Last week I listened to a radio program about carbon offsets - a nifty new idea to help people out of a moral dilemma. For example, if Al Gore wants to fly his private jet around the country instead of taking commercial flights, but doesn’t want to feel guilty about the CO2 emissions he dumps into the atmosphere, he can purchase carbon offsets. The offset money will be used to plant trees or purchase solar panels and alleviate his guilty feelings. People who purchase carbon offsets can live proud knowing they now live carbon-neutral lives. They can even demonstrate their pride, and their environmental concern, with cool “Carbon Neutral” bumper stickers sold by their offset provider.
In response, Peter Schweizer wrote a column in USA Today pointing out some other areas of life where people could offset their own bad behavior by paying other more-well-behaved people to do what they should’ve been doing themselves. Imagine a neutral world where no one would have to change their behavior yet they could live guilt-free, balanced, and peaceful.
To jump-start this idea, a couple of young Brits started a satirical website called cheatneutral.com to meet the guilt needs of people who cheat on their spouses - commit adultery, if you’ll allow me to use an old-fashioned guilt-laden term from a past era of higher moral expectations. The program goes like this: if you have a momentary lapse and cheat on your spouse, you can send money (a set fee to prevent haggling, 2-1/2 British Pounds) to the Cheat Neutral organization who will then give the money to a monogamous couple who’ve been trained by the organization. The guilt vibes released into the atmosphere by the cheater would be offset by the righteous lifestyle of the faithful couple. The guilty person would become adultery-neutral, instantly, and wouldn’t even have to stop cheating.
I mentioned this website to Cyndi and she thought 2-1/2 pounds (however much that is in dollars) wasn’t high enough for adultery and maybe torture was more appropriate. “No,” I said, “I don’t want to cheat on you. I was thinking of signing up for training as a monogamous couple and maybe we could bring in enough guilt-offset money to buy that new car you’ve been hoping for.”
“Why stop there?” she might’ve asked. “You read your Bible every morning … why not let people who wish they read their Bible, but don’t, a reading offset? Then they won’t feel guilty for not reading, and you can use the offset money to buy higher-quality coffee to drink while you’re reading. You could even provide “Bible Neutral” bumper stickers.”
Well, the USA Today column was on my mind Friday morning as I drank from my Harvest Café mug of premium decaf coffee and read from my Daily Bible. (I had to buy my own coffee since I haven’t found any non-readers to pay me the offset fee.) The passage I read was from the Old Testament: Zechariah 7:1. It told the story of some community leaders who sent a message to the prophet asking if they should continue to mourn and fast out of sorrow for the destruction of the national temple. Apparently they’d been doing exactly that for several years and were ready to call it quits. Didn’t the fact that a new temple was being constructed alleviate their mourning and fasting obligations? Sure, the rebuilding project was not yet finished, and work had slowed to a stop … but still.
God responded to them through Zechariah, saying “Was it really for Me that you fasted? Were you not just doing it for yourselves?” God pointed out to them that for all the years they’d been mourning and fasting, they were relieving their own feelings of guilt, but making no actual progress in the temple rebuild. By paying the mourning offset, so to speak, they didn’t have to actually change their behavior and help with the construction. And now, they wanted to stop doing even that bit.
It turned out that God didn’t want mourning or fasting from them. He just wanted them to change how they lived. God said, “Show justice and mercy and compassion, and don’t’ think evil of each other.”
After reading Zechariah I dropped my plans for reading offsets and cheating offsets. Why should I get paid to do something I already enjoy doing? Why should I get paid to do the very things that nurture my relationship with God? And why should I help people offset away there own guilt when it may be the very thing that will bring them close to God?
In a world that want’s no part of moral obligations and seeks a “guilt free” life, I know you’re on to something. It seems the more people try to ignore God, or for that matter, that there is a God who loves them and wants to be a part of their lives, the more outrageous ideas become to assuage that guilt. Keep up the wonderful thoughts and writing.
I’d hypothesis that as money is increasingly available it’s increasingly hard for the people of a society to make wise choices about what actions they should do they pay others to do. Paid pastoral and ministry staff are in particular one of those things that is a bit of a thorny issue for us evangelical folk as we have entrenched traditions of almost literally paying someone to read the Bible for us, give us the cliff notes and then love hurting people so we don’t have to bother.
It’s obviously not that simple and I work for a faith-based non-profit so I see the benefits of the current practices. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions floating out there.