Ethics, Morality, And Me

FRI., OCT. 18, 1991, 12:27 PM
HYATT REGENCY, DEARBORN

A session on ethics… actually one on each day… and you must now seek the reactions and comments of Me, the Holy Spirit. I am pleased with attempts to see current and professional issues and behaviors with “ethical” as a criterion. It is one evidence that spirit is functioning, even as many who have these concerns would not identify their motivations as spiritual.

Continue to hold to your distinction between ethics and morality, even as these definitely overlap and shade into each other. A moral issue is one that involves some given law… from Holy Scripture or from “natural law,” a human “invention” to help those who reject supernatural reality. Moral judgments thus have a firmer base for certainty and more capacity to label some action right or wrong. An ethical issue is one in which you have to consider cultural preferences, which may change much more easily and readily than moral law. Yet when a culture is rather stable, with few major changes, the ethical “right” may seem as steady and unchanging as the moral law.

Consider this contrast. The moral law, based in one of My Commandments, is clear: thou shalt not kill. That law applies in any circumstance. It negates “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” It says murder is wrong, but so is war, capital punishment, abortion, and also conditions which force women into abortions that cause death, starvation, and any other conditions that cause unnecessary or premature death due to human decisions and actions.

On the other hand the ethical issue may be much more relative. One can kill in self defense. One can have an abortion because she cannot be a good parent to a child and because it is an imposition on her body. A nation can declare a “just war,” killing people because of possible future threats from the military of another nation. It is ethical to starve a nation or part of a nation in order to pressure a government toward what yours believes is right.

But now let Me offer you some thoughts on morality as I see it. Morality proceeds from Me, the Triune God. There are Commandments, and there are principles and practices that flow from the Scriptures that tell of My life as Jesus and that draw conclusions from that life, as is offered in the rest of the New Testament. Then there are communications from Me, the Holy Spirit, some as clear as these written words of yours and others in less tangible forms. These are what offer some flexibility in this time and culture, so different from those of the Biblical scene. There are, admittedly, some conflicts in Scripture… and certainly some conflicts in interpretation of Scripture… and even more in My current Teachings. And then I say that the conflicts are more apparent than actual or real.

Living life in a moral way is living with your hand always in Mine. Even if you “mess up” and act immorally you know you have My forgiveness and My encouragement to act as you should in another similar instance. Motivations are more important than behaviors. If you should kill a person who has harmed or killed a loved one of yours… and the killing was out of love for the one harmed the act would be moral… for love is My highest spiritual value. However, it would not be moral if the motives were primarily hate, anger, fear, and revenge.