Good and Wrong, or Good and Right

Efficiency.  That is an important word in our times.  You can’t avoid it.  Surely you have heard about “Cyber Monday”.  Where “Black Friday” had become a byword of a consumerist culture, “Cyber Monday” is a byword of the now culture, which is consumerism on steroids!  Further convenience is not merely a want but an expectation, an assumed reality.  But convenience comes at a price, which is paid in the efforts for efficiency.  What are examples of these efforts, and what the price?

To be efficient, one must always be concerned about time and the quantity of production.  So Cyber Monday is by far an improvement on Black Friday if for no other reason than a greater mass of goods can be purchased in a shorter amount of time.  But the conservation of time, as a concept, as an instinct, shows up in unexpected ways.  When the hourly who reports to you has an issue and grabs  your attention as you’re passing through, do you stop and give your full attention?  Have you noticed that for the 2 or 3 minutes she’s talking your mind is still on the task she interrupted?  Do you ever realize that she can tell, just as you can tell when you need your manager’s attention and see her divided attention being given to you?  Although we know from experience that giving our attention to others is good, many of us don’t do it because our time has been scheduled, and diverting from the schedule is inefficient!

Efficiency also deals in distances, since greater distances require more effort to overcome, which usually adds time in completing a task.  So the centrality of the car in modern life is no surprise.  For the typical person the car moves him from home to work every day of his life, able to cover a mile in less than 2 minutes.  That’s amazing!  One consequence is the increased likelihood that a person will live a long distance from his work, because of the added flexibility in choosing where to live.  An added consequence appears when distance from work also creates distance from other important relationships, like friends, family, Church.  And these are definite issues in my hometown, and in my current life.  But the car is efficient.

Efficiency also deals in defined objectives.  The clearer the objective, the narrower its definition and the more committed to its achievement, the easier it will be to identify and limit the resources used.  An easy example is the building of a road.  If its length, width, start and end are clearly defined, then it can be built with the least amount of wasted effort.  If, on the other hand, the end point is allowed to be indefinite (“we’ll wait and see how the initial stretch of road looks”), then it’s easy to anticipate much confusion, requiring much effort to clear it up.  In the personal lives of individuals, one learns well the productivity that comes from creating and applying oneself to objectives.  I postulate the following:  Churches (and other social/religious organizations) are suffering low participation, in part because the objectives of participation are much less concrete than the world of efficiency that most of us are accustomed to.  The churches that have high participation have well defined programs with leaders driving the program to its objectives.  For example, the building of a new sanctuary is always a high potential as a galvanizing effort.  Lack of efficiency in carrying it out, interestingly, creates potential for division within the same effort.  Study groups with a clear scope can work well in large measure by having and keeping to the scope.  Activity groups, like camps and retreats have similar benefits; participants can even assess whether the level of activity felt worth the registration fee.  But I also wonder about possible consequences in building up spiritual life around organizational efficiency.

By now I hope to have provided enough examples to create a credible picture on how efficiency is constantly at work in the everyday thinking of you, me and our neighbors.  So accustomed are we that, when noticing how others do things, we feel an impulse to correct them.  And this impulse elides from the practical into the moral.  This is more efficient, the right way; that is less efficient, the wrong way.  So consider two more examples:

• When I visited relatives in England, my cousin went for his bath.  He entered the bathroom where the tub was already full, having just then been vacated by his father.  It occurred to me then that either the cost of water was high or that the family was accustomed to drought conditions.  Sharing bath water?  Coming from middle-class Los Angeles, that was unheard of.
• Two friends were talking about a popular Television series that airs on the BBC.  In our times of streaming media this meant that they ought to have a subscription to the BBC in order to watch.  Instead the discussion veered into identifying on which web-sites one could watch for free.  Free? I asked, and discovered that some sites are somehow able to get the material without permission and make it available.  Those two friends, therefore, were saving money.

These ought to be clear examples, the first demonstrating frugality, and the second theft.  In other words, the movement from thrift to theft is a descent from a good to a bad.  What I want to point out here is, so to speak, an ascent from a good to a distorted good (also a bad).  Consider this example:

• "I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.”

This is the Pharisee whom Jesus condemns in a parable in Luke 18:10-14.  But look at it squarely.  Tithing, I dare say, is a very good thing.  Moreover, regularly setting aside money for the poor is a wonderful and virtuous thing (look up Sts Joachim & Anna’s apocryphal history for a beautiful example).  So the item of interest is this: the Pharisee used of a virtuous routine to justify, to account for, base behavior.  A similar mindset comes into play with efficiency, and is visible in example 2.  Getting copyrighted material for free also comes with analogous justifications, usually lauding their cleverness either in finding the source, or their kindness in sharing a bargain with others.  But that free stuff is someone else’s paycheck.  The retort?  Well they should expect that and be cleverer about protecting and selling their materials.  Notice:  practical morphs into clever, and clever becomes a tool for something like this:  I get what I can, you keep what you can, all’s fair.

Pause and reflect.  The last sentences were centered in ideas entirely divorced from virtue.  That’s exactly the point.  Being practical involves a person in a sea of practical details each trading off item for item, looking for a practical balance that tips in one’s favor.  And it’s precisely that sea of detail that engulfs the conscience.  What I’m advocating here is not to reject practicality.  God forbid!  Instead this is a caution that practicality does engulf you, if you allow it.  So be aware.  Check in with your conscience regularly.  Bring virtue back into the equation, because virtue will often recommend highly impractical actions.  Take for example the Good Samaritan’s writing a blank check (so to speak) to the innkeeper to look after the robbed man for an indefinite time frame.  Take for example participation in worship, prayer and study.  These things take commitment with no immediately observed practical return.

So be practical, but do so in matters which your conscience approves.