Christian Morality
Derivation of Principles

Chapter 4.
Morality Applied.

There are two types of morality: socialize morality and personalized morality. Personalized morality is no one's business but the individual's and God's. It consists primarily of the Ten Commandments. Socialized morality is everyone's business. It includes oppression, exploitation and degradation. Christ said very little about personalize morality besides saying that the Ten Commandments still apply (Mat 19:17). Not only is personalized morality no one's business, but little can be done to improve morality at the personal level beyond trying to avoid sin. Socialized morality is where sin is overcome. A person has to correct relationships to other persons to overcome sin, which is done through socialized morality.

Christ taught human responsibilities for overcoming sin. But there is a major tendency in Christianity to shift responsibilities away from individuals and onto God. Often the claim is that repentant Christians do the work of the Holy Spirit. Believers sinning their way into heaven is supposedly the work of the Holy Spirit.

What did Christ say about this? He never gave the slightest indication that there was any divine influence related to morality. What did Paul, Thomas Aquinas and religious authorities say about this? They say divine influence is about all that religion consists of. Actually, Paul did a lot of moralizing, but it was the good advice type of trivia which disappears on the page and never gets used for anything. If the trivial moralizing is relevant, then why isn't all of the rest of morality relevant?

To some extent, God gets involved in everything; but it is no one's business what God is doing; and humans cannot evaluate it. God's work cannot be generalized. Christ said much about the Holy Spirit, but not as a replacement for human responsibilities. Christ taught human responsibilities in terms of the objective realities of life. The purpose here is to describe the moral responsibilities which individuals have. It is thereby a study of what Christ taught.

Martin Luther did not want to create an alternative religion. He was dragged kicking and screaming, because God needed alternatives. Diversity was needed to create the freedom and interaction of realities which allow truth to evolve and corruption to be overcome. All Martin Luther wanted to do was prove to the Vatican that people were saved by faith and not by works. There would have been nothing to it, since Paul said exactly that. But the Vatican knew what the argument was and would not let him in.

After Luther created Protestantism, the Catholics held a council meeting and said people are saved by three things: faith, hope and charity. In addition to changing works to charity, they threw in a third item for good measure. It could have been five or ten more items. There has never been an explanation within Catholicism of why Paul said people are save by faith and not works.

One commonly suggested explanation of why Luther said what he did was that he had one a moral problem which he could not conquer, and he expected to get saved anyway, which was faith without works.

So we are left with a lot of confusion, and we need to see what Christ had to say about it. Whenever someone asked Christ what they had to do to get saved, he told them to follow the Ten Commandments (Luke 18:20). But it never ended there. That was never enough. He then said they needed to sell their possessions, give to the poor and follow him, (Luke 18:22). Socialized morality is summarized by giving to the poor. It was the primary focus of what Christ taught.

Before then, Isaiah and Jeremiah certainly mentioned socialized morality, saying that the oppression of the needy was the primary cause of the demise of Jerusalem. But they could not develop the complexities of the subject, as demonstrated by Christ's teaching.

The limitations of personalize morality are an esoteric theme of the Old Testament. To understand this, we must consider the evolution of reality. All constructive realities evolve. This includes truth, knowledge, technology, biological life and social institutions. Designing that evolution is a large part of God's work.

We'll look at some of the major elements of the evolution of moral concepts, because the evolution is quite informative. One of the points of Genesis is that there were no moral rules to go by at that time. The response to sin was usually more sin. Who was to say it was wrong? So a law-giver was needed; and he created the Ten Commandments. But instead of solving the problems, the result was religious disputes on top of the other problems. There needed to be basic principles which could be applied under all conditions. Teaching that subject was something only Christ could do.

We now return to Martin Luther. The reason why works would not solve his problems is because he was expecting personalized morality to do it all, and it is inadequate without socialized morality. The moral philosophy explains why. Sin stems from a psychologically conditioned force in subconscious minds. The force develops from the desire to prevail against other persons. So it creates an improper relationship to other persons, and overcoming it requires proper relationships to be established. Accomplishing this requires social activity, not personal activity.

