Non Christian morality

[Tellyontellyon]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

 

[JEBofChristTheLord]

The only one who is good, is God alone.
- Jesus Christ

 

[St_Worm2]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

Hello Tellyontellyon, the Bible makes it clear that all human beings are born with a God-given sense of morality/right and wrong, and that this particular "law" is "written on our hearts" by God from birth.

The Bible also tells us that it is by this "law" that those who do not know (or have access to) the written Law of God will be judged at the end of the age (see the passage at the bottom of this post).

This law, the one that God writes on each man/woman's heart, is best known and most often referred to (even in the Bible) as our "conscience", and (again) it is this that gives each of us our God-given "sense" of right and wrong/good and evil (even from a very young age).

Sadly, the Bible also tells us that our conscience can be seared and thereby rendered more and more insensitive and less and less useful (at discerning right/wrong, good/evil) whenever we choose to act against what it is telling us to do, or to not do.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

--David
p.s. - the following passage is taken from the larger passage (treatise) by the Apostle Paul (Romans 1:18 - Romans 3:20) concerning all who remain outside of Christ, whether they be Jew or Gentile (I also included the whole of Romans 3 in the linked passage above as I thought it important to do so).

Romans 2​

12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. ​

13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. ​

14 Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law, ​

15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.​

16 This will take place on the day when God judges the secrets of men through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.​

.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

We are all made in God's image so decency is hard wired, in the beginning. Unfortunately, corruption infiltrates and can have a devastating effect on that decently.
Thanks to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, we can be released from that corruption. But that really isn't the concern here, the real concern is finding it again.

Happy New Year!

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

I don't know why you added the word "healthy" there. Is that important?

But, yes, humans can treat one another morally—they can be "generally decent to one another"—without reference to God, provided that their thoughts and actions correspond with the established values and principles of a given ethical framework (e.g., consequentialism).

However, apart from Christ, their thoughts and actions will be only and always sinful and they will ultimately face the judgment seat of God.

 

[BobRyan]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

John 16 - the Holy Spirit "convicts the WORLD of sin and righteousness and judgment" - not "just Christians", Not "just Jews".

Rom 1 - even pagans in Romans 1 are "Without excuse" because God has been revealing truth to them.

But Christians have the most amount of truth and light. They have the best context for knowing truth from error. EVEN SO - notice how often Christians differ with each other on things like doctrine.

 

[Unqualified]

Name one no Christian who has morality. A virgin? There are married people for a long time who are decent. But we all flaw in some way.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

I don't know why you added the word "healthy" there. Is that important?

But, yes, humans can treat one another morally—they can be "generally decent to one another"—without reference to God, provided that their thoughts and actions correspond with the established values and principles of a given ethical framework (e.g., consequentialism).

However, apart from Christ, their thoughts and actions will be only and always sinful and they will ultimately face the judgment seat of God.

I added the word healthy because 'morality' can mean different things to different people. Some people see it simply as a philosophical rationale, I am thinking more in terms of a heart-felt conscience.
There are paedophiles who rationalise their behaviour as beneficial and may therefore consider themselves 'moral' according to their own distorted thinking.. that's not healthy.

 

[timothyu]

Yes, we are born with good and evil, two necessary components as all is made up of opposing forces. We went out of balance when we acquired the knowledge of said good and evil, at which time we also chose to self determine what actions we would label with each in order to self justify our deeds and new found ability for greed. Good or evil morals of each human are an acquired taste as we are capable of both.

 

[timf]

Morality (the determination that something is right or wrong) indicates a standard of comparison. There are some people that act with no regard for any morality and might be seen as what the bible calls "brute beasts". However, since we are all born helpless, ignorant, and selfish, we might all be called initially "brute beasts". As our parents teach us and through our own observations, we usually learn about consequence. This might be called morality level one. For example, we might get mad enough to kill someone, but we recognize that doing so would incur retribution from angry relatives or in a more advanced society, the police.

The law given the the nation of Israel might be seen as morality level 2. There are rules to follow that may not always be seen as having a discernible reason. However, in this context the obviousness of consequence is less a motivation than the necessity to be faithful.

For Christians the option to live by morality level three exists. Here what is "right r wrong" is more determined by the Holy Spirit. Religious scholars turned the 613 laws given through Moses into thousands or regulations in the Mishna and Talmud in an attempt to make application to every aspect of life. Through the Holy Spirit the Christian can transcend a "right vs. wrong" approach in favor of what is optimal.

Christians are supposed to transcend the selfishness of the flesh for the selflessness of love and walking by the Spirit. As one's investment in self diminishes, there is less contention with others and more service. Morality is less about that is right and wrong and more about what is better and best.

Any religion that has a list of rules can be seen to advocate "morality". However, I suppose what one considers a "healthy" morality to be one that excludes killing infidels. God does not want rule followers as much as he would like us to use our free will to abandon the selfishness that drives us to immorality. To this end he offers all people the opportunity to trust in the death burial and resurrection of his son for the forgiveness of sins..

