THE FOUR C'S

One of the grave errors of situation ethics, often itself a product of moral relativism, is a confusion of three C's, three concepts.
 
And this error is best illustrated by the following scenarios.
 
You are held up by a man with a gun. He says he will shoot you unless you hand over your money. You refuse.
 
Same scenario, but this time you work for a bank, whose hold-up policy is for staff to comply with such violent demands, in the interest of their own safety.
 
But again, you refuse.
 
The gunman says that unless you do as you're told, he'll shoot a child in the banking hall.
 
You still refuse, and he kills a kid.
 
He then escapes without profit from his crime, shouting that it is all your fault, and the kid's blood is on your hands.
 
The dead child's parents agree.
 
It is possible to argue that since your employers have authority over you, and have indicated that you are to comply with such violent demands, your refusal is disobedience to their instructions which in itself is wrong, and therefore your submission to the criminal's coercion would have been entirely justified. Let us ignore that for the moment, even though it is immediately apparent that one is choosing between two evils; one is the apparent triumph of evil by submitting to force; and the other is at worst disobedience to a morally questionable command from an employer and at best non-compliance with a general policy guideline which is laid down to assist but does not have the actual force of a command.
 
Whatever your refusal, you are right, and all others are wrong.
 
The Cause of the death was the criminal desire of a felon.
 
Baulked in the execution of his crime, he seeks to coerce you by blackmail.
 
Your refusal is morally blameless and indeed courageous.
 
His murder of the child is cowardly and indefensible.
 
Yet the vast majority of the world will blame you rather than the gunman,
 
It is true that your refusal is the final event in the chain of causation, but it is still the gunman's finger on the trigger, not yours.
 
It is sloppy thinking that ascribes the entire causation to you.
 
Yet even if you were the Prime Cause, it would still not be the end of the matter. Because the culpability for the entire enterprise is the gunman's.
 
You were acting lawfully throughout: his entire course of conduct was unlawful and dangerous.
 
The consequence of the entire sad affair is the snuffing out of a young life.
 
Try another scenario, the same principles.
 
You are driving at 25 mph within a 30 mph limit. A child runs out between parked cars leaving no chance to avoid a collision, no warning. The child is hurled through the air, a lifeless doll.
 
You feel guilty: you accept culpability. Most people will rush to your defence because it was an accident.
 
The cause? Your driving, the careless child; an unfortunate coincidence, a convergence in space-time.
 
Culpability? None on any part, save perhaps the child should have been more careful, although carelessness is not usually a moral issue, merely a factor of conduct and efficiency.
 
Consequence? A death.
 
Clearly there would have been little or no repercussions on anyone if there had been no fatal consequence.
 
In English law, a crucial element of most crimes is the mens rea, the guilty mind. There has to be an element of intention, even if only recklessness. (And you would be adjudged to have been reckless if you had been speeding).
 
It is our muddy thinking which confuses the three C's.
 
And this confusion, is also the consequence of the human drive to explain events, which leads us to talk about miraculous escapes where chances of escape and survival are often minimal, where a car is entirely crushed and yet the driver gets out and walks away unscathed, while no one describes a chain of equally unlikely events which leads to a fatality as being anything other than a freak accident. Yet the probabilities in both events are the same. One is a wildly improbable escape. The other an equally wildly improbable accident.
 
It is only human to rationalise the uncontrollable and limit the cosmos to excuse our incapacity for commanding the world to behave as we want it.
 
In short it is human stiff-necked pride, a refusal to accept our real place in the scheme of things, and our trauma at the indifference of an accident-ridden universe which suddenly and so casually turns on us.
 
The process of explaining causation commenced for you when you fell over when taking your first faltering steps and skinned your knees and hands. And when you started cramming things in your mouth in an effort to build an interior landscape while you sought to grope to an understanding of distance and size and the separation of Others from your Self.
 
It is far easier to ascribe blame to outsiders than to ditch an often longstanding and painstakingly erected construct, eg. the way you regard the universe.
 
In our anger, when matters do not proceed as we expect (which for Christians is often when God's hand of blessing cannot be discerned), we seek scapegoats.
 
Yet if there is no culpability then there can be no guilty parties.
 
As Elvis Costello sang "... accidents will happen, as everybody knows ..."
 
In truth, most are caused by human error, which cannot of itself be seen to be culpable, since we are finite beings. Or Accident may of course be a by-product of a fallen world. (Romans 8:20 - 22).
 
Romans 8:28 still applies, but to assert, as many do, that each and every aspect of their life is under the hand of God is palpably false. The theology of Accidents and Death has to take into account, not only that we live in a fallen world, but that God is not actively in control of each and every millisecond. A chain of causation began long ago with the Fall, and has led and will lead to a number of accidents.
 
Such Accidents fall fairly and squarely within the domain God has conceded, namely that of free will.
 
There remains the insoluble tension of either adhering to God's omnipotence, which leaves us with a justice problem, or opting for an apparently limited God so as to explain Accident and Suffering.
 
Milton tried to vindicate the Almighty in "Paradise Lost." And failed.
 
As a theodicy. Job is much better. But leaves this central intellectual inconsistency unresolved.
 
Fortunately, there is a fourth C. Consolation ! God is not immune from our suffering. And the Comforter seeks to bring his consolation and care.
 
Ultimately, our hope is that He will "wipe away every tear", and that then (if we are still interested in such matters!) we will actually understand.