Good News for Geese

Christian Ethics and the Shalom of the World

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

As I was driving to work today, I approached a large man, Black with braids in his hair, probably two of me in width, at least a six inches taller than me, white t-shirt and black jeans holding his hand out in my direction to stop me from approaching. He walked out into the middle of the road and put up his hand in the opposite direction as well to stop the giant white pickup truck going just a bit too fast. As I slowed down and drew closer, I saw why he needed traffic to stop. A mother goose was walking across the street with her babies. As they started hopping one by one up the curb, the man allowed me to pass, waving his hand. I smiled as I drove past. There’s a man-made pond by my work and this time of year is always filled with families of geese walking around with little care about the cars and trucks passing by. As I passed, I was struck by the profound simplicity of the man’s act.

In academic theology, it is not uncommon to hear of different kinds of theologies as being “on the way.” For instance, in his book Jesus the Spirit-Baptizer, Frank Macchia calls his christological method a “christology on the way,”¹ meaning a study of Christ in real life situations in church and in the lives of Christians who make up the Church. The man stopping traffic for the safety and good of the geese is, in my mind, an example of Christian ethics on the way. As with most (all) things in academia, ethics can become abstracted from real life as people think and talk about how to think and talk about ethics. I have my own opinions on ethical theory, subscribing to a kind of virtue ethics, but trying to talk to people outside academia about virtue ethics versus deontology versus consequentialism is going to result in a lot of blank stares. Even the word “ethics” can make the subject feel lofty or abstract, something that people with time on their hands can argue about, but that “normal people” don’t have the luxury to sit and think about. Those “normal people” may or may not be concerned about “living a good life,” but still care deeply about simply being a good person.

That is “ethics on the way.” In the 12 Step program, because of the nature of addiction and its propensity to sneak up on a person when they’re not expecting it, people are encouraged to “do the next right thing.” That’s as powerful an ethical statement as any because it assumes there is a right thing to do, that the right thing is contextual—meaning it depends on the circumstance one is in at that moment—and that a person must take the time to discern what the next right thing is. The statement rightly assumes that a person has moral responsibility and that moral responsibility is complex. The person must do the right thing in light of their addiction. If the next thing this person does arouses their addiction, leading them to act out, then that person has wronged their own self. Yet, a person never acts in isolation. To wrong oneself often, if not always, means they are wronging others at the same time. Another principle from the 12 Step program is to take the actions of love, not lust, so as to come out of oneself and live with concern for others, particularly our loved ones. As an example, if an alcoholic has made a practice (ritual) out of stopping by a certain gas station on the way home from work to pick up some beers, doing the next right thing may mean taking an alternate route home so that the ritual is disrupted, and they go home to their spouse and/or family sober and stay sober for the night. That is ethics on the way.

A well rounded Christian ethics on the way learns its moral vision from the life of Jesus, from Scripture, and from historic Christian teaching on living well. Another, less pretentious way of talking about Christian ethics is to call it discipleship. In the West, we’ve often thought of discipleship as learning a few principles, rules, and disciplines that make one a good Christian. We think of things like sexual purity, or Bible reading, prayer, not stealing or lying, etc. But discipleship, i.e. Christian ethics, needs to go deeper than adherence to set rules or disciplines, even though they are important and necessary. The rules and disciplines are meant to form us into the kind of people who live good lives. Rules and disciplines help form us into the image of Jesus, the good Creator and Redeemer of Creation.

This Little Light of Mine

Most of the New Testament’s ethical teachings could be called Christian ethics on the way because so few of them are abstract. Some might be, like when St. Paul exhorts us to present our “bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1). But this abstraction is contextualized by an entire letter in which Paul reminds his readers that God has been faithful to his promises, that he has called Jew and Gentile to live together in harmony, and in light of the ethical statements he is about to make. Presenting one’s body as a living sacrifice looks like loving one another, showing honor to one another, rejoicing in hope, practicing patience in suffering, giving to those in need, blessing those who persecute us, practicing humility, associating with the lowly, not taking vengeance, and doing our best to be at peace with those around us (cf. Rom. 12:9-21). Christian discipleship, or what I’m calling Christian ethics, happens in real life, practiced by real people in real communities.

