Tuesday, April 1, 2008

An Immoral Christian?

Nietzsche writes in his book Daybreak "morality is nothing other (therefore nor more!) than obedience to customs, of whatever kind they may be; Customs, however, are the traditional way of behaving and evaluating. In things in which no tradition commands there is no morality; and the less life is determined by tradition, the smaller, the circle of morality." This is an interesting quote because the word moral or morality is such a weighted word for Christians but in this context the word isn't being used to convey good or evil. But the context of tradition and people behaving in a way that society has come to expect them to act. The key point here is the need to understand why we do the things we do and why do we believe what we believe. I think that this has even more resonance when we look at the modern mainstream church and the differing rules and traditions that we follow, without understanding why we follow them and where they came from. The point of this is that we need to look at why we do what we do, why we believe what we believe, and then figure out what caused these traditions and whether or not they came from something good and right or from the mere concept of tradition. Then after you figure that out you move forward and do it again and again as long as it takes to move to becoming a better Christian and a better human being. I feel that this is what we are doing on Saturday nights and this is a very important process. I think that if this process makes us/me Immoral then so be it. I believe that at the end of the process I will be a better Christian and have a stronger understanding of why I follow and believe the rules that I do.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Dude - You rock.

Very cool consepts. I like the idea that a person could be moral but yet evil, or immoral and yet good. It makes me think of the bumper sticker "hatred is not a family value". I think, on occation, I've alowed my Christian morality to alow me to be evil.

Later,

Tom

Anonymous said...

"morality is nothing other (therefore nor more!) than obedience to customs, of whatever kind they may be

Correct, that's why I focus on Virtue and Ethics, not morality. Morality is what a goup of people cherish and endorse, Ethics are absolute.