Being ethical is not easy. 

Pop culture does not often explore the deep recesses of moral philosophy, but the popular 2010s sitcom The Good Place ventured to do so. Through four seasons, this show, created by Michael Schur—of The Office and Parks and Recreation fame— followed four individuals who had died and believed themselves to be in “the good place.” During their various misadventures to uncover their true whereabouts, they encountered Douglas Ewing, formerly of Scaggsville, Maryland, who gave his mother a dozen roses and, in doing so, lost moral points in the afterlife’s comically archaic point system. 

Why would such a generous and loving act generate negative points and leave the giver in the not-so-good-place? 

The viewer quickly learns the flowers were ordered using a cell phone made in a sweatshop, picked by exploited migrant workers, grown with toxic pesticides, delivered from thousands of miles away through a process rendering a significant carbon footprint, and profiting a racist CEO with a penchant for sending unwanted photographs to his female employees. 

As one character exclaims, “Every day the world gets a little more complicated and being a good person becomes harder.” Not only is it impossible to know the thousand moral implications and consequences of every action, but each context and situation calls for a new range of moral considerations and criteria. 

When we each are complicit in a system of injustice that stretches from economics to race to the environment, how is anyone to know if they are acting morally?

And perhaps this reality is true especially for Christians, who have inherited a complicated legacy of confessing Jesus to the world while simultaneously failing to follow him. The world has witnessed a long trajectory of Christianity inflicting harm upon the Earth and its most vulnerable people. “It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed,” lamented Howard Thurman, “this, despite the gospel.” 

The two millennia since Jesus’ life and ministry call into question the legacy of Christianity and the failure of Christian ethics to produce people who follow in the way of Jesus. 

Christianity produced colonialism, white supremacy, and the Atlantic Slave Trade and continues to perpetuate racism today. One recent study provides evidence that going to church actually makes people more racist. 

Large segments of privileged Christianity continue to endorse discrimination against women, the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized groups, underwrite a capitalist system that destroys the planet and renders portions uninhabitable, and manufacture a complex, individualized approach to poverty that promotes charity work but resists structural engagement. This dark reality leads theologian and priest Kelly Brown Douglas to ask: “If Christianity has been used for centuries to oppress people, was there not something wrong with Christianity itself?”

Certainly, Christians have done real, practical good in the world, but as most data suggests a great exodus from the church, there exists an urgent question of whether 2,000 years of Christianity have done more harm than good. 

How, then, ought we respond to this tainted legacy of Christianity and the moral ambiguity in which we find ourselves? How might we find a path forward to truly follow in the Way of Jesus, especially those of us who through our racial, gender, or economic privilege are complicit with the harms inflicted?

I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about this as I worked on two book projects last year dealing with ethical uncertainty. And the best answer I have come up with? We try. 

Now this response is bound to be unsatisfactory to many readers—perhaps most. But there is a great and esteemed moral tradition that is basically—perhaps, crudely—

summed up with trying.

Christian ethical approaches tend to fall into three basic categories of moral philosophy: a rules-based approach (“Do unto others…”), an approach based on results (“the ends justify the means”), and a focus on character. And while this third category, defined as “virtue ethics,” has historically emphasized a morality of developing inward purity, I believe it still holds the most promise for reckoning with our complex history and reality.

In a world of moral uncertainty, ethical theories that assume you can predictably calculate results or propose standard rules across contexts fall short. As one commentator notes, “Many moral theories take a somewhat Yoda-ish approach. . . You abide by a set of reasonable rules, or you don’t; you maximize the good in the world, or you don’t—there is no try.” But in a morally ambiguous world, a true realistic approach understands that the best we might be capable of accomplishing in many situations is to try. 

We can’t decide simply to be virtuous in a singular event or situation; we have to learn how to be virtuous from training. In this way, developing virtues follows the same process as learning to play an instrument or a sport. It takes practice; engaging in intentional activities over a period of time. 

James Clear, in a popular self-help book on developing good habits, makes an important point about character development. It begins by focusing not on what you want to achieve, but on who you want to become. 

He offers an example: “Imagine two people resisting a cigarette.” When Person 1 is offered one, they respond, “No thanks. I’m wanting to quit.” While this sounds like a reasonable response, he notes that this person “still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else.” 

When Person 2 is offered a smoke, they respond, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” This is a subtle change in response, but signals a change in identity and a process of formation directed not toward an outcome but an identity that makes a certain outcome sustainable. 

“Habits are how you embody your identity,” Clear concludes, and also how you achieve it. You try on that identity until it automatically becomes you.

Still, one might assume an ethics based on results is best suited for the pursuit of just ends. An action is moral if it actually functions to achieve justice or liberation. 

Yet, feminist scholar Lisa Tessman argues a virtue framework is central to the cause of liberation because other moral theories overlook individual limitations or those of a community in achieving justice by racing toward ends or results. These short-term results may lack sustainability or encourage utopian fantasy. By focusing on trying, virtue provides the ethical model best suited for a sustainable life of justice in a world of moral ambiguity.

I believe this to be especially true for Christians who inhabit some forms of privilege but are committed to reckoning with our legacy of standing “against the weak and oppressed, despite the gospel.” A virtue ethic for privileged Christians requires uncovering and changing aspects of one’s character developed under conditions of privilege once one begins to understand them as harmful. Tessman argues that by focusing on character, a person or community can begin identifying how to develop the virtues necessary to carry out the actions needed for liberation.

For the privileged then, character necessarily leads to responsibility. A virtue ethic is linked with an ethic of responsibility: As a community engages practices that become habits that produce good moral character, that community becomes more aware of its own moral shortcomings as well as the ways its behaviors impact others. 

This insight comes from the wisdom of Black women, a tradition called womanist theology in academic circles. While womanism is not known for promoting virtue ethics, scholar Melanie Harris outlines a womanist approach to virtue ethics that includes three aspects of responsibility. 

First, responsibility is mutual relationality. No person or community is an island; what one does impacts others and vice versa. So, developing good character means being in relationship with others, receiving and responding, listening and learning, considering what virtues and behaviors result in the thriving of all. 

Second, responsibility is accountability for one’s moral failings. Developing character means becoming more aware of and confronting one’s own failures; to acknowledge our shortcomings and keep trying anyway, without being constrained by guilt or distracted by self-justification.

Third, responsibility is responsiveness to the marginalized. It requires taking responsibility to and for others, responding to them in solidarity with their struggles and concerns.

Being ethical is not easy. In a complex situation like ours, where one just action might result in two unjust consequences, and where the structures of racism, patriarchy, environmental exploitation, and poverty are so intertwined that one system cannot be dismantled without a strategy for tackling them all, achieving even small victories feels daunting. ICE raids destroy families, Palestinians still suffer siege and genocide, systemic racism continues to create wide racial disparities in health outcomes—all interlocking legacies of Christianity—and we feel powerless to do much about them.

A few years before he passed, I met James Cone, the founder of Black Liberation Theology. He was a legend, intimidating, highly critical of white theology. And as a fledgling, white graduate student, I was nervous as hell. 

I interviewed him about Black theology, white supremacy, and what he thought white Christians ought to do to account for our racism. He was undoubtedly suspicious of me at first. But after we got to know one another over a couple meetings, he told me to speak out, to be truthful, to write about racism and oppression, and when I made mistakes, he or someone else would correct me. 

In other words, he told me to try.

This article contains excerpts from Norris’s new book, Liberating Jesus: Christian Ethics for Privileged People, available now from Bloomsbury Press.