Jonathan,
the Church of St. Louis (with the winning Cardinals!) greets the
Church of Patmos (with no team at all)! Actually, there are
TWO kinds of moralism. One is doing moral things because one
loves the Lord and Lawgiver from their whole heart. The other
is doing moral things for all the wrong reasons (ie: social mores or
whatever). Obviously the first category means MUCH more to the
Lord than the second. However, God will judge a nation that is
IMMORAL in it�s behavior MUCH more harshly than He will judge a
nation with MORAL (albeit with the wrong motives) behavior.
And, lastly to be sure, He will REWARD any person or nation who acts
morally out of a true
devotion to HIM. He does judge our behavior.
He does also know our heart. Good behavior is a step in the
right direction to correcting the heart�s attitudes. (Otherwise, why
do we train up a child in the way he should go? He doesn�t
start out giving a turnip about whether or not his room is clean.)
Izzy
PS
Why would one walking in love assume that when I use the word
�moral� that it would not be assumed to be from a heart subjected to
Him? Aren�t we to assume the best of one another; not the worst?
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonathan
Hughes
Sent:
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 4:34 PM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [TruthTalk] Moralism
versus Christianity
Greetings
all,
I am
writing from my self-imposed exile. All is well here on the
island of Patmos.
Just a
quick note for this conversation which I have re-titled as I am
afraid that the point is being missed and that there is a lot of
talking past one another.
What Lance,
Terry and Izzy are saying are all flying past one another. I
do think that moralism and Christianity are diametrically
opposed. Bill could write all this up much better than
myself. Perhaps he will correct where I am off here. My
apologies for using the Canadian/British spelling of
behaviour. J
Lance is
saying that there is no hope, no life, no godliness in
moralism. Moralism is the practice of moral behaviour.
Moral behaviour is taught by society. What we determine to be
moral as a nation may not be what another nation may think (I wrote
about how having a mistress in Malta is considered by many of the
populace as normal, whereas having a mistress in North America is
considered adultery). In our lifetimes we are seeing a wide
swing regarding homosexuality; it is moving from being considered
immoral to moral (i.e. acceptable). When my father was young
chewing gum in school was considered immoral.
The problem
with moralism (keeping good social morals) is that it is completely
disconnected from God. Morals properly placed in a subjective
manner to God are good. For example, the Torah laws are good
as long as they are placed subservient to the lawgiver God. To
just follow the laws apart from a relationship with God earns one
nothing but it does give the illusion of progress (i.e the Pharisees
followed the laws and were indeed legally righteous; what they
missed was the lawgiver � this is moralism. It is no more new
today than it was then). In other words, morality (which can
be defined as good behaviour, even desired holy behaviour) divorced
from God avails nothing but an illusion. The illusion itself
is powerful. It is this illusion that makes some think that we
live in moral, godly nations. The precepts our countries were
built on have been detached from a relationship with their
Creator.
What the
founding fathers wrote is great stuff, as long as it is placed
within the framework of who God is. Without God, it turns into
a legal matter, a moralistic issue instead of a spiritual
issue. In society it becomes moralism; in the church it
becomes religion.
Let me give
another quick example. Imagine that I behaved completely moral
to my wife. I did everything right, treated her kindly, never
cheated on her and was always polite. It would not take my
wife long to see through me; although I did nothing legally wrong to
her, without the love that God has placed in my heart for her my
behaviour is empty. My behaviour was spot on, my heart was
not. Moralism is like this. My behaviour, while
noteworthy (others who saw how well I treated my wife would be
jealous of our marriage) lacked the basis in relationship.
Legislating
moral behaviour is a whole other post�..
Back to
exile with me!
Jonathan
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004
5:23 PM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Gay
Marriage Roll Call Vote
In a
message dated 7/20/2004 9:05:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Lance,
I�ve been wanting to ask you this. Would you please clarify
what it is you have against �morality�? Please define
morality. (To me it means making moral choices vs immoral
choices, which means choosing sinless choices over sinful choices.)
Izzy
A
great question. And your (Izzy) exchange with Bill was
as interesting to me as was Bill's comments. Did you
change the color of your hair?
;-)
John
