as we affirm that we bear the image of God.
