Dear Prudence: Moral DIsagreements

[minoanmiss]

How do I respond to a person doing something I morally disagree with that they are very excited about? I’ve found myself in many conversations over the past year where acquaintances, coworkers, distant family, or other not-close friends give me an update that makes me uncomfortable.

Examples include: “I’m visiting Hawaii during a drought,” “I’m trying to adopt a baby and fighting the birth mother for custody,” and “I’m going on a mission trip to Uganda to convert people to Christianity.” These are all things I don’t super agree with, but the person speaking often sees as positive or totally innocent. Do I just say good luck? Do I share my concerns? I feel like a self-righteous buzzkill if I react honestly, and like I’m silently endorsing their actions if I don’t.

—Paralyzed By Politeness

Dear Paralyzed,

This is hard to answer because it’s not about the words you say in conversation. It’s about the relationship you want to have with people who do things that you find morally objectionable. And only you can make the calculation about where certain actions fall on the “I would have made a different choice” to “Wow, you’re actually a force for evil and I don’t want to be close to you” spectrum in your mind. I’m guessing that a friend making a poor choice for the environment in a world where we could all stand to interrogate our actions might not rise to the same level as someone committing to a legal fight that you see as seriously hurting a specific child. But I don’t know! Either way, here is your guide.

If you think what the person is doing is so messed up that it makes you question whether you even really want to be friends with them: “Wow, that actually sounds kind of wrong to me!”

If you disagree with the action but not enough that it changes your opinion of the person or your desire to have a relationship with them: “Wow, how long will the flight be?”

Comments

[castiron]

Plus given that according to Wikipedia 85% of Ugandans are some variety of Christian already, they really don't need random white folks jumping in to convert the other 15%.

[melannen]

Yeah, but that actually comes back around to the "need to know more" part. LW obviously knows very little about religion in Uganda *or* mission trips, but still feels a moral obligation to judge. Most "mission trips" from most US churches these days are more like voluntourism than proselytization. If this was a real conversation, the person was probably going to a community with an established sister church and doing something like construction or landscaping work.

There's still a whole grab bag of moral and ethical issues with that, don't get me wrong, but LW is probably very wrong about what's actually going on.