You are the ethicist!

My on-again, off-again boyfriend of three years was on-again at the time he suffered a major illness. Before its onset, I was questioning our long-term potential and decided we were not meant to be. I do not have the caretaking responsibilities (his family assumed that role), and we live on oppositecoasts. I intend to see him through this illness from afar, plus occasional visits. My question: With a recovery time of four to six months, how and when can I let him go, ethically, for both our sakes?

How would you answer this question? How would Newt answer this question?

Here is how the ethicist answered the question.


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Helping Children on the Journey

A couple of resources for children...

A new Children's Study Bible from CEB

Young readers are invited to join the daring crew of Asia, Kat, and Edgar as they set off to discover the Bible. Kids are sure to read, enjoy, and talk about the dynamic Common English Bible text and the navigational tools that make Bible discovery fun, meaningful, and rewarding.

The CEB Deep Blue Kids Bible is a great gift for birthdays, church events, and Sunday school promotions. It’s perfect for kids ages 7–12. Moms and dads, grandparents, pastors, and Sunday school teachers will help create a lifelong thirst for God’s timeless truth with the CEB Deep Blue Kids Bible.

The CEB Deep Blue Kids Bible uses the Common English Bible text throughout. The Common English Bible is a new Bible translation that uses words and phrases that sound natural and conversational for today’s reader. With this new children’s Bible, kids will read a Bible that sounds more like how they talk, read, and write in school, home, church, and with their friends.

You can read a sample here.



Two books of prayer for children...

A Child's First Book of Prayers by Lois Rock

Pocket Prayers for Children by Christopher Herbert

I use both with my children and they are excellent resources.

We also use a "mealtime prayer cube" to help us with our dinner prayer.

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You are the ethicist!

For a large chunk of my life, I was involved with a man who is severely ethically challenged. He is a charming narcissist — a skillful liar, capable of carrying on several romantic relationships simultaneously and financially exploitative. Thankfully, now that our daughter is grown, my interaction with him will be minimal. But I’ve always wondered if I should warn other women about him. Is reaching out with a gentle warning the moral thing to do? SHARON, NEW YORK

How would you answer this?

You can read how the NY Times Ethicist answered here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/last-known-address.html

Approaching the Bible

An excerpt from Opening the Bible by Thomas Merton - 1970

We have to be perfectly clear about what to expect in the Bible. We do not go looking for metaphysical insights into the ground of reality, moral insights into the ethics of every possible human act, still less methods of con­templative discipline or of self-transcendence by trance states and mystic illumination. Nor do we go looking for theological and philosophical systems and articulate explanations of how the uni­verse works. Those in the past who came to understand the Biblical cosmogony as a substitute for scientific knowledge ran into immense difficulties, and their errors of judgment were great enough to be a permanent humiliation for their spiritual descen­dants.

In the long run, every attempt to find in the Bible what is not clearly there leads to a one-sided reading of the sacred books and ultimately to distorted and erroneous vision. This is the kind of thing that has ended by making so many modern men and women suspicious of the Bible, so that even believers are sometimes afraid to get involved in it. But there should be fewer problems if we would simply read what is there, even with its many-sided, perhaps con­fusing, view of things. To accept the Bible in its wholeness is not easy. We are much more inclined to narrow it down to a one-track inter­pretation that actually embraces only a very limited aspect of it. And we dignify that one-track view with the term "faith." Actually it is the opposite of faith: it is an escape from the mature responsibility of faith that plunges into the many-dimensional, the paradoxical, the conflicting elements of the Bible as well as those of life itself, and finds unity not by excluding all it does not understand but by embracing and accepting things in their often disconcerting reality.

We must not therefore open the Bible with any set determina­tion to reduce it to the limits of a preconceived pattern of our own. And in reading it we must not succumb to the temptation of short­cuts and half-truths. All attempts to narrow the Bible down until it fits conveniently into the slots prepared for it by our prejudice will end with our misunderstanding the Bible and even falsifying its truth.

You are the ethicist!

If someone is (for example) a witness to murder he could have prevented without harming himself, is he as guilty as the perpetrator? I know that is a rather simplistic situation, but I believe it is apropos to situations like the recent Penn State scandal. NAME AND LOCATION WITHHELD

How would you answer this?

Here's how the NY Times Ethicist answered:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/a-bystanders-crime.html

You are the ethicist!

I am one of five children of two aging parents. My father, 88, is in the early stages of dementia. My mother is 83 and has macular degeneration. I’ve always enjoyed a close relationship with both parents, especially my mother. She is the most practical, intelligent person I have ever known. She is my best friend. I go to her for advice on everything, but I need help with the one thing she has turned to me for: My mother asked me to get her books on how to commit suicide, so that she can read up on it before her vision deteriorates to a point where she can no longer read at all. When pressed, she told me she does not want to commit suicide now — but that when the time comes, knowing how to end her life will give her great comfort. I love her, and I understand how she feels. Do I get her books on suicide? I also have four siblings — do I have to clear it with them? R.C., Westchester, N.Y.

How would you respond?

Here is how the NY Times Ethicist responded:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/magazine/hate-posts.html


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