Transformations and morals background

 Parish newsletter article as background for this sermon.

 For this month’s article, I am focusing on a secular topic rather than share a theological or spiritual perspective. With Lent approaching, there are some things around our view of morality that we need to think about. In my March 2^nd sermon, I will mention/have mentioned a book called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Dr. Haidt is a moral psychologist who has studied and developed theories on what morals are, what they mean, and how we adopt or change them. This was a book that Father Andrew started to read last fall and recommended it to me, and we read it at the same time. It is a very good introduction to morality based on research and it takes attentive reading to capture everything in it. Most of the moral concepts have Judeo-Christian roots, so they were familiar to me and easily applicable to moral teaching in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. This book has added another dimension to my understanding of morality in general and has challenged me to look critically at my own morality specifically.

There are two main points that Dr. Haidt makes that can help understand morality and its origin, and will help with examining your morality, even if you don’t read the book. The first point is that when we describe the morality of something or someone, it is actually the second reaction we have to it or them. We are under the illusion that we can come up with rational, well thought-out reasons for determining morality that stand up to scrutiny. The truth is that research has shown that we have  an  immediate, often unconscious emotional reaction to something or someone, whether it is delight, disgust, fear, or relief, and it occurs in the context of life experience and trauma. Our moral explanations come shortly afterward to defend and reassure ourselves that our emotional reaction was justified. So, our journey through life and moral situations is guided mostly by our emotional reactions, not our reasoning. This was hard for me to accept, because I believe that I can be objective and come to a rational and justified explanation for my moral judgements and actions. There is good news, though. We can put distance between our emotional reactions and the resulting rationalizations if we ask ourselves about what emotions we experience, and then name them. Then, we can more easily set those emotions aside and engage in determining morality based on fact, reason, and justice, rather than only on emotions. Emotions engage us in the moment and then provide an opportunity to apply reason.

The second point is the five pillars that Dr. Haidt has developed to describe the morals, the sense of right and wrong that we have. These pillars are 1) providing care and avoiding harm; 2) promoting fairness and stopping exploitation; 3) expecting loyalty and dealing with traitors or apostates; 4) recognizing authority and blocking anarchy; 5) recognizing sanctity and removing degradation. These pillars are universal, rising above political, religious, or cultural categories in America, but our actions supported by the pillars look very different from person to person that are categorized politically, religiously, or culturally. Nearly everyone will agree that the five pillars describe their morals, but when we talk about what is moral or immoral, we quickly descend into disagreement and conflict over right and wrong. We constantly have to evaluate and negotiate degrees of morality as we are challenged by ideas or events.

The current American social climate is dysfunctional and politics are combative, and I feel at a loss how to address it. Maybe we need to step out of our biblical source of morality to understand what happens to us emotionally and spiritually when we react to scripture and to daily events happening around us. Maybe we need to examine why morality looks different to us versus other people, and how to work with that difference. At the very least, we need move away from the emotions roused by manipulative manufactured outrage, antagonism for its own sake, and acts of humiliation or imposition. We need to rationally examine the reasons for our judgements of morality to create consistency and understand where right, wrong, and justice lie.