Comments on: On Dr. King

By: philosopher

philosopher — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:04:54 +0000

I don’t think the Parisees motives even come into it; what they did was, by the lights of the Judaism they were practicing, pretty much what they should do.
The point I was trying to make above can be thought of as the flip side to Eric’s comment about stereotypes: just because people in a group tend to have _good_ motives, it doesn’t follow that they are generally on the _right_ side of any given debate. Having good motives is actually not that hard; actually making ethically good decisions, however, really can be. I sometimes worry that many Christians, especially Protestants, get so concerned about the interior state of their own soul that they do not look hard enough & clearly enough at the impact their actions have on the wider world around them.
(Which, to be clear, is not at all to say that all or only Christians are subject to such moral myopia.)

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:49:37 +0000

Certainly, some Pharisees must have thought they were doing the right thing. Others probably were more concerned about maintaining their own power and prestige.
The key to avoiding unthinking stereotypes on the one hand as well as invertebrate moral relativism on the other hand is to realize that while a group of people can on the wrong side of a debate, not everyone in that group necessarily has awful motives.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:23:54 +0000

The tricky English language (well, not just English). “Good X” can mean “Good and an X”, “Good for an X”, or “Good in terms of its Xness”. I would think the last type of reading is what David had in mind (though he can certainly post in & clarify things if I’m wrong). Eric’s proposed paraphrases would be on target, then.
If that’s right, then the Pharisees count as relevantly good Jews as well, I would think.

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:19:56 +0000

Perhaps a better term would be “devout Christians” or “sincere Christians”?

By: John

John — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:21:53 +0000

I think it’s as much of a stretch to refer to them as “good Christians” as it would have been to refer the the pharisees as “good Jews” in the time of Christ. The popular culture ma have perceived them as such, but in the eyes of God, the misnomer was clear.
That’s why it is so important for Christians to keep watch over their claimed brethren. One of the easiest ways to drive people away from the message of Christ is to deviate from it and claim it’s still His message. Thank God for people like Dr. King who snap us back to collective reality. Here’s hoping there are other Dr. King’s floating about today to show us where the church is deviating now.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:01:02 +0000

“Many were good Christians doing what they thought was the right thing.”
One big point that this illustrates is, I think, just how next-to-worthless knowing a person’s quality ‘as a Christian’ is in trying to determine the overall ethical dimension of that persons actions & choices. So many of the whites in this country at the time in question were, indeed, good Christians doing what they sincerely thought was the right thing. And they were terribly, terribly wrong in that sincere belief.
It’s so tempting sometimes to use someone’s clear commitment to their faith as a good epistemic stand-in for their other ethical qualities. (It’s something we saw more than a little of with Tom DeLay relatively recently, for example.) But it turns out that different people can all be sincere in their faith, and come to very different takes on big ethical questions of the sort that at most one of the different views can be right about.