why do you do what you do?
where does your sense of morality come from?
is it an innate set of morals that you follow? born to do 'good' things and not do 'bad' things?
were you taught morals by those who raised you and so adopted them for your own?
or were you taught morals and so rejected them as your own?
do you follow what you believe God is telling you to do?
in an interesting post on morality, The Unwelcome Guest, asks: "Which is more moral, helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think God wants you to do it?"
morality is an interesting thing. who truly determines what is right and wrong? are they ambiguous? what may be right for you may not be right for me? what may be right in this culture may not be right in another?
are there levels of morality? someone is more moral than another? can someone actually be immoral?
are there overarching morals that speak to all people, in all times, in all places?
why do you do what you do?
is it out of guilt? out of habit? out of conviction? out of dedication? out of a blind following of the norm?
or maybe you just do and let the chips fall where they may...?
3 comments:
For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
I believe that I do the (few) good things that I do both out of obedience to God and out of compassion for the person. It comes down to pain for me. God has allowed certain pain in my life, in order that I may be sensitive to those who are experiencing what I did, so that I can relate and help; empathize not just sympathize. In that way, "God prepared in advance for [me] to do." So its both following God's leading, and my own heart.
I learned something about morals and "bad guys" the other day.
"You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all your doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those [bad guys]? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once."
We all can be the force behind the things we wish we not, if we find ourselves not part of the force standing before those things.
My point is, I may have my morals, and you may have yours, but we start compromising our own morals (let alone God's), what does that show about us?
I was having dinner with the parents of a good friend of mine and Drew's. These people are good, strong Mennonites. I really enjoy speaking with them. I asked my friend's dad
"So, here's what I don't understand. If we are supposedly built in God's image - would our instictive sense of morality and intellect not also reflect God's image?"
This is an interesting question which I think can open a whole lotta interesting convos. I tend to believe that the "7 deadly sins" aren't necessarily things that will guarantee your death if you choose to entertain them occasionally, rather they're a certain "death" (whether that means a hardening of the heart, literal physical death, I think it varies from one to the other) if you become chained to them. They are the 7 worst of the worst.
In that sense - is it "immoral" or "wrong" to have pre-marital sex, for example? I think it's odd that we are created as highly sexual creatures, ones who experience incredible enjoyment from sex, who think about it constantly, only to be told (by some oldschoolers) that sex is dirty and wrong. Going back to Lust - I don't think it's wrong to have premarital sex, rather I think it's risky as the consequences may be severe and permanent.
This is the approach I take with much of "God's laws" - not so much a black & white right vs. wrong, as I think that's too simple, but rather to determine what the core of the intention of the guideline. What is the risk?
What is the risk of Lust? Disease, emotional pain, health risks of you and those closest to you, etc.
What is the risk of Greed? Hardening of the heart, a loss of what's important, forgetting who you and other people are and how everybody fits into this world, possibly a lack of compassion?
What is the risk of gluttony? etc.
Just rambling with ya, as it's been a while. ;)
@pilgrim -
""You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all your doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those [bad guys]? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once.""
I think that's really interesting when contrast against one of Ty's other posts about Christian's being boring. This is exactly what I think about most Christians with regards to their conformance of what's taught, what they can/cannot do, etc. We compromise our own understanding and searching in the meaning of truth if we compromise against the intellectual "authorities".
Man, does that ever sound anti-intellectual...
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