God and the Good

Keith Burgess-Jackson asks what theists imagine the connection between morality and religion to be. It’s a question that deserves pondering since so many of us unthinkingly assume that God and morality must be intimately linked. Keith rightly points out that it’s quite possible to be an atheist and still believe in an objective morality. And one needn’t be a theist for moral beliefs to motivate one’s actions.

So what, if anything, is the relevance of theistic belief for morals?

My answer would be that theism (specifically Christian theism) provides the most compelling answer to the time-honored question “Why should I be moral?”

Christians believe that God has created us for loving fellowship with himself and each other. But, somehow, we have fallen out of whack in our relationships with God and our fellow man. We call this condition sin. To correct this state of affairs, God provides humankind with the moral law.* The law is a tool for putting things back in order.**

Now, it’s important to realize that the moral law, on this account, is not a set of arbitrary rules unrelated to human well-being. Rather, the moral law, from one angle, can be seen as simply a description of what human life looks life when it is lived in harmony with God and neighbor. So, the reason we should be moral, according to theism, is beacause our highest flourishing consists precisely in living the kind of life our Creator intended for us.

But as Keith says, “If I conform to God’s rules not because I understand and accept them but out of love for or a desire to please their maker, I would seem to drain my actions of moral worth. This also makes God seem vain, insecure, and selfish.”

I would suggest that the conflict here is merely apparent. Theists say that God is supremely lovable in virtue of his preeminent goodness. To love God is to love the Good. So there is no necessary conflict between acting out of love for God and for the Good. God only appears “vain, insecure, and selfish” if we suppose that his commands are abritrary or whimsical rather than being the commands of a loving God.

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*I refer here both to the “revealed” law (e.g. the Ten Commandments) and the “natural” law that humans can know by reason.

**Obviously, Christians believe that the law is insufficient for putting things back in order. For this the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is necessary. Nevertheless, most Christians maintain that the law remains a reliable guide to living the kind of life God wants us to live.