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%FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY 970715
See the preceding essays for background information.
These statements are descriptive; not prescriptive or
proscriptive.
Their ordering signifies very little.
Their relative importances depend upon readers and
their contexts.
Their meanings are interdependent upon each other and
the readers' experiences.
It will be tragically misleading to focus exclusively
on any few of these statements.
Personal and communal integrity depend upon balanced
consideration of the truths pointed to by these
statements; rather than upon attempts to use any such
truths (1) to get people to conform to any demands or
expectations; or (2) to claim that some people are better
than other people.
These statements point to fundamental truths, but are
not themselves those truths, and do not contain or hold
captive those truths. Readers must seek to discern the
truths pointed to here.
Some of the truths to which these statements point
are likely to be paradoxical to some readers and/or
listeners; i.e., apparently contradictory. In such
instances it will be more helpful to seek to discern the
truth in what the statements point, than to focus upon
apparent contradictions.
It will be tragically misleading to interpret or
react to these statements in ways which systematically
engender alienation through: exclusivity, condemnations,
excommunications, self-righteousness, unbalanced power
distribution, coercion, controls, and/or violent
conflicts. Readers will do well to keep in mind the
truths to which these statements point --- while
evaluating each others' responses to those truths. People
whose responds to these truths are defensive, dishonest,
coercive or violent --- will thereby threaten personal
and communal integrity.
Readers will also do well to be alert to the
possibility that some of these statements may be
inaccurate and/or misleading to some readers.
God's ways are often mysterious and beyond our
knowledge, understanding, and control. We are pretentious
and alienative when we claim that we can or should know,
understand, predict or control God's ways.
1. Christian morality flows from God's Love as
revealed through the life and teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth.
2. Jesus calls us to love God above all else; and to
love our neighbors as children of God --- as God loves
them, and as we love ourselves --- to be together in God's
Love.
2. Our primary moral dilemmas flow from our
relationships of alienation from: God, others and self.
Alienative relationships engender immoral behaviors which
aggravate alienation. This vicious and often violent
cycle can be transcended only th through the healing power
of God's Love --- in which we can participate if we are
willing to do so in keeping with God's Love.
3. God's Love works to extend and deepen both
personal and communal integrity without doing violence to
personal or communal uniqueness, creativity, or desires.
So also can our love work.
3. Personal and communal integrity are
interdependent; neither can be sacrifices to promote the
other. To lose them is to lose all which is of real
value.
4. Healthy spirituality and intimacy are impossible
in the absence of true security enjoyed as the freedom to
be safely vulnerable in open and honest dialogue about our
most meaningful and cherished personal experiences, and
about our most difficult, destructive and persistent
conflicts.
5. True security is a wonderful gift freely given
and accepted; not something achieved, purchased, or
acquired at others' expense.
5. True security flows from being accepted into and
sustained within an open and honest community of
interdependent and complementary unique people who are
engaged in meaningful dialogue.
Only to the extent that all members of a community
enjoy true security --- do the members of the community
(and the community as a whole) enjoy peace and integrity.
6. Exclusive people cannot enjoy true security
because they can not: (1) let others enjoy true security,
(2) deal honestly with paradoxical truths, (3) transcend
either/or issues, or (4) deal openly and honestly with
rainbows of good alternatives to set wise priorities.
Inclusive people can enjoy true security because they
can do each of the above four things which exclusive
people cannot do.
7. The work of God's Love includes: (a) Liberation
of people from many kinds of prisons. (b) The
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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