Is service part of our "morality?"

I've been in Matthew 25 a few times in the last couple weeks, having taught out of it in an adult education class at my church last week and hearing my pastor refer to it this past Sunday. In it, Jesus describes how the evidence of saving faith in a person is loving service to others as if they were Jesus, Himself. (Not that the loving service earns their way into God's grace, but that they inevitably engage in loving service because they have received God's grace.)

We often summarize this concept by saying that saving faith leads to obedience, or a godly morality.

But when we think of "morality," aren't we usually concerned with negative concepts, such as sexual purity, or not watching "bad movies," or not associating with "bad company" (which, even Paul affirmed, "corrupts good morals")?

Is loving service part of our "morality?"

Do we see feeding the hungry (literally and figuratively) or tending the sick (again, literally and figuratively) or visiting the lonely as "moral" actions?

After all, in Matthew 25, Jesus doesn't say, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For all your friends went to see every Harry Potter movie, and you refused to go."

And isn't this positive morality of service what the world needs to see, far more than our restrictions on ourselves? Isn't this the kind of attitude that makes the difference for a university to be a welcoming place to students (who are very often hungry, sick, and lonely) instead of a standoffish wall of intimidation?

I'm off to Maryland for the American Association of Physics Teachers New Faculty Workshop! See you on Tuesday!

Is evolution providing a new morality?

At the beginning of the semester, I sat in on a very insightful workshop session by Dr. Terry Doyle about Learner Centered Teaching (www.learnercenteredteaching.com). His thesis was based on ideas developed by Dr. John Medina, proposing that we need to rethink our teaching practices based on what we know about how the human brain works due to its evolutionary performance envelope. Medina says,

The brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in near constant motion. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI)

Medina (and Doyle) goes on to claim that if we wanted students to learn in an environment that was "directly opposed to what the brain was really good at doing," we would put them in the traditional classroom setting. (Notice the contrast: Our students listen instead of solving problems; they see the same concrete wall every day instead of being in a changing outdoor environment; they sit still instead of moving. How many times have we seen students jostle their legs in that annoying fashion in the middle of class, much as I'm doing right now at my desk?)

Doyle then went on to describe what we should try to do differently: How we should improve the learning environment, how we should engage the students with activity, how even requiring exercise of our students would greatly improve learning, etc. And all of this was based on what we understand of how the human brain evolved.

Two things occurred to me as I was pondering this talk. First, Doyle & Medina are still figuring out the details of their new teaching scheme, as they still give lectures in the traditional format!

But second, these guys have formed a set of teaching standards---a set of "should" statements---based on an evolutionary worldview. Could one consider this set of standards to be a morality based in evolution? (Medina even titles his book Brain Rules.)

I point this out because, before the development of the Intelligent Design movement, Christians in the earlier half of the last century argued against evolutionary theory based on the idea that it could provide no basis for morality. (Hence the reason they failed at the Scopes Trial; the defenders of anti-evolutionist creationism of that day were unprepared to defend their position scientifically, and IDers have been trying to play catchup ever since.)

I think this observation brings us to an interesting question: Has the evolutionary worldview matured to a point where it is ready to provide its adherents with a morality? If so, what is this morality shaping out to look like? And how will Christians respond to this "evo-morality" when it disagrees with their own? What about when it agrees with their own?

(Note: I'm not asking whether you agree with the evolutionary worldview; I'm asking if you think the evolutionary worldview is poised to introduce a set of moral standards on its followers.)