Morality rests on a lie. We labor, after all, to develop virtuous characters capable of compassion, honesty, selflessness, and trustworthiness. In all of this, we aim at ideals that we can never perfectly actualized. When we strive for moral improvement, the ideals recede from us, always just out of reach. We never achieve perfect compassion or become wholly selfless. And we know we never will in this life. Regardless, we hide this knowledge from ourselves, recognizing that if we too carefully observe our own moral limits, we may slacken our push for moral growth. This seems paradoxical. Morality, which (by most estimations) abhors lying, is founded on self-deception, a form of lying.
Or at least it does for one who does not believe in God. For the theist can recognize his or her own powerlessness in the face of morality's demands, and yet strive for perfect virtue, secure in the knowledge that God will, in the end, bring about perfect conformity with ethical ideals. And this "in the end" is key. The theist knows life continues beyond this moonlit sphere into a brighter and holier one. Given this knowledge, he or she may strive in God with all vigor, undeterred by the inability to perfectly actualize moral ideals here and now. When morality rests on God it is not founded on a lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment