It has been said, so many times, in fact, that it has become almost cliché, that ideas have consequences or, to put it another way, that wrong thought leads to wrong action. In many cases an incorrect line of reasoning immediately leads to obviously incorrect action, however, in some instances an error can go relatively unnoticed, either because the one holding to the idea puts it into practice only erratically or because the belief, although incorrect, produces a correct result in most cases. These errors are, in fact, the most dangerous, since they are rarely seen yet can still lead to incorrect actions.
One particular such error lies in the common thought the Christians ought to do the right thing because doing so creates good results. It would seem to be apparently logical to base one's judgment of what the right action is on whether or not the results it produces are desirable. Some may already recognize the insidious error found in this line of reasoning, but it is certainly not readily apparent to most people. The fact is, the statement that a Christian should base his judgment of an action on the results the action produces is the farthest thing from the truth. One could hardly conceive of a more dangerous error for a Christian to hold to. It usually causes the one holding it to arrive at the correct course of action – God's ways are indeed good ways, so in most cases the right action will produce a desirable outcome – but it is most emphatically not a sound basis for any Christian to take action.
In fact, this “results-based” morality is the product of a secular humanist philosophy, not Christianity. Given no other standard to judge behavior humanist philosophers have devised a number of devices for judging the ethics of an action, all of them based on the results an action achieves. For example, one of the more well-known examples of a non-Christian code of ethics, utilitarianism, argues that the individual should seek to do the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of people. In other words, the individual should seek the best possible result, where the goodness or badness of the result is defined based on the net “good” (which can only be defined as pleasure without some other standard to define good) the action produces. Other codes of ethics may define what result is desirable differently, but the basic principle is the same: we take action in order to achieve a desirable result and for no other reason.
The discussion in the above paragraph should begin to give the reader an idea of at least one of the salient flaws of results-based morality. By basing its judgment of the rightness or wrongness of an action on the results achieved, it ignores the fact that the full results of an action cannot be entirely known even after the action has been taken. Christianity, which assumes absolute right and wrong, at the very least strongly suggests that it is possible to know whether an action is right or wrong before the action is taken, and certainly, failing that, afterward. However, if we base our determination of right and wrong on the results of the action we must inevitably conclude that it is impossible to know whether an action is right or wrong before the action is made, and only possible to guess afterward. This fact alone should strongly suggest that Christianity and results-based morality are incompatible.
If this was not enough, results-based morality also misplaces the burden of responsibility for effecting change in the world. Any Christian should recognize that not only does predicting and effecting positive change in the future exceed our ability, it exceeds our responsibility as well. God is more than capable of achieving any results he desires, whatever our action, while our inability to predict future results inevitably requires an inability to consistently achieve our desired results. We are like children, assigned a task by our elder, not because he requires our assistance for the task but out of kindness towards us. Our “goodness” is therefore not judged by the success of our bumbling, amateurish actions – had that been the point the adult could have done it himself far better – but by the fact that we tried to follow the directions given to us. Similarly, we take action not to align world events with God's will – he is more than capable of doing that without our aid – but to align ourselves with God's will. What happens is incidental to the single most important point of any action: how closely it conforms with God's standard of holiness.
With this in mind Christians must emphatically reject attempts to judge the morality of an action based on subjective determinations of whether the result achieved was “good” or “bad.” Such a determination assumes more responsibility and more ability than humans have or were ever intended to have. Instead, we must embrace the belief that the morality of every action is decided solely by how closely that action conforms with God's standard. In many cases actions that conform to God's standard will produce what we view as “good” results, but that is never why an action is right, merely a sign that it may be. Accepting a correct view of morality requires not only that Christians understand such a correct view of morality, but also that they apply it. We must check ourselves when we find ourselves explaining that we are taking an action because it results in certain desirable things and instead teach ourselves to link each action to specific Biblical principles that support it. By doing otherwise we risk allowing an apparently trivial yet still dangerous error to compromise our modes of thinking and acting, potentially causing us to take wrong action, something that should be anathema to the careful Christian.
Labels: Christianity, Theology