In other words, a person cannot focus upon himself and overcome sin. He must be relating to other persons to correct his relationship to the universe. But of course, not just any old relationship does it. Some human interactions create more sin. Christ described what types of relationships solve the problems. Basically, he said to do something good for other persons—enemies as well as friends (Mat 5:43-45). One cannot prevail against others, which always includes degrading them, while doing something good for them. So the act reverses the original premise that one must prevail against others.

Justice and morality are approximately synonyms. Justice is the result which truth produces. Truth is the most significant and powerful force in the universe—the only force which corrupters cannot defeat. The reason why is because it never changes. No one can change it through subjective influence. Also, it is the size of the universe, because it is a representation of all unified reality which makes up life—spiritual and material.

So how does the power of truth create the force of justice? Conceptualize a geodesic dome protecting people from a perpetual hail storm. It's thrown up hurriedly, and half of the braces are in the wrong place. A weakness is located, and a brace is corrected there. Then another weakness is located, and another brace is corrected. Eventually all weakness are exposed and all braces are correctly replaced. Then the dome has its maximum strength. Truth and justice always evolve forward in that manner.

Whenever a sin or injustice is perpetrated, a counterforce of truth and justice builds up against it until the injustice is subdued. This process is automatic and can never be defied. Corrupters always assume that they can come up with a new and better god who can defy truth and justice, but it never happens.

Morality is the standard that sustains life, and justice is the result of life being sustained. Unified reality is life, and truth is the communicated representation of unified reality.

People define what should be done to themselves by what they do to others. This may look like "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," which Christ admonished against. Instead, he said to do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Mat 7:12). So we need some more detailed analysis.

Sin always requires more than one standard, because no one can apply the sin standard broadly, and certainly not to themselves and their friends. The multiple standard is called hypocrisy or duplicity. It creates a good test of where sin or injustice lies. Which of a corrupter's standards is justice? More or less, the one he applies to himself, at least in regard to the dichotomy of a particular incident of injustice.

Corrupters wash their own hands while promoting injustice through "see no evil, speak no evil, do no evil," which is a form of nihilism. Persons who promote and rationalize corruption do more harm than the actual perpetrators, because they extend the corruption infinitely. If there is a rationale for corruption, there is no reason for it to ever end.

So what is wrong with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Two major problems that jump out of that slogan are that no one ever limits the eye to the eye, and the first injustice is never corrected by a similar force. There is no real undoing of injustice, and therefore promoting life requires absorbing injustice and preventing it from getting worse. The persons who absorb injustice are more inclined to prevent further injustices. The fixers through counterforce just create more reason for more injustice.

This philosophy is often interpreted to require total pacifism, but that view ignores the requirement to prevent further injustice, which sometimes involves police force. To allow people to be victimized for philosophical reasons is another injustice. Police force cannot be perfect justice; it is an attempt to reduce injustice in a corrupt world.

Another thing that is often not recognized is the need to use trivial and symbolic forces as a communication device. Corrupters do not hear realities, they only hear forces. This is because corruption immerses them in a medium of forces which is in conflict with the medium of realities. So forces need to be created as a method of communicating the concerns of the victims. This is the logic of so-called civil disobedience.

Otherwise, force is the basis of sin, because forces always destroy realities. There is no other way to define force besides that which destroys realities. Yet forces are easy to observe, because the destroyed realities and consequences are far reaching.

Because of these principles, corrupt persons exist in a medium of forces, while moral persons exist in a medium of realities. Realities define, create and sustain life. Forces destroy those realities, which is the basis of sin. Since every force results in a counterforce building up against it until the force is subdued, the perpetrators of corruption get rapidly overwhelmed by a barrage of forces and counterforces which define their existence.