Christian Morality
Why be moral? It is far easier to ignore moral obligations and do what we like rather than what we ought. Why bother going out of our way and making life harder on us for the sake of moral standards?
Some will say, “Honesty is the best policy and will pay in the end.” This sounds straightforward, but it is based on an appeal to personal selfishness. We are doing it for ourselves. It sometimes appears that the statement may not hold true in our world. We see people flourishing in a state of ungodliness while honest people often live in poverty or extreme frugality with restricted privileges. It is not apparent that morality “pays” in the form of a good life.
Some would exhort us to be moral for the sake of society. We definitely benefit from living together and pooling our resources for protection. Our ability to live together depends on common standards of right and wrong. Society can survive the delinquencies of a few people here and there, but if disregard for moral principles becomes a prevailing habit, society will collapse and no one will trust anyone. One more consideration is, “what happens when our society becomes extinct?” It has happened to others. Will this reason still be valid when our world crumbles in cosmic dissolution?
St. Mark writes, “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” He reminds us that Eternal life is the goal and final explanation of moral living. In this life, we are strengthening or weakening our immortal souls for their eternal opportunities. Moral living is a contributing factor to that spiritual character which survives death. He who lives up to moral standards here is building up spiritual strength for service in the life to come. There are probably other reasons, but they fade in comparison to the call to eternal life.
There is a distinction between Christian Morality and Christian Morals. Morality is a constant fact. Morals change. God has established His universe upon and regulates it by certain laws. These laws are permanent, dependable, and immutable. One of them is the Moral Law. It is inherent in human nature. It is expressed in sets of morals which are our imperfect application of the Moral Law to changing conditions. Eventually morals are destined to coincide with Morality (or the Moral Law). In the meantime we fumble the best we can with human perversities. Sometimes we improve our morals and sometimes they slip backward. Our goal is to evolve a set of working morals which will measure up to the ultimate standard of the Moral Law.
Everywhere people have recognized some kind of difference between right and wrong. There is an innate morality that covers a general field of moral principles. Justice, truth, courage, generosity, and personal decency are recognized everywhere, but their application in everyday morals shows many fluctuations. Polygamy was not always questioned on moral grounds and today is still accepted in some cultures. Retaliation was once considered right and proper, if not obligatory. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is a familiar phrase. Even in the Old Testament, the intent was to limit retaliation to an appropriate level. “No more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is a better expression of the original intent. Today, we try to follow our Lord’s injunction to “love your enemies.” As light of these variances, some people say there can be no final standard of right and wrong.
As Christians, we cannot surrender our attempts to measure up to the ultimate standard of the Moral Law. We believe God is the Source of all life and the Creator of all things. We believe there is an intelligent purpose that can only be fulfilled by the harmonious interaction of all parts of His creation. Man – with his “free will” – can chose or refuse to cooperate with God’s order. We know that right human conduct will produce the harmony God intended. Jesus teaches us the way and, by his own life, shows us how it is done. He is the measure of the perfect life and we are right or wrong as we approach or depart from Him. These eternal standards do not change. We may change but right is always right.
In our partly Christianized society, we have customs which conform to the Moral Law. We have others that fall short or are in direct opposition to it. Current morals are a mixture of pagan and Christian. That explains how people can be socially respectable but spiritually immoral. Our challenge is to sift the mixed values in our world and promote those which belong to Christ. We must also show the strength to oppose the others regardless of the cost or inconvenience.
Twenty centuries ago, Christians lived in a pagan civilization and were forced to erect their own moral standards. Living by these standards often led to a material disadvantage for the Christians. Gradually their way prevailed and Christian morals spread. It is a very slow, uneven process and the battle will not be won until we are aligned with the ultimate standard of God’s Moral Law. As the physical demands of our life have eased, it is harder to take a stand against unacceptable moral practice. It is easier to say, “everyone is doing it” or “that’s their problem.”
Farmers have a good eye for weather. Through experience, they have trained themselves to judge the effect of various signs. A “city slicker” would have no clue as to what to notice and what to ignore. The same is true for everything we do. We have trained our eyes and hands and minds for the jobs we do everyday. The question is, “Are we training our consciences?” We cannot expect to judge moral issues if we have not trained our consciences. We cannot expect our children to adopt our moral expectations if they haven’t seen them in practice.
All of us are equipped with something we call a “conscience.” It is a moral umpire, a moral sense which passes judgment on our own conduct. Like any other part of our moral equipment, it demands cultivation. If neglected it becomes dull and unresponsive. If warped, it can be a hindrance rather than a help. If it is regularly cultivated by attention and exercise, it will grow sensitive to the Moral Law and become reliable in its decisions. Training a conscience can be as simple as constant reference to the Ten Commandments and the Summary of the Law.
There are two kinds of Christian morality – personal morality and group morality. Each is incomplete without its companion. Personal morality involves our relations as individuals with other individuals. It is easier to recognize the right actions when we are dealing with personal morality. Every person is important in the eyes of God and we can treat no one as less than a person. We cannot elevate things above people and we cannot elevate certain people by degrading others. Cheating, thievery and murder are contrary to Christian morality because they exploit or destroy the personality of others. Price, snobbishness, malicious gossip, personal hatreds are all morally evil because they deter the development of personality. The Golden Rule applies here, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Group morality is not so clear. We have all heard people deny their prejudice on the basis of their acceptance of one member of an otherwise objectionable group. Racial antipathy – simply lack of concern for some of God’s people – can overwhelm our personal morality. International peace can only come when we have workable standards of national and racial morality. Individually we have really acquired some commendable morals based on Christian morality. From a corporate standpoint, we are still in the Dark Ages. People do things under the label of “it is just business”, that they would never do on a personal level. The natural tendency to take the easy way out is escalated by profit motives and competitive drive. We are not coming close to the ultimate standard of God’s Moral Law as long as we allow this bisected morality.
It would appear we need no code of conduct today. Many value self-expression and self-indulgence over moral discipline. Yet honesty, fair-play, decent living, reverence for God, respect for fellowmen and loyalty to Jesus Christ remain. There are some things a Christian must do and others we must not do, just because we are Christians. To believe in Christ and live like a heathen is an impossible contradiction. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”