Morals are not some arbitrary rules imposed by an "oppressive" Church, or things God established at random to prevent us from being happy. Rather, they are rules for avoiding harm, both of the physical and spiritual sort.

Physical ones are rather easy to intuit for most people - obviously, killing people, stealing, coveting your neighbor's things, lying, and cheating tend to be things that shorten one's life span, result in a beating, imprisonment, or other losses. Plus, it's easy to identify a victim in these circumstances, be it oneself or others. The big problem element has been sexual morality, since from time immemorial, people have been trying to get around the rule that sex in any situation outside of a husband and wife open to kids is harmful.

Then again, this is also a harder sin for which to identify the potential harm. The most obvious ones that comes to mind are STDs, particularly those which cause discomfort in the genital regions, a rather unpleasant situation which no doubt would remind the offenders of the transgression from the earliest of times. In modern times, HIV/AIDS has replaced them as the primary harm. There is other collateral damage involved, such as the suffering of illegitimate children, the feelings of betrayal from the spouse, divorce in this day and age, broken families, feelings of emptiness, the prevalence of contraception, abortion, objectification of women, and so forth.

God tries to spare us from all of that, but ends up in the position of a frustrated parent whose children think that, contrary to the parent's advice, they are being kept from something fun. And so, like ignorant kids, we do what we've been warned will bring suffering. Unlike the kids, who might actually get the message that touching a hot iron indeed burns them the first time around, we get burned, but don't seem to grasp why. It certainly doesn't help that there's a whole gang of professional idiots who say that the burning pain is all an illusion or is just a conditioned response to our ignorant parent saying it would burn. So many come to everything but the obvious answer that THIS REALLY HURTS YOU! STOP DOING IT TO YOURSELF! This may be why God says to be like children - they're more intelligent about these things than the so-called adults.

On a related note, this is why moral relativism is so deadly, because morals by their very nature cannot be relative. Moral systems, and morals in general, have one main goal in mind - to keep people out of peril, both of body and soul. These in turn are based on general principles of human nature and of the world in general. As God knows these best, having created them, He chose to be merciful in revealing them to us.

The moral law is not, however, ultimately based on the times, but on human nature. The essentials of the moral law were not changed by God because human nature itself, in particular the laws governing it, did not change with Christ. To argue otherwise is to say that God was deceiving people by giving them a moral code not in harmony with human nature.

The law was reestablished, not because God was changing his mind or the laws of human nature, but because there was a change in the quality of human nature. It went from fallen to redeemed; it was elevated by God sharing in it. This elevation did not call for a lessening of the preexisting moral law, but rather its elevation as well. Things which had been lessened by the nature of being a fallen race, such as marriage, were restored. Things proper only to a fallen race, like sacrificial animal sin offerings, were ended. Some things proper only to a redeemed race, but not to a fallen one, such as the requirement to receive the Lord in communion, were added.

All around, the moral law experienced a step up, proper to humanity's redemption, and designed to be the optimal way for humanity to live. There can't be any relativism about that - either the Church's moral law, as revealed by Christ, is the best way to go about life, or it isn't. Heavenly or diabolical, to borrow an idea from Scott Hahn. There's no middle ground here, no maybes, and definitely no nonsense about different moralities for different people.

N.B. - Moral theology is not a strong suit for me. Knowledgable people are urged to correct errant ideas.

- Posted by in Common Sense at 2:27 AM