Defining Morality

 

Welcome to our first post in the series "Finding a Moral Line"! 

Today, we're just talking about morality in general. What is it, how is it determined, and why is it important. 

Let's get right into it. 

(P.S. I was a bad girl and didn't write this in advance like I had attended and because NaNoWriMo is going on right now, I'm loopy and absent minded, so I apologize if this is rambly. XD ) 

What is morality?

Merriam-Webster describes it as this: 

Definition of morality

1a

: a moral discourse, statement, or lesson

Definition of moral

 

1a

: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior

Morality and morals are the "right" in life, it's what is socially and ethically acceptable and generally agreed on by the majority of people. 

Do not kill, lie, steal, take advantage of others, hurt others, abandon, abuse, etc., are all well known moral rules.

What determines morality?

Morality can only be determined by God. The next section, "Why is morality important?" goes into this a little further, but in short, without God, there wouldn't be morality at all. There would be no great Judge determining all of this for us. 

Only something that is supremely good could tell us what is wrong, and so only He can tell us what is and isn't morally right.

 God is what determines morality, and so the Bible is our moral compass. 

Why is morality important?

Morality is evidence of God's existence, firstly. The definition of "moral" that I posted at the beginning says, 

"of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior"

Without a supreme Good, there is nothing to determine bad. Without a defined set of Right, there is no definition of wrong.

So who determines that right and wrong? Say you think that telling a white lie is no biggie, but killing someone definitely is. 

So what about stealing? Say you stole a candy bar from a drug store. Was that bad? Morally wrong? Yes, yes it was. But it wasn't nearly as bad as killing someone.

Why? Because one is ending a life, right? A life that wasn't yours to take. But then again, neither was that candy bar. 

But. What about that is bad? Who's to say that it's wrong to kill? Who says it's wrong to steal? We know that it is, but why? 

It's a circular argument. Some may say that it's just general humanity. Don't take what isn't yours, you didn't earn it. Don't kill, life is sacred. Don't lie, truth sets you free. Sure.

But there's a much deeper meaning to all of that. If you were to take God out of the picture, if this world did not have God, morality wouldn't exist, because God, Who defines morality, wouldn't be here. 

Every human naturally echos God's image in one way or another, and our sense of morality is one of those ways. Sure, you might be fine with having sex willy-nilly, but you wouldn't be fine with killing someone. Sure, you'd be fine with lying or swearing, but you would never steal. 

One way or another, we've all got some moral line we wouldn't cross, and even if you don't, you know what is and isn't morally acceptable even if you don't follow that line.

We all have some sense of morality because we were made by God, Who is goodness in and of itself. Before the world existed, there was goodness. Once man was made, and once man sinned, then evil and immorality entered the world. 

So good can exist without evil, morality can exist without immorality, but evil cannot exist without good, and immorality cannot exist without morality.

Another reason morality is important is the fact that it's keeping humanity alive. If we did not have morality, we would have no issue stealing whether the other person needed whatever it was or not. If we did not have morality we would have no issue killing one another.

We would have no issue taking sexual and general physical advantage of one another, which would produce illness and harm. 

We would have no problem robbing one another, which would lead to starvation, possibly losing houses and properties and thus rendering people homeless and/or unable to pay for medical needs, thus rendering and producing generally unkept lives. 

Lying would cause trust to be a rare, if not impossible, thing, which would lead to depression and loneliness, which then could lead to suicide. 

Those are the big things.   Maybe you think I'm going a little overboard with that. Maybe you think humanity would still be like "well duh I'm not going to go around killing people that would ruin the population which would then ruin society which would then ruin my livelihood and in the long run my life, so it would be most beneficial to not do those things". 

I'd like to think humanity was at the very least that practical, but I'm afraid our general lust for immediate self gratification would overrule it, if we did not have established morality that is written into the law in one way or another in first-world countries at the very least. And we wouldn't have that written into the law if humanity did not first recognize the wrongness of self gratification in this way, and they wouldn't see that, they wouldn't feel the need and the sacredness of life and morality, if they were not first made in the image of God, who, as I said, is the definer of morality.

How do we know His definition? 

We read the Bible. And not just the ten commandments. The entire Bible, old and new testaments together, is full of His definition, of His rule, of His order, which is why it is so important to study it further if you consider yourself a Christian. 

And if not, well, it's pretty interesting anyways. 

A good place to start with morality through the eyes of God is the ten commandments, though like I said, it's really the entire Bible, which we will hopefully go into a little bit better throughout this series. 

The ten commandments are as follows:

Do not have any other gods.

Do not have idols. 

Do not take the Lord's name in vain. 

Keep the sabbath day holy.

Honor your mother and father.

Do not kill. 

Do not steal. 

Do not lie.

Do not covet.

Those in bold are the ones that general society agrees on the most, and we will be talking about them, as well as some of the others, in more depth throughout this series.

For now, this is our kick-off for the series. 

If you have thoughts, comments, questions, observations, have something you want us to cover in this series, etc., please leave a comment! I strongly encourage open discussions here, so long as you are respectful and keep in mind that WTY's audience ranges from 13-25 year olds, and use appropriate language with that in mind. 

If you would like to guest post in this series, shoot me an email and we'll talk about it!

-EJ