CAN PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY EVER BE SEPARATED FROM PRIVILEGES?

© 1998 by Orchid Land Publications
[Jan., 1998. updated 7-19-99]

     Few would dispute that you have no claim on most of the privileges of secular life without fulfilling responsibilities that go with it.  Can this sentiment can be carried (and has it been carried) to untenable extremes?   The principle of attaching responsibilities to privileges (including wealth)  is certainly not an objectionable way, in most respects, for social structures to exist and function.  

     Suppose a young woman--widowed, divorced, or never married--has a fatherless child and no family to lean on and no facility for taking care of her infant if she should seek work for her   child's and her own support.   In the absence of rape, the child is in some sense her doing, for sure, even if she conceived the child under the influence of drink or drugs.  The answer of how society should treat such a person and such a child is less simple than some non-religious and some religious people suppose; various questions arise.

     If the mother in question is not a widow or divorced and also repents of having the child--not just because the child is inconvenient, but because of her share in the responsibility for the child's plight--should the rest of us (taxpayers) refuse to help her with a job and child-care for the infant?  The reader of the Evangelists (authors of the four Gospel books) and of the Apostles might offer different answers from those of a cold-hearted realist, though even the unchurched would normally pity the mother and child.     What does the reader of the Gospels and Apostles answer, say,  when the mother in question claims not to repent of any action on her part for the child's and her plight?   (Her role may be unblameworthy--say, if the child's father has been killed in an accident.  And the same holds for a widower with a child on his hands as the result of the other parent's accidental or disease-caused demise.)   Even if some non-Orthodox citizen might blame the poor mother for not having undergone an abortion, an Orthodox person would praise the mother's responsibility in having the child--even though the infant is "wanted" by her only in the negative sense of avoiding the sin of abortion.    The reader of the Gospels and Apostles will have to decide whether the statements of the biblical writers indicate a need to take care of a poor down-and-out mother, even apart from her repentance.   However that may be answered, what about the child?  No one will claim that the child is responsible for its own being born into an impossible situation.   If not even a pagan society can blame the child, a Christian society would not wish to take a position that would in any way constrain women to undergo an abortion unwillingly--or unwillingly to become a nun. 

      There are two separate sets of questions:   (1) concerning the deprivation of some privilege (like the benefits of helping to find a job or providing a job and/or child-care at taxpayer's expense--or possibly  at the expense by a single charitable-minded congregation) as a de facto punishment for  the woman's responsibility for her child; and (2) exacting some deprivation of privileges for the mother or father of a poor child even though the child cannot be anything but blameless.   If the latter is unthinkable, the first is also hard to reconcile with the Gospels and Apostle--whether the mother repents or not, but certainly if she repents or indeed, being a widow, is blameless.  Indeed, the question embraces a child with two married parents who cannot provide for the child's welfare through the salary of just one parent--i.e. when both parents have to work in order to be able to feed and provide medical care for the child and themselves. 

     So, forgetting the mother's faults and thinking only of the child, how  does a pagan citizen decide; and how does one who accepts the Gospels and Apostles decide?   There is no need for the writer to say what the Christian answer to this question--or even to cite well-known passages from the Bible.  [One can say this even though some Christians have avowed that a woman with an unwanted child (possibly even a widow) has got no right to taxpayers' (or even church-goers') financial help, job assistance, or child-care; "let her pay for her sins" seems to be an attitude that can be met with:  The mother is responsible, so no privileges can accrue.  Or let the father (if she is not a widow) lose his job assistance and child-care privileges, if such privileges indeed  exist. ]     Byzantine society, an Orthodox society of many ethnic groups but one prevailing religion, set a much different example in its charitable enterprises--even for strangers.  However that may be, the matter is something that no adult citizen or follower of Christ with a sane mentality (i.e. one able to reason about such things) can avoid considering.

