Is Your Pas­tor a Human­ist?

“There are only two options on the shelf, pleas­ing God or pleas­ing self.” I was intro­duced to this lit­tle phrase about a decade ago while doing a pas­toral intern­ship. This phrase has had a deep impact on my life and my min­istry. In fact, if you lis­ten to many of my ser­mons you will soon encounter this phrase. It is a good reminder that in every moral dilem­ma and in every choice that faces us we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to please God or to please self. This phrase sim­pli­fies what many per­ceive as com­plex moral deci­sions but in real­i­ty, obe­di­ence is a sim­ple thing, where­as dis­obe­di­ence is very com­pli­cat­ed. 

This phrase doesn’t just sim­pli­fy moral dilem­mas by bring­ing our mind back to obe­di­ence to God, it also speaks to our reli­gious and moral alle­giance. We are either going to be alle­giant to God or we are going to be alle­giant to self. If we choose to be alle­giant to self, we are ulti­mate­ly affirm­ing human­ism in that moment. When we choose to please our self over pleas­ing God, we make a human (your­self) out to be the moral arbiter of our moral deci­sions, and that is human­ism. 

There are two dif­fer­ent ways a per­son could right­ly be called or claim the title of human­ist and they are 1) Some­one who always makes moral deci­sions based on a human moral arbiter 2) Some­one who ascribes to a moral or eth­i­cal sys­tem that places a human as the ulti­mate moral arbiter. The first per­son is one who prac­tices human­ism regard­less of their eth­i­cal sys­tem, so they are in prac­tice a human­ist. The sec­ond per­son ascribes to an eth­i­cal sys­tem that is inher­ent­ly human­ist, so they are a human­ist in prac­tice and belief. 

It is dif­fi­cult, and at times can even be impos­si­ble, to con­vince some­one who prac­tices human­ism but claims a non-human­ist eth­i­cal sys­tem that they are in fact a human­ist. For this rea­son, I will be deal­ing with those who hold to a human­ist eth­i­cal sys­tem. I do want to be clear, our actions prove what part of our doc­tri­nal state­ment we actu­al­ly believe; for this rea­son I main­tain that those who pre­dom­i­nate­ly prac­tice human­ism are human­ists, even if they ascribe to a Chris­t­ian eth­ic. 

This brings us to the ques­tion pre­sent­ed in the title of this arti­cle, is your pas­tor a human­ist? You may be ask­ing; how can a pas­tor be a human­ist? Let us look at man who was ordained and taught for sev­er­al decades in sem­i­nar­ies and yet was clear­ly a human­ist, Joseph Fletch­er. Joseph Fletch­er lived from 1905–1991. For 26 years he taught Chris­t­ian ethics at Har­vard Divin­i­ty School and Epis­co­pal Divin­i­ty School (affil­i­at­ed with Union The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary), in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. In 1974, Fletch­er was named Human­ist of the Year by the Amer­i­can Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion, and in 1983 Human­ist Lau­re­ate by the Acad­e­my of Human­ism. 

It seems strange that a man who is a dec­o­rat­ed human­ist would teach Chris­t­ian ethics at var­i­ous sem­i­nar­ies, but that is exact­ly what hap­pened. Fletcher’s great­est influ­ence came in 1966 when his book Sit­u­a­tion Ethics: The New Moral­i­ty was pub­lished. The intro­duc­tion of sit­u­a­tion ethics into the Chris­t­ian cul­ture has cre­at­ed a human­ist eth­i­cal sys­tem in a very unlike­ly place. Through sit­u­a­tion ethics many who claim the name of Christ have become unknow­ing human­ists by ascrib­ing to a sys­tem that makes a human (self) the ulti­mate moral arbiter. Sit­u­a­tion ethics is built upon four pre­sup­po­si­tions and six ascribed fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples. They are: 

(The Four Pre­sup­po­si­tions of Sit­u­a­tion Ethics) 

• Prag­ma­tism: The ends jus­ti­fy the means 
• Rel­a­tivism: The only absolute is love 
• Pos­i­tivism: Love is the moral axiom in place of nat­ur­al or moral law 
• Per­son­al­ism: Treats peo­ple as ends and not as means 

(The Six Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples) 

• Only one thing is intrin­si­cal­ly good, name­ly, love: noth­ing else. 
• The ulti­mate norm of Chris­t­ian deci­sions is love: noth­ing else. 
• Love and jus­tice are the same, for jus­tice is love dis­trib­uted. 
• Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not. 
• Only the end jus­ti­fies the means: Noth­ing else. 
• Deci­sions ought to be made sit­u­a­tion­al­ly not pre­scrip­tive­ly. 

