Demandingness and Compassion Sunday

The Ethical Theories class I took last semester was one of the best I've taken at Cal. One reoccurring objection to various theories was the Demandingness Objection. It goes something like this.

Let's say you have a theory such as Utilitarianism, which says that the moral thing to do is to maximize utility (utility can be understood as something like units of goodness or happiness). That would seem to imply that I must try to do the most optimal action at all times, and anything short of that would be immoral. In short, the theory is too demanding, because can't I be moral without giving ALL my money to starving children in Africa?

That objection always brought to mind what I saw in Cambodia this past summer. Huge mansions, bigger than I've ever seen in person before, surrounded by lawns and gates. And littered around these mansions were dingy shacks, people living in absolute poverty. I imagine the demandingness objection in the mouths of the rich; surely, I'm not required to give up ALL my money to help these others? I earned my money, why should I give it up? Surely I can be moral without being supererogatory (going above and beyond my duties)?

Ridiculous, completely immoral, callous, wicked. There's a place for the demandingness objection when discussing ethics, but more often than not it's just an excuse to justify sins of ommission, avoiding what ought to be done. Those rich Cambodians are morally required to help their poor neighbors, and we're morally required to help the poor too. Forget whether or not we're required to MAXIMIZE utility and give ALL our money, how many of us give ANY money?

That's one reason I'm proud of what Gracepoint does on Compassion Sunday, which we had just a little while ago. It takes $32 a month to sponsor a compassion child, which provides food, clothing, vaccinations, education, community. Many people in our church are already sponsoring multiple compassion children, and somehow we manage to sponsor more every year. This time around, members of our church sponsored all 100 compassion children provided to us to sponsor within the five minutes of service ending.

Now that is a beautiful thing.