A Morality Based On Love

After the first message and vision I pleaded with The Greatest Love to give me guidance on how to proceed. On what They wanted me to do next with my life. I was met with only silence. No further revelations were forthcoming at that time and it would be twenty years before I received another. At that time, after the second vision and message, I asked again for such direction. This time however, instead of silence The Greatest Love spoke to me with four simple words: “Live a good life“.

For many this response may not have been clear enough. A good life went undefined. But for myself, twenty years after the first revelations, I knew what this command meant for me. At a time when They could have provided me detailed instruction on how to shape my morals, the rules on which to base my life upon, or a new direction in which to take it, They effectively left the question on how to act, to answer for myself. They allowed me to set my own moral compass. To define “good” for myself.

By the time of the third message I had matured emotionally. I had started a family of my own. Experienced the tremendous joy of having children, and the terrible grief of losing close family members. I became more observant of how I treated people and found where my passions truly lay. I believe now this is why The Greatest Love did not answer my pleas for guidance twenty years prior. I needed to mature past my narrow, self-centric view of the World. My moral compass needed to calibrate itself through life’s experiences before I could properly interpret the third message.

A good life for me in my forties looked very different from me in my twenties. And if the revelation to live a good life came twenty years prior I am not sure what I would have concluded, if anything at all. But in my forties “… I knew exactly what that meant for me … Live with love in your heart. Treat people with compassion, respect, and decency. And treat yourself, your community, your nation, and your World similarly.“

This was my interpretation of a good life from my later years and it remains to this day. It did not come from The Greatest Love. Unlike the Abrahamic god of the past They did not provide any objective moral truths which I must follow. Instead it was left for me to define a good life for myself. And so any moral truths that I did conclude were necessarily my own. They were necessarily subjective, and did not come from any almighty source of moral perfection.

There is no reason to believe that The Greatest Love’s direction for me is any different than for anyone else in this regard. Their guidance to live a good life necessarily applies to all of us. But it is up to each of us to define what constitutes good.

That may be concerning to some readers. There are individuals that act to the detriment of others. Such people may define “good” as “that which benefits me most“. This is one extreme, but there is an opposite extreme as well. There are individuals that would accept the elimination of all individual liberties in favor of a collective fealty to a supervisory state or power. These people may define “good” as “that which benefits the state the most”. These two extremes frame the long-standing debate between individualism and collectivism. I do not believe that either of these extremes represent a good life.

But neither can there be any notion that a single perfect balance is to be found between these two extremes. There is room within the global mosaic of our World, given each of our diverse thoughts, histories, and cultures for each society to choose their own balance. So long as that balance is chosen based on love and is open to change over time. No such balance on Earth must ever be considered perfect.

Given this lack of a perfect balance there can never be a single text, sacred or secular, that can dictate a comprehensive morality to all of humankind. Different societies, not to mention the individuals within those societies, can view the same action through very different perspectives and come to very different conclusions, both based on love. Consider that in a very broad sense Western societies tend to favor individualism over collectivism while for Eastern societies it is the opposite. Such leanings will necessarily impact individual moral views on everything from family loyalty to labor unions.

The result is that I do not believe there is a single moral compass for all of humankind because love does not have a single true north that can be pointed to. Love is not so neatly nailed down. Instead love allows for an infinite number of poles, each established through a boundless mixture of societal influences. Such influences are unique to all of us and so necessarily we each have our own moral compass. I believe The Greatest Love rejoices in all of these different moral perspectives and interpretations so long as they are built upon the love They helped to imprint on each of our hearts. Love that I believe is a product of not only nature, and nurture, but the Divine as well. Love which is uniquely defined for each of us but can change during our lived experiences. A morality based on such love must be prepared to change along with it. And over a lifetime hopefully a higher love may be achieved and with it a deeper moral understanding.

Where we begin to go astray is when we look to other factors outside of love in which to establish our moral foundation. Wealth, power, celebrity, or status must never be an ends unto themselves. They are not love, but are merely tools to be wielded wisely in the pursuit of it. We must never calibrate our moral compasses to point to such mirages for we would be shifting away from our own true north.

I believe love is the one command upon which our moral frameworks should be based. But each of us will break that one word down in different ways. When I reflected upon the word, some broad principles began to take shape based on my own beliefs and history. Principles that have formed a second level of detail for my own moral compass. These principles did not originate with me, but are embraced by me. Nor are the principles exhaustive. Subsequent levels are not defined and they do not address how to precisely act in every situation.

Nonetheless these principles form my own subjective moral truths. They are not objective truths from The Greatest Love. They are instead principles I try to follow in my own life, but do not always succeed in doing so. To be even more clear, I do not believe my god endorsed these principles for me, much less anyone else. These are not another set of stone tablets delivered from a mountaintop. They are only principles I try to live my life by. That is all I know with certainty.

Those principles are:

