Man and Morality

Is man a moral creature?

To answer the question meaningfully “moral” needs defining. Does moral, as some believe, mean “to be good"? If so, we face the same dilemma a second time. The need to define "good".

Moving into the sphere of morality – ethics, value systems, standards of goodness, decency, honesty, integrity, honor, virtue, godliness, or just plain civilized socially acceptable behavior – we are forced into the theological, sociological, philosophical, and peripheral psychological disciplines.

Secular academia and theological seminaries have trudged through the abyss of centuries of speculative human definitions and descriptions of the dynamics of the ‘sick and sorry’ socio-pathological elements of the human heart and still avoid or reject the clear statement from the Eternal that “The heart is deceitful [fraudulent, crooked, polluted] above all things, and desperately wicked [morally incurably sick]: who can know it?” [Jer 17:9.]

The associated mental, socio-psychological impact of this pathologically corrupt, naturally immoral condition of man created a chasm of unholy chaos, worldwide. Witness, inter alia, the murderously vile social eruptions in the United States where hateful violence, insufferable looting, flagrant firebombing and a litany of unmentionable crimes rule cities, destroy people and businesses, and cruelly tear the guts out of once peaceful communities, bringing industry to a standstill and destroying an economy!

Such is the fruit of the innate and uncontrollable corruption of the human heart which under the guise of sociological, philosophical and theological “intellectualism” eviscerated God-based moral values from the social order. The social elite, “Professing themselves to be wise... became fools” [Rom 1:22], turning the world into a lurid modern Colosseum and crank house.

The terrain of human morality is murky, dispute-laden, opinionated, vile, and filled with frenzied vilification from toxic hearts and inebriated minds, having descended into the dark pits of squalid human nature, filled with vitriolic vituperation, and rank intellectual insanity. That notwithstanding, Christian Commentator bravely ventures into the arena of this intellectual spiritual war-zone – CONFIDENTLY!

WHY? Because of greater knowledge, spiritual superiority, mental acuity, self-righteous arrogance, or pretentious priestly piety? Never! Christian Commentator strives to show the way in its assessments, critiques, value determinations, and understanding by means of insights from the ONE SURE, absolutely incontestable guide in this deeply divisive domain of human morality – the infallible WORD OF GOD.

But what say the philosophers about morality and goodness?

Philosopher GE Moore, defines “good” as a "simple, natural, indefinable quality known by intuition... Attempts to define it were inevitably fallacious." [Principia Ethica, 1903. Emphasis added throughout.]

Upon analysis we discover that, according to Moore, "good" is: 1) "indefinable" -- it cannot be defined or given precise definitions 2) it is "known by intuition" and 3) Moore insists, "inevitably fallacious".

If intuition be perception, or a mental view [Shorter Oxford English Dictionary], we ask: "Whose mental view or perception? And, what are the cultural, religious, or historic milieu and motivations from which these perceptions or mental views would derive? Clearly, Moore’s perception of "good", is restricted to her myopic Darwinian, evolutionary established biological “ape ancestry” convictions. Her observation therefore is correct – any conclusion derived in terms of morality from that quarter would clearly be fallacious.

Moore further declares that this “good” is intuitive. The intuitivism doctrine she upholds allows for any person's private intuition to be their fundamental principle of ethics, morality, or "good". In short, every person's feelings, viewpoints, perceptions, emotional persuasions or morally moribund mental musings can serve as their misdirected behavioral compass. They are their own lawmakers and moral masters -- a law unto themselves! – wizards of their self-centred, self-destructive, instinctive, intuitive intensities and sensitivities; living in defiance and disrespect of everything Godly.

If “good” be indefinable then “anything goes”. Anything can be described or characterized as “good”. Obscure, speculatively philosophic, and personally appealing perceptions – irrespective of its utter perversity and moral depravity -- are viewed as moral goodness. “What I think is good, is good!”

Therefore, when, according to Moore’s philosophic opinion, “good” is indefinable, nobody, presumably, has the right to define or determine what is “moral”. Unfettered savage horde “standards”, loathsome sexual actions and depraved orientations can dictate to society what is “good” – and woe betide any who dare oppose or criticize those sick standards, contemptible norms, and vile values. Moore and ilk laid the foundations of today's "Rainbow Culture".

