"Jesus never said a word about about highway appropriation bills or FCC regulations!"

I seem to have noticed an increase in the frequency of folks on all sides of the political spectrum invoking the “argument from silence” with respect to Jesus’ stance on their pet political issues.

On the left you might hear someone say “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality or abortion.”

On the right someone might mention that “Jesus never said anything about the environment or the government giving money to the poor.”

I find this to be a pretty unhelpful approach insofar as it implies we can only make judgments about things that Jesus specifically pronounced on. Especially when you consider that there are relatively few positions that Jesus took which have automatic and immediate applications to our present situation. Paying the temple tax is hardly a pressing issue for most of us.

And even in those cases where Jesus seems to come down on one side of an issue that does have present relevance, there is little agreement in the church how exactly it should be interpreted and guide our actions. Take divorce – Jesus comes down pretty hard on it. And yet pretty much every church (with the exception of the Roman Catholic) allows for divorce in some circumstances (and, frankly, most Protestant churches seem to have made peace with the idea of divorce for pretty much any reason at all).

Part of this is no doubt motivated by pastoral concerns, part of it sheer capitulation to the zeitgeist, and part of it due to legitimate differences of opinion about what Jesus intended to teach. There are conflicting accounts after all (and I’m leaving aside for the moment the question of whether what’s recorded in the Gospel accounts accurately reflects the “historical” Jesus).

My point is that you’re going to have to struggle pretty hard to get a litany of pronouncements from Jesus on the hot button issues of our day. And maybe the quest to do so (besides being an attempt to score cheap partisan points) is a way of avoiding our own responsibility for making ethical choices in a complex world.

This is not to embrace relativism or deny that there is a distinctively Christian ethic. But I do think it’s helpful to be reminded that outside of certain core principles there is a lot of room for disagreement among sincere and reasonable people about how to interpret and apply those principles. And remembering this might help us avoid both facile arguments from silence and hubristic identification of our political positions with the cause of God himself.