This moral sys­tem places an individual’s per­ceived view of love in every sit­u­a­tion as the ulti­mate moral arbiter. This becomes dis­tinc­tive­ly human­ist when we con­sid­er it is love unde­fined and divorced from God’s law. Fletch­er wasn’t shy about the fact that sit­u­a­tion­ism was in oppo­si­tion to God’s law: 

Sit­u­a­tion­ism results in such char­ac­ter­is­tic propo­si­tions as that we ought to live by the law of love and nev­er by any love of law. It holds that love ethics is infi­nite­ly supe­ri­or to law ethics, so that chasti­ty and not vir­gin­i­ty, for exam­ple, is the Chris­t­ian norm, and unmar­ried love is infi­nite­ly supe­ri­or to mar­ried love.1 

When faced with a moral dilem­ma the sit­u­a­tion­ist doesn’t ask, “what does God say about the issue at hand?” The sit­u­a­tion­ist asks, “what do I think is most lov­ing?” With this being under­stood, we can see how the sys­tem or process is cen­tered around a sub­jec­tive opin­ion of man as opposed to an objec­tive moral law from God. 

While con­sid­er­ing sit­u­a­tion­ism it is imper­a­tive to address, what I am sure is an ele­phant in the room, and that is the ques­tion “what is wrong with love?” Sim­ply put, noth­ing is wrong with love as long as it is defined by God. Scrip­ture gives us a cou­ple of quick hit­ting and impor­tant insights into how love is defined. 

The first is in John 14:15 where Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep My com­mand­ments.” The sec­ond is found in 2 John 6 where it says, “This is love, that we walk accord­ing to His com­mand­ments.” Bib­li­cal love is attached to and defined by the com­mands (law) of God. We can­not right­ly love Jesus with­out keep­ing God’s pre­scribed com­mands and we can­not right­ly love oth­ers with­out walk­ing in God’s com­mands. We could sum this idea up by say­ing, “there are only two options on the shelf, pleas­ing God or pleas­ing self.” When we take the law (God’s com­mands) out of our moral frame­work we become human­ists, because we are tak­ing God’s opin­ion out of our moral deci­sion mak­ing. 

Fletch­er became a human­ist when he pit­ted love against God’s law. Today, many pas­tors and reli­gious teach­ers do this by teach­ing that love (unde­fined by the law) is the means we are to con­sid­er in our moral deci­sion mak­ing. This is human­ism. Pas­tors who teach this moral frame­work are human­ists, no mat­ter how well intend­ed they are. Don’t get me wrong, we should be com­pas­sion­ate and full of love, but this love must be defined by God’s law or it is ille­git­i­mate and dev­as­tat­ing towards oth­ers. We also need to under­stand that our feel­ings do not change our moral oblig­a­tion, no mat­ter how we feel about the sit­u­a­tion we ought to please God. 

We can see the fruit of this in our church cul­ture as many have soft­ened their pro-life stance and jus­ti­fy alle­giance to those who do not val­ue life in the womb. We can also see this in the sur­ren­der of the fight for bib­li­cal mar­riage and a less­er val­ue on the nuclear fam­i­ly. Human­ism always erodes God’s insti­tu­tions and makes church­men apa­thet­ic towards holi­ness. 

If your pas­tor often encour­ages you to be lov­ing towards oth­ers but does not define that love with the immutable and eter­nal law of God, he most like­ly is a human­ist by way of his ascribed moral sys­tem. When con­sid­er­ing the pop­u­lar­i­ty of sit­u­a­tion­ism you should not stop with sim­ply ask­ing if your pas­tor is a human­ist, you should look in the mir­ror and con­sid­er if you are a human­ist. After all, “there are only two options on the shelf, pleas­ing God or pleas­ing self.”

1 Joseph Fletch­er, Sit­u­a­tion Ethics: Is it Right or Wrong? Pg. 24