My Moral Constitution

As I stated in my first blog entry, I feel that it is important to have a clear creed. My one true creed is to seek the truth and to live by the truth. However, I feel that it is also beneficial to have some sort of moral constitution. The following is the moral constitution that I try to live by. I call the first section “Nature” because it is intended as a description of how things are. I call the second section “Directives” because these are the rules I think people should live by.

In my constitution, I have utilized a nonexistent word: omnibeneficient. This word was introduced to me by my father. He used to say something like, “While an omnipotent God is not necessarily unreasonable, an omnibeneficient God is beyond the realm science.” I think he got that from Albert Einstein or Bertrand Russell. I have considered this idea at length and concluded that an omnibeneficient God is not unreasonable. My father had the same problem as many others who contemplate God. He could not reconcile a God who cares for everyone and everything with all the suffering he saw in the world. My inclination is to think that we assign too much authority to our own powers of reason. While I would stop short of telling a mother whose child just died from SIDS that “It is all for the best”, I suspect that we probably don’t know what is good for us or why we must endure the experiences we are dealt. If God seems to break us, we must keep in mind that God can put us back together again…in this life or the next.

Like most people who attempt to follow such a constitution, I find myself failing at nearly every turn. I am too lazy to follow it most of the time, and too vengeful, spiteful, jealous and afraid to follow it the rest of the time. Lately, I notice that this constitution does not prevent me from stealing images from all over the Internet. If the progenitors of these images are offended, please contact me so that I can take them out. They are just such nice pictures, and I don’t expect anyone to read this anyhow.

NATURE

1. God exists.
2. God is both Truth and a necessary consequence of Truth.
3. God is omniscient.
4. God is omnipotent.
5. God is the creator of all that exists (the Universe).
6. God is patient, tolerant, and forgiving.
7. God created us with immortal souls and free will.
8. Love is the perception of another soul as a part of oneself.
9. God loves all souls with perfect, infinite love.
10. God is omnibeneficient.
11. God cannot communicate with us in any way that is statistically verifiable. God can only communicate with us through what appears to be coincidence.
12. God guides us and protects us.
13. The nature of God is the definition of Good.

DIRECTIVES

1. Faith is the belief that God exists as described in NATURE. Faith is not about kowtowing to God or being rewarded for our good works; it is about believing in more than the material universe. Faith is not about believing that we will get what we want or think we need in this lifetime; it is about believing that we will ultimately get what we actually need.
2. We may speak to God whenever we like and talk of whatever we please. This speech is often called “prayer”. God requires no such speech, but he welcomes it. Prayer should be commenced by addressing, “God.” Prayer should be concluded by saying, “Amen.”
3. We should depend on God but not live as though we are dependent on God. To practice dependence on God is to repudiate free will.
4. Belief in God should be implicit rather than explicit in our actions. Our faith should be practiced rather than professed.
5. The behavior we exhibit toward others and the behavior we hope to experience from others should be consistent.
6. We should strive to live and prosper and to help others live and prosper.
7. We should strive to be like God. In this manner we effect Good.
8. God’s methods and purposes are difficult for us to comprehend, but we are to assume that our choices and actions have meaning and value.
9. The hardships persons experience are part of God’s plan for our completion. We should assume they are essential, even when they do not seem to make sense.
10. God cares for us in this life and God will care for us in the time after this life. We should not neglect this life, or ignore the time after this life, but live in harmony with both.

I must point out that this is not some sort of “revelation”. I do not consider myself to be more in touch with God than everyone else. Notice that I do not say that I do not consider myself to be more in touch with God than “anyone” else. I have met some people who were pretty out of touch with God. Many of the things I list are beliefs held by all the major religions. Others are conclusions I have reached by thinking and observing the world. I may eventually arrive at different conclusions. Who knows, I may eventually become a legitimate Christian. If that is where truth takes me, that is where I will follow.

The one idea I am not seriously open to is atheism. To me, atheism is a dark and narcissistic philosophy. Whenever I contemplate being an atheist, I feel as if I have been cut adrift in a cold dark sea. One might equate atheism with freedom from dogma. I find that I lose much more in serenity than I gain in independence.

Atheists claim that they have a moral compass, but for some reason I cannot take them seriously. People who are committed to the idea that God does not exist and no one is watching them may make apparently moral decisions while times are easy. I am not confident they will make the same decisions when times are tough. If you do not feel like your actions are being observed and judged by some higher power, it can’t take much to convince you that genocide or some other atrocity is the best choice in some obscure circumstance.

Atheists always seem to me like they have appointed themselves as God. This self-appointment appears to be the reason why they are drawn to collectivist philosophies like Communism, Humanism, and the Resource Based Economy. The one thing all these philosophies have in common is that they take their primary directives from human authority. There is a saying that’s attribution I do not know: “If there is no God, man is a poor substitute.” Even if the belief systems and creeds attributed to God actually came from men, they came from men who believed in God. They came from men who sincerely believed someone with power over them was looking over their shoulder. True, there have been charlatans throughout history, but their words have been filtered down to us through true believers.