Called by Name

In a recent post, I noted our tendency to confuse tradition with infallible truth.

But if our cherished principles might just be fallible, where can we find solid ground? How do we navigate ethically?

The first thing is to recognize that principles are importantly different from actions. Principles are our ways of passing on what we’ve learned about the nature of the world. For example, the first law of thermodynamics holds that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. Newtonian physics describe how things in motion interact in predictable ways. Principles describe the world as we know it, and many of our descriptions have endured so long that they seem timeless.

Actions are different. Given how we see the world right in front of us, what’s next? What ought we do?

At med school, my nephew first learned the principles of 21st century medicine. Having mastered these, he served an apprenticeship under doctors who supervised his mastery of the actions taken by surgeons in response to the most common circumstances encountered in his field. Eventually they licensed him to continue his accumulation of wisdom independently by practicing his art solo among a particular people.

The point of it all was not merely to prepare him as a medical robot, repetitively performing the same procedures without variance. No, the point was for him to become a human uniquely prepared to contribute his own creativity to the healing God desires for all. He uses his learning and experience to imagine and do whatever is needed in often uncommon situations, leading patients toward the wholeness they seek.

Imagining and doing the creative, and resisting the destructive — that’s his surgeon role. And, indeed, that’s one way to describe our human vocation.

Yet we are toolmakers. We invent robots in order to become more fruitful. Such technologies apply principles universally in order to produce homogeneity.

One such technology is universal ethics, which is at the heart of both modern liberalism and some flavors of conservatism. Both often assume it’s both possible and desirable to prescribe or proscribe actions for all humans across time and in all circumstances. In both faith communities and political parties, such universal dogma are soon named timeless or eternal. God-ordained! For preparing tenderloin in a different way threatens the family identity.

But there is a crucial difference between timeless principles and our actions. I remind myself of this with a favorite saying: “God’s Word never addresses us in general. God always calls us by name” (see Isaiah 43:1). In other words, God’s Word is itself timeless, but I always experience it in a concrete way — as an irruption into my time, my location, my circumstance, my particularity. In biblical context, we are summoned by name and called to ascend the holy mountain to be united with our Lord.

What ought we do? How do we navigate? We hear the same Word but, at any moment, we stand at different locations on the mountain. God’s Word is the real-time map guiding us to the summit from our particular locations on the mountain. Our vocation is to act creatively, avoiding destructive brambles and cliffs, adjusting course as needed.

Our dogma — whether in roasting tenderloins or in ordering our families and communities — are never timeless. Confusing principles and actions, universal ethics promise a shortcut to the summit that it can’t deliver. Individually and communally, though armed with the maps of our forebears, we have to navigate from our point in time. We wisely follow the well-worn trails of our ancestors, but prudence sometimes requires that we clear a new path.

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