Day 5 - Justice... or Let's just assign ourselves extra credit.

Today was another pretty boring class, all we did was talk about justice, nothing too heavy.  But I did ask one question and received an answer from the teacher that will be worth remembering in the future.

So class was started and the teacher the teacher asked us if anybody has the right to extra credit?  We answered, no.  He then divided the classroom down the middle into two groups: East and West.  We were to write down our names on a piece of paper (for our respective groups) and he said that he will give five points of extra credit for rhyming words.  East's task was to find five words that rhyme with cat, West's job was to find five words that rhyme with dog.

Well both groups did the task.  He had East read their words, he wrote them down on the board and then wrote "+5 extra credit" underneath their list.  Our group (West) read our words, he wrote them down on the board, and then proceeded to start with class.

Now you could tell that it was OBVIOUS to everyone that my group didn't get any extra credit.  My former-teacher radar could tell that this was a little experiment to get the class thinking about fairness and stuff.  So we had a little discussion about what happened, how expectations were not met, etc. and this led into the topic of the day.  Justice.

But while we were still discussing the situation and the West group realized that we weren't getting any extra credit I asked the teacher, "Can we assign ourselves extra credit?"

He responded, "Sure, it won't make it into my book, but go ahead."  This response got me thinking.

While once talking to someone about the authority of God, I likened it to a classroom situation (now all analogies never have a complete one-to-one relationship but bear with me).  Let's say that the teacher is the god of the classroom.  In many ways this is true.  The teacher has authority inherent in his position, the teacher can tell the students what to do and what no to do.  The teacher decides what the expectations of the homework assignment are and how it will be graded.  The teacher can even choose to give or withhold extra credit.  Let's say that a student says to the teacher, "I believe that I deserve extra credit for being awesome."

If I heard this back in the day, I would probably have chuckled and kept on with my work.  But let's say that the student persists and asks, "So you're not going to give me extra credit for being awesome?"

"Nope," would be my reply.

"Well, then I'll just give extra credit to myself."

I can tell you that I would reply the exact same way as my ethics teacher did.  He is perfectly capable of assigning himeslf extra credit, but it certainly will not make it on the report card.  What the student chose to be his reality did not matter at all.  The only reality that ever mattered was the teacher's.

But let's say that there is no teacher.  If the student decided to give himself extra credit, is there any objective reality where the student will actually get some extra credit?  To whom is he speaking?  The other students?  Does all the students getting together and deciding upon the standards of extra credit and then applying it to themselves mean they actually have this extra credit now?  It's possible that the students may divide themselves into two camps with opposite standards of extra credit.  How then would they decide which standard is the correct standard?

Let's get out of the analogy and pretend that God does not exist.  If God does not exist, why isn't it the case that any human 'right' (like in Monday's discussion) or justice is not just humans assigning themselves extra credit?  Sure we can SAY that we have human rights and people ought to be treated in a just manner but does that objectively mean that human rights and justice exist?  Does all of us human beings getting together and deciding upon the standards of human rights and then applying it to ourselves mean we actually have human rights now?

The teacher ended the class with a story from Second Samuel where the prophet Nathan tells David that he did something wrong by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba (If you need a reminder of the story, click here).  The teacher used this example to explain that if you're in a situation it's tough to see if your own behavior was just or not (which is probably why people are not their own judges in a courtroom case).  According to my teacher, Nathan was there to tell David that he did something wrong and David was able to see this because Nathan was an 'outside voice' and saw the situation from a different point of view.

I should have brought this up, but why should David have listened to Nathan?  If all of the Hebrews were mistaken and there is no God, then all Nathan was telling David was that he doesn't get any extra credit for killing Uriah.  In fact, David got negative extra credit.  He got so much negative extra credit that David's report card was showing a big fat F in the class called Life 101.

Unless Nathan had some sort of authority then David could just have responded with, "Nu-huh!" stuck out his tongue, and ran away.  But Nathan did have authority.  Not inherent in himself, but his authority came from God.  David was cut to the heart and admitted that he sinned against the LORD.  It is God that is the standard of our behavior.  It is God who is perfectly just in all His actions.  He is the object in which human rights and justice rest.  Though we, like David, sin against Him every day, God tells us, like Nathan told David, that the LORD has taken away our sin.

So while I didn't talk about the topic of justice and its definitions and whatever, I'm just going to assign myself extra credit anyway.  :)

Small group discussion... or Rule number one: You don't talk about group discussion.

Rule number two: You don't talk about group discussion.

Anyway, was it just me or do most teachers have insanely high hopes for group discussions?  They dream for this:

But instead get this:

or this:

So I've signed up for the small group discussion part of the class this upcoming Friday and these will be the topics that we'll be discussing.  What I would like from you is your ideas, perhaps some Bible passages that come to mind about the topic.  The topics are in italics and my first impressions about them are after.