In Matthew 5:16, Jesus tells us to let our light, i.e. our ethics, “so shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” In Jesus’ mind, Christian ethics is a light shining in darkness, pointing people to his Good Father. The Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says this, is all about how we act out our relationships within a community of believers. It’s a simple and powerful ethics that has inspired theologians and thinkers for centuries, and what is easy to miss is that Jesus’ teaching is rooted in the faith of his ancestors. Jesus’ teachings are consistent with the moral vision of the Old Testament.

The “moral vision of the Old Testament” is a loaded term, and I wouldn’t want to give the impression that this article covers the breadth of it. Quite the opposite. I want to focus in on a singular aspect of Old Testament ethics. The “Law,” as Torah is often referred to, doesn’t function quite like the way law functions in modern governments, nation-states, cities, etc. There is some crossover, here and there, but unlike the civil-laws we’re used to, Torah is embedded within a story, the story of the people of God. Though knowing the history of the original colonies’ contention with the British crown helps to contextualize the Constitution of the United States, it’s not necessary to understanding the Constitution. It seems like the drafters, sons of the Enlightenment that they were, wanted the Constitution to exist apart from history, transcending the need for historical grounding. Not so with Torah, which was explicitly a covenant between God and his people Israel. It would be impossible to understand Torah without keeping in mind the story of how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt.

Torah, in Hebrew, means instruction, and though the commandments in Torah are binding on the Israelites, it would be better to understand them as instructions rather than laws. If they’re instructions, what do they teach? This is admittedly an oversimplification as there’s much more going on than just this, but Torah is teaching the Israelites how to live in a community that shines like a light in the world, demonstrating the goodness and holiness of the God who delivers people from slavery. This logic carries over into the Sermon on the Mount, which as I alluded to earlier, is doing the same kind of thing.

The way we act in the world has a direct impact on how those living outside the faith view God, whether that’s good or bad. By teaching us how to live in a godly, honoring, loving community that cares about and for one another, we become a beacon of hope, a prophetic light into the world that is coming to be through the promises of God, beginning with the resurrection of Jesus. Though the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t explicitly speak outside of human relationships, Torah does. God’s redeeming love extends beyond human beings to the whole of his Creation. This is explicit in the Old Testament (cf. Psalm 104), but the New Testament is also aware of this reality.

God is aware that the world is not right, not just for humans, but for all Creation, as all Creation suffers under the consequences of sin (cf. Gen. 3:17; Rom. 8:22). Jesus is the flash point for God’s redemption and salvation of the world, human and other-than-human. How we act toward Creation and all the creatures within Creation also serves as a prophetic signpost of the world that God dreamed of in the beginning and toward which he is leading us now.

Groanings

Without diminishing the beauty and glory of humanity’s salvation given to us in the person of Jesus, I think it’s important for us to remember that God had the redemption of all Creation in his heart when he came to us in Jesus. St. Paul had this in mind when in Ephesians he said that God “made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9, 10). And when he says we’ve been called to “live for the praise of his glory” (v. 12), he is speaking of the way we’ve been called by God, as those who share in the calling (inheritance, v. 11, 14) of Jesus, to partner with God in his work to redeem Creation. In Colossians, the sister letter to Ephesians, St. Paul says of Jesus, the one in whom “all things in heaven and earth were created” (Col. 1:15), that God was pleased to “reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven,” through Jesus, “through the blood of his cross” (v. 20).

The earth knows both that it is destined for full redemption in Jesus and that this redemption is meant to come to it, not only through Jesus of Nazareth, but through his body, that is through redeemed humanity (cf. v. 18). In Romans 8, writing in this same flow, Paul says “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Rom. 8:22) because Creation is “waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (v. 19). Notice, Creation isn’t waiting for the revealing of the Son of God, i.e. Jesus Christ alone, but for all God’s children. The redemption of all Creation, of all animals, the soil, the rivers, trees, mountains, springs, prairies, fields, and humanity happens together as a community.² Redemption isn’t complete until all of God’s creatures have found redemption and reconciliation, not just with God, but with one another. Redemption is complete when “a wolf shall dwell with a lamb, and a leopard shall lie down with a kid, and a calf and a lion and a fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Is. 11:6). Yes, this verse is symbolic, imaging the shalom that that will be present when God fully realizes his kingdom, but it is also real.

