Can
anyone separate himself in an enterprise from his personal morality? In every forum of human activity, there is a
crucial but often subtle correspondence to morality, be it politics, work, celebration,
education, the liturgy, etc. In fact,
everything one does is a reflection of his morality in some way. Every human activity is therefore bound to be
misunderstood and poorly undertaken if the moral framework on which it is built
is misunderstood.
Morality, simply put, is belief put into action. Everyone has desires for what he believes is good and so what he believes, be it by faith or reason, has implications for how he decides what is a preferable choice or course of action. For example, if one believes that air conditioners are bad for one’s health and that person wants to preserve his health more than he wants to keep cool in the summer, that person will probably not buy and use an air conditioner, unless of course, some other thing leads him to believe that he should. Though this may perhaps seem to be a trivial example, it is still morality. What morality is not is an arbitrary set of rules. Even commandments and moral absolutes can be shown to be reasonable and representative of a conviction on what is good and desirable.
Morality, simply put, is belief put into action. Everyone has desires for what he believes is good and so what he believes, be it by faith or reason, has implications for how he decides what is a preferable choice or course of action. For example, if one believes that air conditioners are bad for one’s health and that person wants to preserve his health more than he wants to keep cool in the summer, that person will probably not buy and use an air conditioner, unless of course, some other thing leads him to believe that he should. Though this may perhaps seem to be a trivial example, it is still morality. What morality is not is an arbitrary set of rules. Even commandments and moral absolutes can be shown to be reasonable and representative of a conviction on what is good and desirable.
It
is easy to see how any of the above mentioned examples of human activity ties
into morality in a very deep way. From a
Christian perspective, morality is much more deeply intertwined in every facet of
human life; from waking up in the morning to burying the dead. This is because, for Christians, morality is
life itself. If morality is the pursuit
of good on behalf of our own desire, then morality is the pursuit of God. The moral life springs from much deeper fonts
than commandments and precepts. It is more
akin to a love affair, in which every soul experiences an unquenchable thirst
for something beyond this world; for life itself. This is God, and He is goodness itself.
The
moral life is sometimes called a participation in goodness. I am not speaking here of some ethereal neo-platonic
concept of fragmented bodies tending back into union with the One (though it is
worth looking into). To participate in
something is to act in unison with those who are part of it. It does not help to understand morality by
saying it is “acting in unison with others who are also acting for the good.” This is obvious. What is extraordinary in Christianity, in
speaking of participation, is that God, who is goodness itself, acts. He in fact acts only in goodness. Thus, to say that one “participates in
goodness” is to say that one “participates in God.” That is, one acts in unison with Him. St. Thomas Aquinas goes even further in
saying that, because God is perfect, there is no potential good in Him that is
not already realized. God is therefore pure act (though let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
When
one acts for the sake of goodness, we call this love. This is why we say that God is love, because
He is goodness in action. To act for the
sake of something is to love that thing.
This works in every analogous sense of the word: I love ice cream – I will find some and eat
it: I love art – I will create it and
preserve it: I love my wife – I will protect
and honor her. Because God is the good, everything is good by
virtue of Him. He created it; he
maintains it, and everything good leads ultimately to Him. We thus see that every act of love, in
whatever sense, is a real participation in the goodness of God.
To
say that something ought to be
such-and-such a way is to commit to a standard in which that thing is considered
good. We maintain this standard in our
beliefs on what is good. If one, for
instance, believes that free-market economy is good because of so-and-so, then
he would be likely to say that the economy ought
to be a free-market. If this same free-market
proponent were a Christian, it would stand to reason that he would believe a
free-market economy (in some small way at least) to be a reflection of the
goodness of God and a means of leading oneself to Him. A Christian cannot reasonably conceive of any
sphere of human activity as being separable or unrelated to his morality, be it
politics, education, joke-telling, fishing, drinking, love-making, eating,
working, nose-picking, reading or writing, buying or selling, child-rearing,
painting, pissing, or sleeping. Everything
he does ought to be done out of love of God.
To believe one thing and act contrary to that belief on account of some
other belief amounts to a contradiction of beliefs: Such a person is unreasonable and a liar to
himself. If a Christian cannot sincerely
believe that he does something in order to participate in the goodness of God,
he ought not to do that thing, no matter what that thing is.
