I got my introduction to ethics at an early age. We had a pecan tree in the lot beside our house. In the fall after school my little brother and I would go out and pick up the fallen pecans under the tree. We would put them in brown paper bags. In the evening, after supper, we would watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS evening news and shell the pecans. We’d put the shells in the trash and the fruit in a glass measuring cup. When we had enough nuts my mother would bake us a pecan pie.
One Saturday morning I decided that pecan pie would make a very nice breakfast. Unfortunately, so did my little brother. Our arguing brought my mother into the kitchen. You see, there was only one piece of pie left, albeit a rather large slice. As the first-born son I had decided that piece of pie was essential to my destiny and I wasn’t one to share. My brother’s over-developed sense of justice or just plain old hunger led him to object with those most famous of words, ‘‘That’s not fair!”
My mother handed me the knife. She said I should cut the piece of pie into two slices. As I grudgingly took the knife a moment’s thought lead me to eagerly turn to the piece of pie. Just as I started to divide it into a big chunk and a sliver, my mother said those awful words, ‘‘You cut, but your brother gets to pick which piece he wants.” Never in the history of all humanity has a piece of pie been so carefully and evenly cut!
Christian ethics, speaking from my own tradition, is the branch of theology that thinks about and studies human activity with the aim of bringing our actions into a loving vision of God as our complete and true happiness as our final end. Now that’s a mouthful, but it means imagining what life is and with God looks like and making use of grace, virtues, and our gifts, in the light of revelation and reason, to pursue that vision. Perhaps you might recall the phrase, ‘‘the pursuit of happiness” from one of our founding documents? ‘‘Happiness” in this case doesn’t mean some transitory emotional state like pleasure—mmm, mmm, mmmm that pecan pie was tasty! No, by ‘‘happiness” we mean the ultimate good toward which all human actions ought to aim. What do we imagine as the ultimate aim of our lives, our communities, our nation? What does the realm of God look like? How should citizens of that realm behave?
I remember one of my teachers saying words to this effect: ‘‘At the beginning of the moral life we are like children, full of desires and plans, but weak-willed and quick to seek refuge in the imaginary. In this painful struggle between the ideal and the real, we discover how far our freedom is enslaved by our weaknesses and faults, how inappreciable still in the face of life and its demands.” For some it is the choice of how to cut a slice of pie. For others it may be seeking help with addictions or the trauma of life. For all of us, however, it is the call to live a life characterized by our mastery of excellent actions and creative fruitfulness. May God bless you in your endeavors. Who knows, soon you may be the one baking a pie!
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