There’s a disturbing horror episode of note in Judges 19 and 20 relating the corrupt actions of such a bunch of revolting miscreants with decayed, deviant, immoral values. God calls them “base fellows” [RSV] or “sons of Belial [wickedness]” [19:22, KJV]. A city old-timer admonished them not to engage in the “vile thing” they contemplated. [Read Judges 19:22-23 to discover what that horribly “vile thing” was. It's something that has recently crawled out of the revoltingly filthy, slimy closets of a decayed society.] The episode erupted in an agonizing night-long gang-rape of a minister’s wife, resulting in her heart-breaking death. That, however, was not the end of this tragic incident. It escalated into the death of over 250 000 men, children, women, elderly and otherwise capable and highly talented Israelites from the tribe of Benjamin!

One night’s sexually perverse passion on the part of a few degenerate moral miscreants virtually decimated a whole tribe in ancient Israel. The reason the Eternal allowed the near decimation of Benjamin was because the depraved sexual deviancy of these perverts [see Leviticus 20:13] were known to the community and the city leadership [similar to the governor and mayor as in New York, et al] defended the “politically correct” and socially acceptable behaviors of these “vile” lowlifes.

On the other extreme we find elements in society motivated by schmaltzy emotional sentimentality -- saccharine sweet “do-gooder”, “lovely” and “nice” people who appeal to the “soft side” of human nature – until famine and hunger strike... then mothers fry their own offspring to still their gnawing hunger pangs and uncontrollable passion for personal survival! [This really happened! Josephus, historian-priest detailed it in his “War of the Jews”.]

Because some concept or idea is projected as “nice” and “good” does not mean it is “nice” and “good” -- whatever those terms may mean. Some most permissive behavioral standards obviously find great appeal among the morally corrupt societal factions to the degree that what is good in God’s sight is declared evil by man, and what is evil in God’s sight is declared good!

This was the lament of the ancient prophet Isaiah who lived amidst such a decrepit, decadent and dissipated society. He writes in Isaiah 5:18 “Woe [sorrow] unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity [falsehoods and lies], and sin [defiance and disobedience to the Eternal’s laws] as it were with a cart rope [their sins are so numerous it requires a thick rope to pull the enormously heavy wagon-load of their sin.]

The prophet continues, verse 19, “[They] say, Let him [Yehovah] make speed, and hasten his work [of vengeance against us who defy Him], that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! [They arrogantly challenge God to punish them because they didn’t believe He exists and that the breaking of His moral laws as contained in holy writ will have any punitive repercussions.]

But note verse 20: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil... that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” [Anachronistically applied to the liberal, morally deficient politicians, effete theologians and foolish philosophers who deliberately complicate and confuse the common folk by political vraisemblance and obscuring the difference between right and wrong by means of their sin-splattered hearts and conscienceless, law-rejecting, warped reasoning.]

Verse 21 “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!... 23 Which justify the wicked for reward [as apparently some evil billionaires in the USA do by financially supporting the demented destructive gangs seeking to annihilate all vestiges of morality, law and order, in an already decaying society]... and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him [referring to judges within a corrupt legal system which deny justice to people with a righteous cause].

We live in a world where the ship of morality has been ripped from its moorings. It flounders on the tempestuous societal waves of a tohu va bohu [ruin, chaos and confusion]. Such a worthless and wasted humanity presumably has the right to define or determine what is “moral”? Unfettered savage horde “standards”, loathsome sexual actions and depraved orientations can dictate to society what is “good” – and woe betide any who dare oppose or criticize those sick standards, contemptable norms, and vile values.

Jane Austen incisively and succinctly observed: "We do not look in great cities for our best morality." So, where do we go to for clear-cut defining of what is genuinely good, upright and moral?

Objective morality cannot be accurately defined by man who by nature rejects moral thinking and behavior. Therefore we need to look elsewhere -- outside of man -- for moral insight and guidance. The only true source of morality – of genuine good – is found within the revealed word of the Eternal, the Bible. The eternal law of moral conduct was clearly stated by Christ when He declared: “And you shall love Yehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like [it], namely this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is none other commandment greater than these” [Mk 12:30-31].

