Proclaimer Blog
Pastoral complexity and a dose of realism
Mrs R and I got to enjoy a film night recently: Eye in the Sky starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman (and a host of other well known stars). It was a compelling film, based on the moral decision to send a missile from a drone to destroy three terrorists and two suicide bombers.
The film was exciting, tense and thought-provoking, though not without its flaws. Key amongst these was the switch in moral dilemma. Towards the beginning of the film, the issue at stake was whether the British government should be killing two British citizens without trial, a kind of Judge Dread scenario. This is an interesting line of thought and needed to be developed more.
However, once a young girl sets up stall next to the targeted compound the moral issue switches to whether her possible death is acceptable collateral damage. You’ll have to watch the film to see how it pans out.
The film simplified things, focusing for the main part on the second issue. But for me the first issue is just as troubling and needs some more assessment. It interested me that the movie was only really able to deal with one moral issue at a time. Presumably that makes for a good script (or is all we audiences can cope with)?
However, in the real work, complexity is the norm. We find this pastoring. In the classroom, pastoral ethics on, say, marriage, seem very straightfoward. But in the real world, where there are kids and multiple layers, things are much messier. The classroom rarely prepares us for the real complexity of life.
But we must not stick our heads in the sand. Part of preparation for ministry has to be determininng a settled position on what we do with competing ethical choices and whether we take a graded view (where we choose the lesser of two evils) or whether we view life more in terms of absolutes. Once the situations are upon us, it’s generally too late to make a choice.
For, as the film does aptly portray, decisions made in split second are very often not the best ones.