{"id":397,"date":"2014-01-31T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=397"},"modified":"2014-08-12T23:05:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T23:05:23","slug":"integrating-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/integrating-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrating Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Brooks socio-psychological study, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement<\/em>, while full of holes and inconsistencies overlaying a political agenda, does very much get to the heart of how human\u2019s develop, grow, and flourish.\u00a0 His central thesis is that our emotional subconscious is very much a key leader in how we will interact, live, react, and succeed or fail in the world.\u00a0 Using an almost bizarre amount of random factoids and scientific studies, he strings them along with a life narrative about two people to illustrate his point.\u00a0 \u00a0The complex social systems we inhabit, whether they be family, culture, neighborhood, or school, go on to have profound influence on our emotional subconscious, affecting our intelligence, emotional well-being, successes, failures, and even our next generation.\u00a0 Brooks does not seem to be deterministic though, he is working mainly with statistics and probabilities, and does a good job pointing out the exceptions, and that people can overcome and break through.<\/p>\n

Brooks does give us some good things to think about as Christians and leaders.\u00a0 Generally, he is asking how do we affect change, or create systems that will promote human flourishing.\u00a0 For Brooks, the ultimate focus should be on \u201cthe character of the society\u201d so that we are also utilizing \u201cemotional and social perspectives\u201d in how we tackle societal problems (loc 5279, 5299).\u00a0 That is to say, Brook\u2019s final thesis is that emotionally healthy people of high character will emerge from socially strong and adequate systems, to continue to form equally strong social systems.\u00a0 There is not much really new here.\u00a0 One need only read Bauman or Castells, or really any anthropologist to find similar conclusions about how human\u2019s develop emotionally and cognitively. Brooks is much more optimistic though and simplifies by focusing in on the powerful urges of our emotions. \u00a0\u00a0Culture is of course one of the biggest, unconscious emotional delimiters of morality, beauty, cognition, and values.\u00a0 It is no wonder Yahweh set forth such strong cultural markers for his chosen people in the Old Testament, for their protection and flourishing.\u00a0 Still, we know how the story goes, even when training up a child in righteousness, we get some good and some bad, and in the end God\u2019s chosen failed at their ultimate end (although a study of the myriad success and flourishing of Jewish culture would be interesting in light of Brook\u2019s thesis).\u00a0 Still, they were just part of a bigger plan, a sign and a foretaste of what was to come, and incubation of God\u2019s ultimate plan and love.\u00a0 For God, had said he would one day bring about his Spirit and write his law on the hearts of the people, and thus would flow mercy and love.<\/p>\n

Here we turn to the issue of morality.\u00a0 One which Brooks makes some interesting observations about how our unconscious informs our morality put into actual action.\u00a0 Morality is an essential part of the puzzle here.\u00a0 It is essential how we treat each other, and ourselves.\u00a0 Adultery breaks up and destroys families, greed leads to stealing (at all levels), and how we view others can either lead to exclusion or embrace.\u00a0 Even different cultures do not always agree on the clearer definitions of morality.\u00a0 For a Spaniard, not being completely direct or honest is not a matter of importance, but to a German it is everything.\u00a0 Current political and economic European realities bear this out. \u00a0\u00a0Here Brooks explains that it is our deep unconscious emotions that really enact our moral agency.\u00a0 The problem of immorality is when there is a strong disconnect between our emotional self and our actions.\u00a0 Perhaps this is what Paul railed against when he said he did the things he did not want to do.\u00a0 For Brooks healthy morality comes together when we become deeply aware of our inner selves and strive for \u201cintegrity-integrating inner ideals with automatic action. (loc 48522).\u201d\u00a0 This seems to be what God is calling us to: moral action that comes from a deep emotional well spring from within.\u00a0 That the law be written on our hearts.\u00a0 That mercy and compassion flow out of us into action.\u00a0 Jesus often acted out of compassion for others.\u00a0 In fact his acts of healing and miracles often directly followed the use of the verb \u201csplagchnizomai.\u201d\u00a0 This Greek verb signified being moved in one\u2019s deepest bowels towards loving action.<\/p>\n

As Christians we often struggle between the letter of the law, in imposing righteousness through structure and rule, and the Spirit of the law, acting out of love of God and neighbor, but not a weak kneed Hollywood type of love, one of Jesus centered compassion.\u00a0 So there we have it, the church still often has a morality issue.\u00a0 Either we fail to live up to our ideal morality, or we do, but we lack the real connection to our inner emotional life.\u00a0 What to do?<\/p>\n

Perhaps we do need to deal with our deep unconscious and emotional self.\u00a0 Perhaps we need to spend more time digging deep like a mole into the inner recesses of our soul.\u00a0 Reflection, contemplation, and silence may need once again to become a part of mainstream Christian spirituality, and not just for monastics.\u00a0\u00a0 Monastics like Teresa de Avila understood this link, how in the contemplation of the inner self and of God, one could receive great healing, and integration of the emotions with the will, so that one could be better prepared to truly love God and neighbor in action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brooks socio-psychological study, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, while full of holes and inconsistencies overlaying a political agenda, does very much get to the heart of how human\u2019s develop, grow, and flourish.\u00a0 His central thesis is that our emotional subconscious is very much a key leader in how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[167,2],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brooks","tag-dminlgp","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1722,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/1722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}