Confusing Situations

The outcomes of moral actions can be "messy" in real life, not working out the way we expected, but we shouldn't turn to "realistic perspectives" that try to explain moral actions as futile because life doesn't show that to be true.

The outcome is not what we expected, and it is even hard to explain what happened.

Christians,

There are times when we try to do something we believe is right, such as forgiving someone, but we are left with a “messy” outcome.  The outcome is not what we expected, and it is even hard to explain what happened.  There are models of thinking that try to explain this with anti-religious, “realistic perspectives,” but these models often also lack realism by trying to paint all moral actions as futile.  Instead, what we want to realize is that things don’t always work out the same way we expected but that even amid the messiness of what happens, it is still possible to see some of the good we hoped for. 

Consider a situation where you say to a colleague at work, “I forgive you for what you said but it still hurt, and I hope it won’t happen again.”  We were then expecting a serious moment where the other person felt the seriousness of the situation, was moved by our willingness to forgive, and was now awakened to how they should act toward us.  However, they instead chuckle and look uncomfortable, saying, “…okay, I guess.”

Then, as they walk away, they whisper something to someone else who shakes their head. That’s different from what we expected would happen and that can leave us wondering what to think about what is happening. What we might find over the course of the next week is that that individual has stopped saying some of the things they had been saying before.  In other words, the situation is better, even in its strange and confusing form.  To better understand these situations, we need to keep in mind that while they might not work out the way we thought they were supposed to happen, “realistic perspectives” don’t prove that a moral choice cannot produce a desired result to some degree in the world.