EDITORIAL: ‘Morality’ is more than sex we don’t do

Posted: 4/28/06

EDITORIAL:
‘Morality’ is more than sex we don’t do

The last time we met on this page, we talked about immigration and education. We discussed Texas’ march toward Hispanic-majority status and the necessity of educating Hispanic Texans. Specifically, we looked at two opportunities for improving lives as well as making our state stronger: (a) lowering the Hispanic dropout rate by at least 2 percentage points a year for at least 10 years, and (b) making education at the nine universities affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas accessible to Hispanics.

Elsewhere in that issue of the paper, we reported on how Albert Reyes, president of the Baptist University of the Americas, has called for U.S. immigration policy to reflect Jesus’ demand for justice for all people.

Predictably, some readers appreciated neither the editorial nor Reyes’ remarks. Their complaints followed a familiar theme: The church should take care of poor people, and the state should butt out. Of course, none of the complainers could cite a single church that is providing its prorated share of service to the poor—a proportionate ministry that, if copied by all the other Christian churches in the community, would be sufficient to meet the needs of the very young and very old and the disabled and vulnerable who live there. None of them offered to demonstrate that they have anted-up tithes-and-offerings sufficient to provide their share of their church’s share of all the care they say “the church” is supposed to offer. By the way, I’m batting 1.000 on that request—never have had anyone take me up on it.

As I listened to one long and angry voicemail (she said “socialist” at least three times and threw “liberal” in for good measure), I recalled one of the final—if not the last—speeches made by Phil Strickland, the longtime executive director of the BGCT Christian Life Commission and one of the finest champions of care for those whom Jesus called “the least of these.” In his last days, he asked a question that consumed him for decades: Why—in the buckle of the Bible Belt, in the state with the largest Baptist population, with churches on practically every corner, with a CLC in operation for 50 years—why does Texas rank at or near the bottom in so many indicators of compassion: Support for abused and disadvantaged children, education, single-parent families, the elderly, the disabled, and on and on?

Suppose you concur with the rationale that care for poor people is the job of “the church” and not “the government”—Phil Strickland’s question remains: Why are vulnerable people so bad off in Texas? With all our churches and all our Christian wealth, if we truly believe it’s our job to minister to “the least of these,” why don’t we? Even if you don’t believe in charity, then why don’t we have enough church-run and church-funded programs to train all the able-poor up out of poverty, provide Christian foster care and adoptive homes for every neglected and abused child, and offer dignified care for every person who gets old between the Red River and the Rio Grande? And even if you say, “The job’s too big,” then why don’t we at least try?

The reason stems from a classic paradox: Our strength is our weakness.

Texans, particularly Texas Baptists, always have been big on personal responsibility. We value independence, strength and self-reliance. So, we tend to question or look down on people who don’t possess those virtues. Similarly, we historically emphasized personal morality. We even joked about being known for what we’re against—smokin’, drinkin’ and dancin’. Joking aside, we defined morality as sins of the flesh. And just as we exalted personal responsibility, we made personal morality—sins we don’t commit—our talisman of virtue. Moreover, the raunch and promiscuity of our media-soaked culture has narrowed our parameters of morality to sex: We’re moral people if we don’t fornicate, adulterate, engage in homosexual acts and abort babies.

Problem is, that’s too narrow a definition of morality. Jesus talked about caring for the poor many times more often than he talked about sex. In fact, he seemed to have a soft spot—a measure of grace that makes us squirm when we think about it—for sexual sinners.

If we’re going to recapture the morality of Jesus, we’ve got to become a people who care about the things Jesus cared about. The gospels don’t mince words: Jesus cared an awful lot about poor people. If we want to think of Texas as being a moral place, then Texas ought to be known as the state that cares the most for the youngest and oldest, for the least and lost and vulnerable.

Our public morality must eclipse our private virtue.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.