On our Duties

A Quick Update

I was on a podcast. Twice! Nathan Cheever started his new Vertical Thinking podcast. It’s a podcast dedicated to discussing different ideas of meaning and value, rather than just the mundane. In the first episode we discussed Kierkegaard’s Two Ages and the meaning of passion. In the second episode we discussed Ian T. Ramsey’s Models and Mystery and explore ideas of metaphor, meaning, and theology.

Additionally, this month I gave two talks at a local tech conference. Unfortunately it was one of those “you had to be there to see it” events, but I did post the slides of my talks to my Github.

Our Duty

I know it’s November, and I really ‘ought’ to write a bit about gratitude, but another topic has been on my mind and I want to write about it. That is the topic of duty.

Since I was a young boy, duty has always been impressed on me as important. My father was in the military, I was involved in scouting (even attaining the rank of Eagle), and participated in my church youth programs. In each of those cases, I was instructed to do my duty. When I myself joined the military, I was inspired by the stories of those who had fulfilled their duties.

Despite this, I, to my shame, allowed myself to fall into a pattern of belief that began to downplay and even undermine the importance of duty. It was the belief that no obligation or commitment could be expected of a man, except that he had freely entered into it. Unfortunately, this is a belief that I think has become fairly widespread these days. To this I aim my comments.

We all have a duty

Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

- Ecclesiastes 12:13 (KJV)

I understand that some will disagree with me, (in that they agree with my former self). I’ll admit that the above belief does seem pretty standard. In civil law, no person can be held to fulfill any contract they did not enter of their own free will. It would be unjust.

However it is that feeling of justice, that requires that we acknowledge that we have responsibilities, obligations and duties. Even ones we never consented to.

To explain this, we must first ask, what do we mean by something being just or unjust? Well, definitions vary, but generally justice can be defined as an individual receiving that which they deserve – good for good, and evil for evil.

To believe this then, we must have a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. And not just a sense, but a belief that their exists right and wrong. That it exists apart from human belief or knowledge of it. Anything else is merely our preferential feelings playacting as impartial judiciousness.

So to believe in justice, is to admit to a belief in moral truth. But then if there are moral truths, then they indicate that there are certain actions that we ought, or ought not to do. And what is a duty but something you ought do or refrain from doing?

Ok, so what?

If you think all I have done is a mere rhetorical trick, I would go back to what I claimed earlier. Our belief in justice, the same justice that we claimed prevented any obligation from being assigned without an individuals consent, requires that we believe in universal moral truths. Furthermore, those truths exist beyond human preferences. Since they exist regardless of human recognition, then they also exist as obligations without prior consent of any human. In short people have a duty to do good, and they don’t have to recognize it to still have that duty.

As an analogy, we must all breath in air to continue living. We never agreed to this arrangement, it is simply a “fact of life”. Similarly, moral standards are a fact of life. The only difference is that we have the freedom to choose not to follow them.¹

Executing our Duties

Thank God I have done my duty

- Final Words of Admiral Nelson

Now, what is interesting about acknowledging this is that it actually teaches us about how we must help each other in fulfilling our individual duties.

I often see good meaning individuals attempt to “help” others by relieving them of their duties. They will seek to complete the obligations another individual has, or take them away. As an example, I once suggested that we give the young men in my church the responsibility to shovel the walks and driveways of the local widows and elderly. I was wisely reminded that there were already men assigned from the congregation to look after these families, and that my suggestion would deprive them of fulfilling their duty.

Sometimes we are driven by a malignant and enabling form of “love” that seeks to protect other by taking away the “stress” and “pressure” of fulfilling a duty. But this merely eliminates any potential for growth, which can only come through struggle against opposition.

Other times is is less a preoccupation of protecting the individual, but a desire to see a certain result. While certainly we can agree that if someone is derelict in their duties, another person stepping in and fulfilling them can have an outcome. For example a mother writing a school report for her child, may achieve the result that the homework was done. The derelict individual, however, has not been benefited ,the child has not learned.

So should we never help another? Of course not. But our help should be focused on getting an individual to fulfill their duties, not to fulfill their duties for them. It can sometimes be distinction that is difficult to disentangle, but it is an eternally important one. I believe, when the time comes for reckoning on how we have comported, justice will be less interested in the exact details of what we achieved, but rather who we have become. And if we shirk or cause others to shirk or reject their duties, we have merely become a stumbling block in their eternal development.

• duty
• agency