Sunday and the Moral Spectrum

In Seattle, home to one of the largest populations of bike commuters in the country, officials have overturned a decades-old regulation requiring cyclists to wear helmets because of discriminatory enforcement of the rule against homeless people and people of color.


Sunday and the Moral Spectrum

Today's is one of the difficult gospels--and insights--of the New Testament: the 'love your neighbor' gospel. Christ's position is almost unfathomable, especially for the times. National hatred was, and is, an elaboration of tribal hatred, something inherent in us. Christianity's broad reassessments--charity, equality of value of the individual--were not just revolutionary, they were unheard of. (Aristotle thought women were incomplete men.) Christ's realignment of thought here was simply stupendous.

And an astonishing demand, a challenge to any non-theologian with an opinion. But it seems to be more a tableau, a portrait of the problem rather than a simple solution. Turning one's cheek in Ukraine will be fatal, surrendering your family to slavers almost collaborative. The purity Christ asks for is less a demand than a context, a way of measuring the moral failures that are guaranteed by our natural limits and those of our natural world. Christ's sacrifice is humanity at its purist, his torturers, man at his worst. Between those extremes, Christ expects us not to be Pilate.