Modern Decision-making: Driving Over the Cliff Backwards

We are all liberals and individualists nowadays, even those who pretend otherwise (forget the Amish for a few minutes, please). Our views of self and society lead us lead us to act according to a cowardly form of prudence. Let me take a quote from the 1913 Webster as found in the Collaborative International Dictionary of English:

Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends. –Whewell.

In other words, true prudence comes into play only when moral decisions have been made. I think I would be well-justified in saying that this is not the order in which modern people make their behavioral decisions. Rather than deciding what is right to do and then trying to find the safest means to do what is right, and the means which might best reach that goal, we first — often implicitly — decide what options are available for moral decision-making. The available options are limited to those which maximize our chances of living safe, comfortable lives.


I have written in an earlier entry on my other blog ( “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”) about the fact that pro-life Christians see that our medical systems are becoming increasingly evil but they do not consider the possible call to refuse the benefits of those medical systems. You see, pro-life Christians are also modern human beings and have to take care of their own safety and comfort first. After they go for their annual physical, buy all their prescribed drugs, visit the chiropractor a few times, and consider that surgery to relieve their carpal tunnel pain, then they settle down to deal with their disgust with modern society, including those increasingly evil medical systems.

We feel that we have a right to be treated for our physical and mental ills despite the fact that we have to deal with the same medical establishments, government agencies, and insurers which are funding abortions and artificial reproduction and experiments on babies being grown in test-tubes.

Oh, those are evil people who are killing some unborn babies, creating fertilized eggs in laboratories, and even making test-tube babies for medical experimentation and maybe for eventually harvesting organs. We’ll show them. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and His saints showed us how to deal with such great evil. We’ll reschedule our appointments with our doctors and we’ll head down to Washington to march in front of the news cameras. That’ll show everyone we know how to carry our crosses.

Maybe everyone who pretends to moral integrity should make their moral decisions first? Maybe we should decide that we shouldn’t accept benefits from a system which is doing great evil? Maybe Christians in particular should realize that the crucified Son of God didn’t teach us to first screen our options that we might secure our comfort and safety? In the case of Christians, a proper prudence will tell us to meet our higher calling even by sacrificing our comfort and safety, that we might follow our Lord and obey His commandments. But that might lead us to a new form of martyrdom: suffering and dying when the magicians of our society can relieve our pains and ills. Surely, we Christians have passed beyond that primitive need to accept martyrdom rather than to forsake our Lord and His commandments? Surely, we modern Christians can be fully members of modern societies and then find ways to be Christians if only in the gaps of those societies.

Am I reading the Bible wrong? Or is there wrong in the thinking, or non-thinking, of all those who first nurture their careers and secure good benefit packages before they set out to protest against a materialistic and corrupt society?

I have to admit I’m inclined to utter a new version of the famous prayer of St. Augustine of Hippo:

Lord, make me willing to be your true servant whatever the cost. But you don’t have to rush. Christmas is coming and then there’s the SuperBowl and…

I also am a modern Christian.