I get the impression that we as humans like to establish rules based on exceptions. Several examples come to mind, the two I want to address right now are medical ethics and contemporary Christian philosophy. Yeah, I know, two pretty diverse topics. While my purpose is not to be inflammatory, what I say may be controversial and arouse anger in some individuals. However, I’m not going to debate the moral absolutist right or wrong on these issues – I merely want to consider the trends I observe. With that said, I’ll dive right into this.

First, medical ethics – an issue that is no longer an issue limited to healthcare professionals. A lot of the medical practice’s dos and don’ts are now established by lawful conduct instead of by moral code. While I don’t want to focus much on that issue, I bring it up because this concept, that medical professionals only have to be compliant with legal standards, demonstrates to me that ethical rules in medicine don’t necessarily improve the quality of healthcare when those rules are determined by exception.

That’s a long thought and a lot of big words. Let me see if I can explain this more. Many of the legal codes of healthcare (Patients’ Bill of Rights, Confidentiality stuff like HIPAA) are great. They explain many of the responsibilities of the healthcare provider, as well as protect patients from bad care. However, laws can only explain so much. And personally I get kinda skeptical when judges are the ones telling healthcare providers what they can and cannot do (not to mention prescribing medical law, no pun intended). Anyways, it seems like whenever there’s some law that says that everyone has to do this (ex. all parents of minors must be notified if the minor is getting an abortion), or that this treatment is okay for everyone (ex. Plan B oral contraceptive being made an over-the-counter drug) it ends up that the arguments made by detractors and/or proponents relies on some form of “exception” that justifies it being made a rule for everyone.

For minors getting abortions, questions of “what if” scenarios pop up: what if the parents would force the minor to raise the child against her will, what if the parents don’t know about the pregnancy, etc. They’re certainly questions that require thought, for sure. At the same time, the other side argues, “what if the minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will by her boyfriend?” or “what if the minor died because of post-abortion complications without the parents’ knowledge?”, which are equally thought-provoking and troublesome. Like I said, I don’t want to get into the moral judgment of who’s right and who’s wrong, and I also don’t like appealing to majority-rules arguments, so I’ll just raise the question, which one is the exception, and which one does the rule enforce?

You see similar things asked when there were debates about whether the Plan B oral contraceptive should be made over-the-counter. There were questions about drug missuse and abuse by opponents, and questions about unexpected situations (like rape and sexual abuse) by proponents. Again, which situations are the exception, and which situations do the rule enforce?

Honestly I don’t know the answer to those questions – I think both sides have a little bit of both and also have compelling reasoning. I know that sounds kinda weak, but again, I reiterate my opening statement: I’m just considering the trends that I’m observing. I have my personal opinions on what I think is right or wrong, but that’s not what I’m trying to address. I’m merely “thinking out loud,” to borrow the expression – except that instead of speaking I’m typing. Moving on to modern Christianity.

There have been many “new” philosophies that are being introduced by people who claim to be Christian. While most of these people don’t claim to have developed a truly original perspective of the faith, they do propose some seemingly unorthodox thoughts that are suppose to “enrich” our life as a Christian (assuming that one is a Christian). What I ask myself as I’m looking at these ideas now is this: what perspectives are based on exceptions found in the Bible, and which ones are based on the prescriptive texts on those corresponding subjects? I’m running out of time to write on this (I gotta get back to studying), but I’ll just make a brief mention of some popular Christian writings, some of them probably really good, some of them probably really bad, and let you all consider them as well.

I’ll limit this to these five (some are book titles, some just a short description of their thoughts):

• John Piper’s Christian Hedonism (reference Desiring God and seen throughout his other books and messages)
• John Eldredge’s Wild At Heart (pretty much all of his books have some aspect to this idea)
• Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer Of Jabez
• Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz
• Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life

Okay, back to studying. I hope I got through this post without offending everybody. But at the same time, I hope all 2 of my readers out there will find this post challenging and stimulating.

Stay tuned for the next post, which could be about Romans, making decisions, something else completely different, or not until I’m done with tests. Which one will it be? You’ll have to wait and see!