Thursday, April 24, 2014

On Ethics

I've reached the point in my life where I've just become skeptical of the search for 'the good' either as a matter of some external law or some internal fact of character. More and more I quit looking for some abstract ethical principles or some vision of human nature to which I seek to conform. I've come to see all ethical language as merely reflections of some fact. Moral language seems to me to reduce to some perception. I don't ask myself so much whether what I am doing is 'good' or 'bad'. Rather, I think in terms of the suffering or joy of God. I think when people talk about what should or shouldn't be done, they are in effect talking about the pain or joy of the divine. All 'ethics' has become, for me, strictly religious. Is God benefited or hurt? Is God made or less incarnate in the world by this act? These are the ethical questions that interest me.

To say something 'is good' is just, for me, to say 'I see God in that.' This doesn't fall victim to Euthyphro's Dilemma because there is not question of God's Will, but rather God's presence. Truly, then, I think my entire outlook on life is vehemently Christocentric. There is no right or wrong, or good or evil, there is only the Cross and Resurrection, and what our lives look like in the light of these.

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