The Reverend Richard Lamm on Trial for Heresy

Abstract

In Christian theology, there is the story of Saint Martin of Tours. In the late thirteenth century, late one night outside an ancient city, Saint Martin of Tours was riding his horse down this ancient byway. Right outside the city gates, he comes across a cold and starving beggar. In an act of charity which got him sainted a couple hundred years later, he took his cloak and cut it in half. He took half of his dinner and gave it to the cold and starving beggar. Now, Bertold Brecht, in one of his plays, raises this question: What if instead of one cold and starving beggar, there were 50, or 60, or 100? What is the ethical choice now? What does the ethical person do? It is for asking these hard, but important, questions that you charge me, here and now, in 2007 A.D., with heresy. You charge me with heresy for changing "Love thy neighbor," to "Love thy nearest neighbor/ My answer to you is that this is the new bio-spiritual ethics. This is the new ethical reality. I wish with all my heart it were not, but my mind and soul tell me (tragically) that it is the new reality. Charity must begin at home. The Bible states (Timothy 5:8), "If any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.1" Painfully, but inevitably, mankind must fit itself into its ecosys tem. At some point?we can argue endlessly when that takes place?but at some point, infinite growth in a finite world comes to an end. At that point?whenever it happens?a new ethics must be formu lated.