Should Ethics Come Last?

I do wonder whether there is a tendency to place Ethics as a last, and sometimes elective topic in various ministries and professions. My evidence is a bit anecdotal… but please bear with me.

#1. I used to be a mechanical design engineer. I earned a four year degree in mechanical engineering. I took another year of engineering with specialization on naval nuclear engineer. I earned a masters degree in mechanical engineering, and I served as a mechanical design engineer for 8 years. In all of those years, including 8 years of formal education and 8 years of application, I never received training in engineering ethics. It is not as if the course did not exist. I saw it in the course listings. However, it was not required, it was not encouraged, and I kind of wonder if it was not actually available. While I think that I probably acted ethically as an engineer most of the time… I have to wonder. I often would joke that “Engineering Ethics” is “That which works is good and that which doesn’t work is bad.” I wonder, however, how often I may have fallen into taking that joke too seriously. I wonder how often others have as well.

#2. I served in the military for a few years. While we did a lot of training— some of which, such as Military Leadership, promotes a form of ethics through instilling “martial virtues”— I don’t think that there was ever a course I took on Ethics.

#3. At seminary for my Master of Divinity degree, I did take a course in Ethics. I thought it to be rather useful. However, I ended up taking it the final term of my final year of seminary. I also don’t really think that this was just me. Generally, I tried to follow the recommended schedule of courses. Taking it late doesn’t mean that it is thought of as least important. Some might even argue that placing it last means that one can use one’s integrated training and supervised ministry and process it all through this course. Still, I do think that ethics should be foundational to ministry— a start, not a finish in the training process

#4. While we did have an Ethics course at seminary, I think it was safe to say that it was more like “Learning Good Ethics So You Will Know What to Preach to Others.” This is important… but it did not necessarily deal with ministerial best practices. There was no class that discussed ethical versus unethical behavior as a missionary, or an evangelist, or a pastoral counselor (among others). There is a lot of important things missed.

#5. Looking over my book on Cultural Anthropology that I wrote up for my class, I realize that I really had no section on ethics for the Christian minister relating to cultural anthropology. Well, I sort of did. I had a section of “Axioms” for Christian Cultural Anthropology. These are good, and foundational. Still, there was a LOT left unsaid. I really wonder why I did that. It seems like something so obvious to have, how could it have been ignored, BY ME? https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Anthropology-Christian-Missions-Multicultural/dp/B0C9SDMY9S

#6. For our book on pastoral counseling, my wife and I DID actually write a chapter on practical ethics. I feel good about it. Again, however, we put it in Chapter 15, the very last chapter. Why? https://www.amazon.com/Art-Pastoral-Care-Robert-Munson-ebook/dp/B01IKY3YTG/

#7. Speaking of pastoral counseling, Len Sperry speaks of five broad categories of presenting concerns. One of those broad categories (Category III) involves “Ethical Concerns.” Sperry notes that a number of types of counselors (including psychologists, psychiatrists, pastoral counselors, life coaches, and spiritual directors) tend to avoid this whole category of problem. The only group that really embraces these types of problems are the Philosophical counselors. Philosophy, going back literally millennia, has been deeply concerned with ethics (ethics being a whole category of study in philosophy, after all). But why are the other groups ignoring it. For pastoral counseling there are at least a few possibilities. (A) Pastoral Counseling has been strongly influenced by humanistic psychology— such as Carl Rogers. Being client-centered is seen as being both non-judgmental and being non-directive. It is hard to deal with ethics without embracing some form of judgment or directive guidance. (B) A lot of people go into pastoral counseling rather than pastoring because they do not really appreciate the prophetic role. Pastors often embrace a more prophetic role— expressing “Thou Shalts” and “Thou Shalt Nots.” (C) Pastoral Counselors often deal with people of other faiths or faith traditions. As such, it can get pretty problematic to influence much in terms of ethics without undermining the counseling relationship. <On this last point, I would probably say that dealing with ethics is important, and the challenge of addressing ethics across denominational, religious, or other divides is important and the struggle is worth the effort.

#8. A missionary friend of mine was talking about a person (we can call “Tom”) he knows who is just so so unethical. He was contrasting this with another person (we can call “Bill”) who was… simply a wonderful person. He could not understand why everyone does not see what a fraud Tom is and why they can’t see what a peach Bill is. Well, I know the two people my friend was talking about. I don’t really have high opinions of either Tom or Bill. If I was forced to give a preference, I might think slightly better of Tom than Bill— but neither I would describe as ethical. It does occur to me that in seminary, in church, in missions, in an awful lot of Christian ministry, we tend to ACCUSE and EXCUSE, not so much on ethics or virtues, but on tribe. If a person is seen as part of our tribe, then their sins are just foibles… or perhaps simply virtues in disguise. If a person is of another tribe, their sins are dark and hardly forgivable… their virtues are probably trickery… covering greater sins. Now for me, since neither Tom nor Bill are part of “my tribe” I find it pretty easy to identify flaws in each. Those flaws are big and ugly. But, again, because they are not part of my tribe… I still struggle to see their virtues— I doubt their sincerity, their motives, their consistency. In other words, I have the same problem as my friend. I think in church, we don’t really take ethics very seriously— tribalism combined with have sub-culturally acceptable sins— often takes precedence in our evaluations. Jesus gave us warning about judging— but I don’t think that He was guiding us to be non-ethical beings.

I am still processing a lot of this. I definitely should add a chapter on ethics in my book on Cultural Anthropology. The American Anthropological Association has a good list to start with: https://americananthro.org/about/anthropological-ethics/ I have also written on the topic of the church (as a lived out experience) being unethical. I will give the links below. I haven’t read those articles in awhile. I hope that I still agree with them. I think I need to address ethics more seriously in my classes. I am teaching holistic ministry and there is a lot of ethical issues when it comes to the myriad aspects of holistic ministry.

I would say that perhaps there are two places that ethics should be dealt with in terms of instruction. First, there should be an ethical foundation and this foundation should be stated explicitly and explained. I did that in my book on cultural anthropology, and I think that was sound. Second, there should be an end piece on ethics. After all, once one has learned one’s tools and how to use them well— the subtleties in helping one understand that “what is possible and what is good” are very much separate things and should be explored. Probably this should be tied to an ethical best practices. My wife and I did this, to some extent in our book on pastoral care. I suppose if we combined the two books (foundational ethics and best practices ethics) we would have a pretty good book.

https://munsonmissions.org/2012/04/10/the-unethical-church-part-i/