 

[timothyu]

God does not want rule followers as much as he would like us to use our free will to abandon the selfishness that drives us to immorality.

Winner. We were told to act in servitude to God and each other, not live our lives looking out for number one and what can be gained at the expense of others. That applies not only in home life but all the way up to global rule. One need only turn on their tv or smart phone to see the world does not have servitude to each other as its default setting which makes the world at large anti-Christ in its ways, and us willing participants.

Failure of religion to teach the Gospel of the Kingdom as an alternative for almost 2000 years has not helped rectify this situation. It must first admit it rejected the Kingdom to re-join forces with the world of man and change/repent before it can start teaching against itself for that indiscretion. That would be an earth shaking event in the history of man as division returned to being between the Kingdom and our world we have made, rather than division amongst 8 billion people. The Adversary is still in control however, and we, as a species, seem to like it that way for the most part.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Does all healthy morality come from God, or can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion..?

I'd view these as two different questions.

One question is:

"Does all healthy morality come from God"

and the other question is:

"can humans be generally decent to one another without the need of religion"

The question of human morality can be fairly complicated in Christianity, and there are a lot of different views among Christians when it comes to specifics and details.

That said, most Christians recognize these fundamental truths:

All that is truly good comes from God because God is good; and that means all natural good comes from the Creator. There is a natural good, because the Good Creator made a good creation. The problem, however, is sin and death; which is like a poison that harms the good creation. So that human beings are, at their core, now alienated from God and from the good of their own humanity. Thus it is impossible for human beings to be naturally righteous before God, that is, to live the abundant life of a righteous person in accord with the Divine Law; so human beings need to be saved from this problem, restored to God, and thus restored to themselves and the rest of God's good creation.

There is still a natural good, creation is itself good. Creation still bears witness to the goodness of the Creator (even if we do not see it rightly, and thus we are led astray toward idolatry and various wayward thoughts and actions). Since there is a natural good, we still see the signposts in the world, things like love, and freedom, and compassion, and a sense of right and wrong. Human beings still crave relationships, we still build societies, we still establish laws, we still desire freedom, and feel the need to love and be loved, there is still a hunger for things like peace, and justice, and fairness. We recognize, generally, when we are wronged and we can often still see when others are wronged.

That doesn't require being a Christian, or religious in any way. But without the restoration and healing which the Good Creator God has to give us, in and through Christ, then we are always looking at things through a dirty and broken window, the smeared muck and cracks distort everything. Our sense of the good, though present, often gets distorted, twisted and jumbled up. Even when we know what we should do, we don't do it; and we still do what we know we shouldn't. We recognize when there is a wrong, and that it needs to be righted; but we very often contribute to that wrong or even make the wrong worse. Our sense of justice can be perverted, resulting in things like tyranny or anarchy; our sense of love can be twisted, becoming infidelity, jealousy, or a myriad of other terrible things; our sense of freedom can lead us to thinking our words and actions shouldn't have consequences when we hurt others, or ignore the harm it even causes us.

So the signposts are broken (recommended reading: Broken Signposts by N.T. Wright), but they are still there.

Yes, human beings are or can be moral even without being a Christian; because all human beings are made in God's Image and are part of God's good creation--but the image is distorted, and the creation is held captive under the tyranny of sin and death. We are gazing through dirty and broken glass. What human beings can't be, without the divine intervention of Grace, is righteous in the sense that we should be; that righteousness in which life is full and abundant because it is the fullness of God's own Love and Goodness--where there is the fullness of love, and freedom, and peace, and justice, and mercy.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[timothyu]

How are we to grow, if not to learn to overcome temptations, self-determinations, splintering what God says into the 8 billion plus ways of mankind's personal desires (the prime one being deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong to justify our actions). How do we overcome all being mini-satans, mini-adversaries to God?​

​

Angels were made before mankind and made eternal. Some proved rebellious. Beta mankind was made not only with a built in expiry date so that no one who gains power would become supreme for long, but is it not logical that in an attempt to avoid another eternal angel like rebellion, that He would also test this new creation. Not only that... but He would eventually create an 'out', an escape through the needle's eye from this exile world of rebellion and death, and offer up an 'out' by way of a Kingdom and King specifically tailored to humanity? Our existence as a species is still a work in progress. It's a two step process.​

 

[Tellyontellyon]

I think what I'm really talking about here is not human morality, but God's morality.
He can condemn to hell those of different religions, he can command the slaughter of women and babies.
He can drown a whole planet, killing animals, as well as children and babies in the process...
Yet, this can't be criticised if everything God does is good by default. He is an angry, jealous God.. and declared that about himself.
If I did all that I'd be a monster..
Your God sounds deeply flawed to me..