This, the highest of moral decree, the law of love, is made simple to understand being detailed in the Ten Commandments. This inviolable, sacred, and perfect moral law is despised by men, including theologians who are supposedly ordained to uphold, honor and teach this law. But God’s commands are hated alike by the godlessly violent, the satanically depraved rabble and, ironically, by the liberal theologians espousing the soul-destroying and morally destructive fallacy of salvation “by grace alone”. Law-hating ecclesiastics, prosperity preaching pastors, clergy donning Purple, Crimson, Black and White vestures – some with yarmulkes and others with tonsured heads, or high hats and curlews – only vary in the degree of their hatred. In a pretense of righteousness they submerge the Eternal’s laws to their customs, traditions, doctrinal delusions, systematic and intellectually constructed schemata. God must yield so man can prevail! CALVIN MAY EVEN GIVE HIM A TULIP from GENEVA!

Demonically inspired humanity [James 3:14-15] could, like Sodom's sin-saturated perverts, find more grace on judgement day than those ecclesiastics who arrogantly, sneeringly, bombastically prance proudly on evangelical stages, blowing their foul breath on the crippled and maimed, shoving them into the ready arms of catchers, ostensibly “healed”! Screaming at 200 decibels with stentorian voices, thundering hell fire and brimstone against all who would not “accept Jesus” and give a “seed offering” of “$1000 or more”, whilst inveighing against the holy, good and just law of God [Ro 7:12]. These shameless con-men continue with their Churchian charades. It will be more tolerable in the judgement day for the Sodomites than for these unashamed preachers who teach against The Eternal's holy law! [Matthew 11:21-24.]

The former may be forgiven upon repentance, but the preachers boast about Bible knowledge, pretended “revelations from God” – even “going to heaven”! – quoting reams of Scripture, babbling incomprehensively in so-called “angelic tongues” and “SECRET prayer language” which they with “proud humility” display in public. Therefore, because they say they “see” -- know God and have spiritual gifts -- their sins will remain! [John 9:41.]

What irony! Sodomites might be forgiven by God but not the hypocritical preachers who condemned the Sodomites!

Lawlessness is the pervasive cultural norm, much of it spawned by Christian antinomianism – the false belief that God’s grace will abound where their sin abounds! Having swallowed as much of Luther's "by grace alone" theology as he swallowed barrels of beer, they, spiritually inebriated, sport their mantra: “Let us sin so that grace may abound.” [Ro 5:20; 6:1.]

Such philosophic liberalism is to be the expected and regular consequence of Moore’s inevitable philosophic fallaciousness. Despite all effort by moral philosophers, liberal theologians and socio-political engineers to reconstruct the nature of man, seeking means and methods to spiritually salvage corrupt man, the moral state of humankind spirals relentlessly deeper into a putrid pit of bubbling moral excreta. Consider this conundrum: Is it possible for a superior moral man – Nietzsche’s renovated Platonic Ubermensch – to rise out of such a quarry of corruption?

Can immorality spawn morality? Can moral good be birthed out of moral evil?

A naturally developed moral man is an illusion of delusional minds. Humanist philosophers, despite their collective or individual brilliance, will never succeed in forging a philosophy or a curriculum that will successfully re-engineer the nature of man. Man's nature will ever remain what it is. Mind science and positive thinking gurus can at best only speculatively intellectualize with sciolistic, ill-informed opportunism; their vaunted self-congratulatory views being but mere opinions based on guesswork, transient human emotion, banal sentimentalism, and flighty feelings. The idealism of “summum bonum” [the ultimate good for everybody], that will satisfy the total need and destiny of all human beings is totally out of reach until we arrive at a full understanding and appreciation of what composes a “moral man”.

How will the MORAL MAN – the “new man”, the regenerated man, the reborn man – be constructed? It will be the man who lives and dwells within the law of God, being deconstructed – broken down in repentance [Acts 2:38] -- and then spiritually reconstructed by Christ Himself by placing His divine spirit and eternal moral law within the human heart.

“This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel [and all people]; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" [Jer 31:33]. This promise of creating “the new man” [Eph 4:24, Col 3:10] – the truly moral man – can only be fulfilled in Christ and will be extended to all humanity only “after those days”, that is, after the return of Christ.

Then, after Christ’s return, will be fulfilled the reality expressed by the apostle Paul upon Mars Hill to the Gentiles that the new moral man will “seek Yehovah, if haply they might... find him, though [presently] he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being... ‘For we are also his offspring’ ” [Acts 17:27-28].

Clearly, a pre-millennial moral society is impossible, man will remain in conflict with God’s morality -- God's Law -- until Christ returns and then He will establish the means, the processes and spirit-enablement to create, universally, true moral men and women.

In the meantime may the Eternal grant you, personally, the will to seek after Him, to live and move and have your being in Him -- and He in you!

[R20/06/22.]