I must confess I have never taken a class in Bioethics, or
any other kind of ethics, and I certainly have never had occasion to teach
one. This is no longer true. My colleague, Dr Noel Horton, teaches a
Bioethics class and Mongolian International Uni, and he asked, would I be
interested in teaching a class.
Would I!!
Despite my total ignorance I put together not just one class’s
worth of material but TWO! And it was
great fun… at least for me.
I had never realized that I had experienced so many ethical
quadries in my research career. My general
approach was to present the situation I had faced, break them into small groups
and have them recommend an ethical response.
In almost every case, their response was different than my actions.
“That’s no surprise”, you say. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t that surprised either.
I started the class elucidating two general principles: 1)
Our ethical decisions are determined by whom or what we serve, and 2) That the
existence of BioEthics establishes that scientism’s claim that science is the
only way to definitively KNOW anything is BOGUS. The students came up with a long list of
possible masters including:
- · Self
- · Money
- · Your employer
- · “the public welfare”
- · And others.
The students were quite sharp, and much more willing to
participate the second class meeting, as is usually the case in the USA.
As I prepared these two lectures, it came home to me the
GREAT TRUTH of Jesus’s words, "No one can serve two masters; for either he
will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
So, once again, I must ask whom am I serving. See the list, I choose each of these at one
time or another. And, but the way, at
least one student said that G^d should be on the list.
Indeed, He should, and I pray I will serve His interests
more often than my own. I can pray for a
miracle, can’t I?
In a small group meeting recently our teacher led us in an effective exercise. We wrote out the top ten most important things in our life. He wrote a starter list on the board for those needing a jump start. Family, friends, career, financial means, faith, were all on the board.
ReplyDeleteThe teacher encouraged us to be specific with our list rather than general (e.g., Tina instead of spouse, Christ rather than faith, etc.)
I felt pretty good about my list. Then he said, "Imagine a catastrophe happened beyond your control and you lost three items forever. Draw an 'X' through those."
The amount of quiet deliberation we all went through surprised me. After five minutes or so, we had all made our marks. The teacher encouraged us for taking it so seriously.
Then he said, "Now imagine one more catastrophe that forever took three more from your life. Mark the X's."
After three rounds, we were down to one item. It surprised me how the act of whittling caused such painful this-or-that decisions. It was really difficult. What really shocked me was how emotionally affected I was by putting an X through Tina's name, the kids, church and teaching (and Bama football).
The teacher asked, "Are you hurting your #1? What decisions in your life detract from your #1?" Then we made a list of those decisions. Painful and poignant.
Can't serve more than one master, indeed.
Great story. Thx for sharing. Where was the class?
ReplyDeleteIt was a seminar I went to on good decision making. The class, ironically, ended up being a good decision.
ReplyDelete