     What kind of responsibility do we see in our society and in our educational system today?  Advertizers tell us that their product is what we "deserve" so often that that word has lost most of its meaning.  So far has responsibility shifted from the one who fails to the one who points this out (say by grading a pupil's work in school) that we are urged to praise the worst failures and tell everyone how good s/he is.  The cult of self-esteem has gone about as far as it can go, and of course sin has no meaning in this context--which assumes that feeling good is more important than being good at something.  This is a reaction from the extreme of denigrating others to the opposite extreme of pretending that others are better than they are.  Studies have shown that pupils in countries that do the best in, say, mathematics rate themselves less highly than American pupils, who are at the bottom of the list, rate themselves.   The Christian view is expressed in Rom. 12:3:  "For I say, though the Grace given me, to everyone among you not to overrate oneself beyond what it is proper to think . . . "  But the same Apostle urged charity in all things. 
     An honest assessment serves everyone best, though one would not advocate its being done by others or oneself in a put-down fashion.  Aside from the way in which  false praise of small efforts dampens the desire to push on to harder things, and aside from the way people with too high an opinion of themselves react more violently to any failure to acknowledge their worth, this whole philosophy confuses potential attainment with real attainment and responsibility with feeling good.   Without a due sense of responsibility, a person is nothing.  All of that having been said, teachers should of course be encouraging rather than discouraging, not giving up on kids from backgrounds or with problems that make learning difficult; special help, rather than false compliments, should be the order of the day for those in difficulty.   Aside from the mendacity of false compliments, a person will rest satisfied with mediocrity if it is complimented.  That's why the US produced so many  students that cannot do mathematics to the degree found in other countries with a more realistic and less meretricious view of merit and worth.   The biblical point of view stresses responsibility for one's own failures.    
     The sad fact is that some pagan societies treat the problems discussed here better than some societies that have a majority of citizens adhering to one or another well-known religion.   Aside from this, there are (1) the fact that the problem of feeling proper responsibility for what one does exists. as does (2) the failure of Americans to come together to deal with the problem realistically.  One can add (3) that there are those who don't avoid the question but answer, "No privilege without responsibility"--even for begetting an unwanted infant.  Of course, it was worse when infants were stigmatized for their parents' failings; but acknowledging the evil of that does not warrant rushing over to the opposite extreme--which is sillier though more benign.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, it is just as immoral to punish a child for being unable to accomplish more than the child can under given circumstances s it is unrealistic to neglect the needs of the down and out and the care of their children--even when the parents are blameworthy.  It is nothing short of idiotic to punish a widow for the fact that her husband has died and left her penniless and with no way to earn a living--no government provision, no religious assistance:  A younger widow with young children cannot work without adequate child-care, and conversely,  she or he cannot care for her child if she or he works.  If one is to demand that she work, then one is obligated to provide the child-care.  The orphanage (or an earlier abortion) is what the nay-sayers effectively pressure the down-and-out mother without familial or other help into.
     Is that what society wants?  Is that what readers of the Gospels and Apostles want?   The question looms for all citizens.   Citizens of the Apostolic Orthodox Faith may recall that the Beatitudes [Mat. 5:3-12] play a role in Orthodoxy and her Worship that the Ten Commandments (Decalogue) play in classical Protestantism (formerly read at preaching services at a point parallel with the   place in the Russian Liturgy where the Beatitudes are sung)--and even for at least one Protestant civil judge in our time, who insists on having the Ten Commandments painted on the walls of his courtroom.   (For us, the Decalogue is a pre-Christian expression of "natural morality," divinely sanctioning matters attainable by reason through considering the nature of humanity; while the Decalogue with its prohibitions of idolatry, murder, adultery, and covetousness is no less important to us for having been divinely revealed to the Hebrew people as prescriptions for the conduct of everyone (even non-Jews and non-Christians and even civil courts), it falls short of being an Evangelical [i.e. Gospel] or complete guide for how the faithful conduct themselves and answer questions about their relations to others.)   Do they mention love, the key to Christian piety?  If some consider the Beatitudes and other sentiments of this sort in the Bible to be "too liberal," that doesn't change the fact that we Orthodox cannot answer the question of what society should want and institute without reference to the Gospel--and not least the Beatitudes (sung near the beginning of some of our services).   The sad thing is to be what passes for conservative in civil morality and liberal (anti-tradition) in religion at the same time.   Better to be at least as "liberal" as Jesus and the Beatitudes he preached in the Sermon on the Mountain in our behavior toward others and conservative (traditional) in religion:  These go together; the combination is in fact straight out of the New Testament.
     As much confusion exists on the matter of baptizing unconsenting infants, the reader should LOOK HERE and HERE

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