1.  The head of marketing thinks one of his subordinates spends too much  time surfing the Internet. He asks you to monitor the employee's e-mail, URL  stops and Web downloads, and wants the logs on his desk in a week.  He asks that  you not inform the employee of your monitoring, and that you not discuss your  activities with anybody else in the company. 

I don't have a problem with this, but the requirement to not discuss the activities with anyone else might be suspect.  If you're at work, your time is not your own, you should be working.  I would probably think of the 7th commandment in this situation.  You are stealing from your employer if you get paid for not doing the work that you are getting paid to do.

2.  Frank is a software designer who has been assigned to work with an  employment agency, building a database for their job applicants.  The client (the  employment agency) explains that when displaying a list of equally qualified  applicants for a position, male applicants are to be listed ahead of female  applicants, and white applicants are to be listed ahead of non-white applicants.

This one is a bit obvious here, but maybe it's an employment agency for actors and when a script calls for a white dude the agency needs a program that can sift through all of the actors and find the white dudes quickly!  Or maybe the employment agency is run by a bunch of sexist bigots?  Who knows?  Passages anyone?

3.  Irene is a software designer who has been assigned to work for a foreign client, building a database to help schedule on-going medical treatments.  She is  asked by the client to build the database so that members of ethnic group A are  always given priority over members of ethnic group B, even if that priority  endangers the life of the latter.  Such a priority is not illegal in the country where the client is located;  indeed, it is culturally expected.

I don't think I would want to work on this project, though I would want more information about the whole thing.  In the end, I would tell them to find someone else to do it.  Even though this is similar to number 2, does anybody have some passages that might apply?

Thanks!

Day 4 - Rights...or You Got It (The Right Stuff)?

Oh, oh, oh, oh oh oh...

Today's class was pretty boring and I'll admit that I didn't spend that time thinking about the New Kids on the Block.  Especially Donnie (he's so street!)  All we talked about was human rights and what some of them may be.  Here is a definition of rights!

"Activity or opportunity we expect to have protected against the actions of others."

So human rights are rights that humans have (duh?) simply by virtue of being a human.  We then began to make some sort of a list of rights that humans could possibly have such as life, free speech, love, liberty, association, discovery, humane treatment, family, blah, blah, blah.  We went through some examples where we discussed a situation where people's rights could possibly be involved and more blah, blah, blah, blah.  But then the teacher posed a question that piqued my interest.  It was:

"Where do rights come from?"

The teacher said that this is a hard question and an answer to it can help to distinguish between different ethical theories.  There are three main answers to this question.  One is that all rights are legal rights, the next is rights are religiously based, and finally that our rights are based in human nature.

I especially liked that rights are religiously based (specifically based in the Christian God of the Bible) but we didn't go into any of the three choices very deeply.  That's probably going to be another class period (I can't wait).  But since class was boring my mind was wandering over the topic of God and rights and as this is my blog here are my thoughts on rights and how they relate to God.

I believe my teacher said that all three of the answers to the "Where do rights come from?" question have some deficiencies.  Now I naturally disagree with this (concerning answer number two) but the teacher said that all people must decide for themselves which way they're going to answer  the "Where do rights come from?" question.  However, this is a philosophy that, as C.S. Lewis said, puts God in the dock.  Here is the full quote:

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge.  For the modern man the roles are reversed.  He is the judge: God is in the dock....  The trial may even end in God's acquittal.  But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God in the dock."

The philosophy that my teacher espouses puts man's reasoning and authority over God's reasoning and authority.  Let's say that God does not exist (or He is not as He says He is) then what right do we have to decide that we have intrinsic worth?  Would we get worth just because WE say so?  What justification could there be to hold this attitude?  I suppose that we could just choose to have this attitude, but would it necessarily be true?  Just because someone arbitrarily says, "Humans have intrinsic value by virtue of being a human" what about someone else saying, "No, humans do not have intrinsic value by virtue of being a human being."  If one can be arbitrary about the whole situation why shouldn't another person be just as arbitrary?

No, human rights are not just arbitrary choices made by people some time ago, rather humans have value because God has given us value.  David wrote:

 ³ When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
       the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,

 ⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
       the son of man that you care for him?

 ⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
       and crowned him with glory and honor.

 ⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
       you put everything under his feet:

 ⁷ all flocks and herds,
       and the beasts of the field,

 ⁸ the birds of the air,
       and the fish of the sea,
       all that swim the paths of the seas.

 ⁹ O LORD, our Lord,
       how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)

In all of God's creation the the only reason that we have any value at all is because God has given us value, not ourselves.  God holds us in such with such a high value that He sent His Son to die for us and continues to forgive us even though we sin daily!    God has revealed His attitude to us in His word and in our hearts so we are to mirror this attitude in how we treat others.  So the 'rights' that my class came up with (life, association, humane treatment, discovery) can only be properly understood in the context of Christianity.

Wednesday's class is about justice.  Another Christian concept, huh?