Good News for Geese

Deuteronomy 25:4 reads, “You shall not muzzle an ox while he is threshing.” This commandment is found in a list often grouped together as “Miscellaneous Laws” in contemporary English translations, but if you read carefully, you’ll notice they’re not so miscellaneous, and that a common thread runs through them. If we go back as far as the beginning of chapter 24,³ the constant theme running through these commandments is one of community shalom and justice. A person isn’t allowed to take another’s livelihood in pledge (24:6); kidnapping carries the death penalty (v. 7); collateral is forbidden on loans (v. 10); fair payment is to be given to both citizens and immigrants (vv. 14-15); a farmer is only allowed to pass through their field once, leaving what is left, whether missed or forgotten, for the poor (vv. 19-22); criminal punishment is capped (25:3); when finally, we get to the commandment to leave oxen free to feed on the grain they’re threshing.

The themes of justice and shalom continue from there. Deuteronomy as a whole is very concerned with these ideas, and these verses are typical of what we read throughout the book. When we find this verse in the middle of several chapters of commandments geared toward justice and shalom, it’s safe to assume the same thread is woven into this verse as well. The beautiful thing is that this verse is concerned solely with the ox. Later, St. Paul will use this verse to extrapolate the idea that a worker, i.e. a teacher like him, is due the wages of his labor. Curiously, he asks rhetorically, “Is it for oxen that God is concerned?” (1 Cor. 9:9), to which I would answer, “Yes, Paul, it is for oxen that God is concerned.”

We can now talk about geese again. Hopefully, by now, you can see where I am going with all this. I don’t know whether that man was a Christian or not, but in that moment he was acting in harmony with the kingdom of God. One might ask, “Is it for a mother goose and her babies that God is concerned?” And the answer from heaven is a resounding, “Yes!” This is the kind of Christian ethics, the kind of Christian discipleship in which I am interested. It’s certainly not that I don’t care about other things like prayer, fasting, Scripture reading, or justice for humans, but it’s that I am (or at least want to be) concerned for the rest of Creation as well. A holistic, well-rounded Christian ethics takes consideration for all life, human and other-than-human. I want the love that God has for his creatures to fill me with his love for them and, in that love, to do my part in caring for them and acting for their shalom.

This is Christian ethics. This is, as counterintuitive as it might feel, Christian discipleship. Following in the footsteps of the Master is what discipleship is all about, and the Master is the gentle and good Creator of the world who makes sure the animals and fields are taken care of (cf. Psalm 104). I might go so far to say that this is Gospel, remembering the words of our Lord, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15).

I rejoice in the kind of ethics that sees the beauty of geese, and values their lives enough to stop traffic in order to let them cross the road in peace. This is in itself a good thing, but at another level, we might even discern that the man paused the machinations of capitalism—manifest in infrastructure, technology, the act of going to work, and oil consumption—in order to extend shalom to the geese. If we could start practicing shalom in the small, simple places like goose ponds, recycling bins, or kindness to our co-workers, we might just ritualize ourselves into being the kind of people that live as a city on a hill, glowing with the goodness and love of God.

*Music by Onoychenkomusic*

1. Macchia, Frank D. 2018. Jesus the Spirit Baptizer: Christology in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

2. I’m not saying there’s not an order of salvation. It seems like humanity is redeemed first, and the Son of God was incarnate as a man, not any other creature. There is a lot that can be said here, but this is connected to the idea that humanity is God’s image, appointed to rule in God’s world on God’s behalf in the way our good God would rule the Creation for which he loves and cares.

3. This division is artificial, and it’s important to remember chapter breaks didn’t exist when the text was written. These chapter breaks can create perceived gap in our reading and it can be hard to follow the flow of what’s written.