Introducing Moral Compass, a regular advice column answering ethical dilemmas through a Christian lens. Do you have a question for ethicist Ashley Moyse? Send it to general@broadview.org
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Q: I support supervised safe consumption sites, but I don’t want to live near one. How do I deal with this? —Worried Neighbour
A: Dear Worried Neighbour, I’ve been reading writer and farmer Wendell Berry’s essay “In Distrust of Movements,” where he critiques social movements that remain disconnected from the lived realities of the communities they aim to help. Your hesitation about living near a supervised consumption site mirrors this common tension: supporting an idea in principle but feeling unsure about its impact on your immediate environment.
First, let’s examine “support.” The word comes from the Latin sub (below) and portare (to carry). This etymology speaks to more than theoretical endorsement. It speaks to practical involvement, to bearing something from underneath — taking on the weight of responsibility.
This meaning is familiar to the Christian; supporting the burden of others is central to a Christian moral life and to genuine fellowship. It’s in accepting the discomfort and burden of another that we recognize a neighbour, rather than an object of charity or manipulation. When we carry the burdens of our community, as Christ bore humanity in his living and dying, we participate in the same self-giving love that fulfils the law of Christ.
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Advocating for safe injection sites from afar may seem right, but it disconnects us from this deeper act of compassion that “support” helps us to see.
While supporting, though, we ought not to dismiss the risks. Well-meaning attempts to help do not guarantee success. What if your resources are insufficient or your compassion leads to harm? Your question already, and rightly, implies an awareness of such risk. Compassionate support must also be met with a realistic understanding of our limits. Not every burden can be easily borne, and not every act of care yields the desired results.
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Support, therefore, involves accepting the discomfort and complexities of communal life, a reality underscored by Berry’s critique of movements disconnected from the lived experiences they seek to impact. Living near a supervised consumption site invites you to embody support not as a distant ideal but as a practice rooted in shared responsibility for your neighbours.
So after reading Berry and reflecting on the practice of bearing burdens, I must insist that support of place and people means carrying the weight of our convictions in local, sustained and realistic ways. Such support must also be accompanied by humility — an understanding that compassion, while noble, is fraught with limits and risks.
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Ashley Moyse is a Canadian ethicist, theologian and assistant professor of medical ethics at Columbia University in New York City.
This article first appeared in Broadview’s January/February 2025 issue with the title “What If I Don’t Want to Live Near a Safe Consumption Site?”
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