1. Reciprocity: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or stated in the negative do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself. The former version was most famously recited by Jesus Christ during his Sermon on the Mount and is known in Western cultures as The Golden Rule. The negative version has roots in Eastern cultures where it was presented by the Buddha in 600 BCE and echoed by Confucius around 500 BCE.
2. Equal Worth: The Greatest Love loves each of us equally and considers us all of equal worth even as Their greatest prophets. Given that premise, extending universal rights and freedoms to every citizen of every nation is an ideal worth achieving. I also believe that many fundamental freedoms such as the freedoms of thought, belief, and expression along with universal voting rights promoting free and fair elections were endowed by the Creator and subsequently discovered by humanity.
3. Equitable Treatment: Be fair. Point 1., reciprocal treatment, does not imply equal treatment. Nor does equal treatment imply equitable treatment (a.k.a. fairness). Equitable and equal are different standards. Fairness may require differential treatment and resource redistribution so as to achieve a level playing field amongst all affected individuals. For example fair treatment in the healthcare industry may imply treatment commensurate with the need so that, for example, one’s financial situation does not sentence one to a lifetime of misery and pain when treatments are available but unaffordable. A child born with leukemia is likely to be a greater burden on the healthcare system than the services required for an average child. Their treatment will not be average, or equal to the general population. But it must be considered fair.
4. Humility and Kindness: It has been a point that has continued to stay with me for many years since it originally crystallized and was the inspiration for an earlier post. Being humble does not mean being weak or powerless. It means believing yourself to be of equal worth as others. No more and no less. It is a recognition of point 2. and then incorporating that recognition into your relations with others.
5. And If Something Goes Wrong, Make it Right. The first four points above tell me how to act with love. This last point tells me how to recover when I fail to do so. I am human and I make mistakes. When that occurs I have an obligation to the party I have wronged. An obligation to make it right. This works at my individual level but it also applies to larger groups, including nation states.

I do not believe The Greatest Love will send more prophets to dictate tomes of objective moral truths to us. There can be no number of sacred texts for human morality. A morality based on love is infinitely complex with an endless number of paths that can be followed while navigating it. There are any number of ways that individuals and societies can organize themselves around it. It is why I believe our World will always consist of a diversity of nations each enacting their own laws that will help to promote their own moral standards.

Each nation, province, state, or community will come to their own conclusions about the many intractable moral issues that confront them. The only guidance I believe The Greatest Love gives is that we must look to our hearts in such debates and then allow our emotional selves to have a place at the table, along with our rational selves.

And we must never be afraid to reject aberrations of love that are disingenuously justified as, for example, a difference of values, opinion, or a means to maintain a peaceful social order. Repression of civil liberties, a lack of universal suffrage to reflect the will of the people, or the absence of affordable health care for all, are but a few examples of such aberrations of love.

Going forward I do not believe The Greatest Love will reveal the answers to our most intractable ethical issues. Yes these issues pose an enormous challenge which often times have no single and/or easy answers because those answers are necessarily based on each of our own unique and loving perspectives. Debates in areas such as the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia will continue for some time yet, perhaps indefinitely. And there will be many other debates going forward as new technologies and discoveries make the previously unimaginable, possible. It will force us to question what we represent as a people. What defines us and gives us purpose. The guidance The Greatest Love provides us for those debates is that we must not be so analytical in our pursuit of answers that we can find no place for care and compassion within them. Our love for our closest kin, as well as our distant neighbors, must not be left out of the deliberations, and we must never let our own interests blind us to other peoples.

And I believe we will be fine.

I believe that humanity’s love can rise to the challenge and confront the issues that the future holds. Historical and current leaders, scientists, philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and ordinary citizens all have parts to play. The issues are complex and we must not only consider the new frontiers that emerge but our past decisions and canon as well. That does not mean we do not cherish our foundational charters, constitutions, and scripture. It just means that when history progresses and the rules of the past are no longer equipped to handle the needs of our future we are willing to search our hearts, examine our love, and reconsider our beliefs regardless of the reverence we may pay to such past moral dictates.

At a time of growing secularism and liberalism many people are wondering whether objective moral truths even exist at all. By objective moral truths I mean universal moral claims that hold true regardless of an individual’s perspective, culture, nationality, religion, upbringing, etc.

Moral claims such as “the killing of children for enjoyment is wrong” or the “the feeding of those that are hungry is right” lie at the extremes. They are likely to illicit universal acceptance. But even this does not make them objective moral truths. Because for a moral truth to be truly objective means it must come from a source of moral perfection. All of humanity combined does not produce such a source. By definition it is not possible for humankind alone to know when a moral claim is in fact an objective moral truth.

In the past many relied on the Divine providing us with such answers through revelation, but the times when the One god dictated objective moral truths from the heavens I believe are behind us. In its place are millennia of moral discourse, thought, and progression, influenced not just by religion, but by all of humanity in all of her disciplines. And although I cannot say with certainty whether future moral truths will be forthcoming from the heavens I do believe that any such claims should be viewed very cautiously.

Without a source of moral perfection that is willing to reveal moral truths to us objective moral truths can never be affirmed and the secular laws our societies converge upon today can never be shown to be objectively moral. But this must not be a cause for fear or concern. It must not dissuade us from trying to reach consensus on core principles, rights, and freedoms. Moral edicts from the heavens have been supplanted by our love. Such love originates from The Greatest Love Themselves. It serves as our connection to the Divine here on Earth: a guiding star that can lead us toward The Greatest Love’s objective moral truths.

Why has this happened? Why is it unlikely that The Greatest Love will reveal any further objective moral truths going forward that can help us confront the issues of today? Because like a growing adolescent we are learning to speak for ourselves. We are questioning any commandments from any politician, priest, or, prophet from the past, much less the present or future. We are viewing any purported moral truths with a skeptical eye and see none as sacrosanct. And like a doting parent The Greatest Love understands this, sees it as a natural progression, and knows that now, with all of the history we have been through, we must decide for ourselves what ethical and moral foundations should form the basis of our lives going forward.

However for the devout who believe their sacred texts are the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of their god the view is different. For them all the dictates prescribed in those texts continue to be the objective moral truths that they must adhere to. But I believe such sacred texts, even if sourced by revelation, were lessons often tailored for the specific time and place in which the messenger delivering them lived. We must understand scripture within the context of who that messenger was and what the pressing issues of their lifetime were. So even if the revelations contained in sacred texts are inspired, inerrant, and infallible it does not necessarily make them timeless or universal. We must always understand the complete context in which any edict is proclaimed and be willing and able to question their applicability to the current conditions of today. Even when those edicts are revealed by the Creator, set in stone, and delivered from a mountaintop for all to see.