Ethics and the gas pump

Well, the semester is coming to a close. The class, Daily Space with God, which was the impetus for this blog only meets one more time. This week the instructor, whose doctorate is in theological ethics, said that he had a conviction that by and large teaching ethics is wrong. That trying to teach something that is to be intuitive by hypothetical situations at best has little fruit and at worst undermines ethics. It introduces possibilities to hurt, kill, steal that when living a godly life aren't really possibilities. His hypothesis is that making space with God and the resulting life of contemplation is where ethical behavior flows from.

He's right. Prior to this class and even in it, I had become a little disillusioned. It felt like "works." If I stopped and just was, then the reality would be that my closeness with God would become distance. And while there is truth to this, another truth is that in the discipline of creating space for God and living in him, the discipline becomes intuitive. Your first reaction isn't always anger, but it starts to move to love. Your first impulse isn't self-preservation, but it moves to sacrifice. Your reliance on happy circumstances starts to move toward contentment and peace beyond your environment.

A couple of days ago I did a really stupid thing. I had been filling up my car and went into the quick mart for a candy bar. When I came out, I started the car and slowly backed away. I then saw and heard the nozzle still in the tank. Ouch. So I stopped and pulled out the nozzle. It was dripping fuel, but didn't look damaged. My tank door got bent pretty good, but the fuel hole looked untouched. So I replaced the nozzle, continued the transaction and left. I was relative sure that everything was fine, but had this nagging feeling it wasn't. So the next morning I drove by and sure enough there was a bag over the nozzle and a large sign saying the pump was down. I called a few minutes later and the manager was unaware of what was going on and said to call back that afternoon. I stopped by and gave the afternoon manager my name and number. Now, at different points in this episode I was thinking, well they probably got me on tape, so it's good to confess - any time the cops are on the way, often I didn't think at all about it, no the cost of this thing is incidental to them but when they realize they have a "live one" they're going to rake me over the coals - better leave this alone, but in the end it was a matter of how much is peace worth? Isn't the righteous life worth a few buck, maybe many hundred few bucks? I can say that taking God seriously and working through daily disciplines didn't have me at a place where I immediately responded righteously (or I should say I allowed some entertainment not to respond righteously although the steps generally were), but it did give me the ability to decipher the truly important.