Sunday, May 01, 2011

Must Ought Would - will they survive?

Technically called auxilliary verbs the three words "must, ought and should" express in decreasing emphasis the existence of a moral imperative or obligation. In a moral univese they have meaning but as the world is becoming increasingly relativistic and even amoral; the words are gradually losing their proper meaning - although they continue to be used.

"Must" implies a necessity or compulsion to fulfil some imperative. I must treat ny mother kindly implies that I feel more than an obligation to do so.

"Ought" is slightly weaker than must but still expresses some obligation or duty (desirable or otherwise). I ought to visit my mother.

"Should" used in one of its senses also expresses a sense of obligation to some kind of moral code.

However, once we remove any notion of a moral necessity outside of ourselves (amorality) or acknowledge only ourselves to be the arbiter of morality (relativism) then these words lose much of their meaning.

The strange thing is that even those who firmly believe in an amoral /relativistic universe still use these words as though they had some meaning for them. They are swift to cast a suspicious eye on anyone who would use these words to express some imperative, necessity or obligation  - seeing that person as someone trying to gain control over them. What makes you think that we ought or should help the poor and infirm? What hidden agenda do you have here? Are you attempting to gain some kind of control over me by implying that whatever moral code you live by is somehow superior to mine? Are you attempting to induce some sort of guilty feeling in me?

But even stranger is the fact that even those who are most resistant to any kind of moral standard outside of themselves not only continue to use the words but seem unable to live without them. Most strange of all is the continued existence of guilt. Guilt about what exactly - if, as modern man would claim, the universe is amoral? And yet guilt continues to make men miserable and angry, even to the point of despair and suicide. How can it be that those who reject any kind of absolute moral standard are still prone to feelings of guilt?

Few have managed to live without some notion of a higher external moral standard. Those who have usually have a deterministic view of man - i.e. that man is no more than a collection of natural elements. Those who have often end up either totally devoid of any genuinely loving impulse or in the madhouse.

The paradox (in this case good news) is that those who confess that they are created in the image of God and as such have fallen short of His absolute moral standard, confessing the reality of conscience and the guilt of sin, find in that same holy and righteous God a loving and forgiving disposition - a disposition made possible and demonstrated by His willingness to enter His own fallen creation in the person of His Son and take upon Himself our sin and die in the place of those who had rejected His moral authority and alienated themselves from His love.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. Romans 5:6-11

No comments: