Does God have to be moral? Or do morals come from God? What is a moral law? Is a law moral because it is from God? Or is it from God because it is moral? And if the law is from God because the law is moral in the first place, then does that mean God is following rules that are somehow outside of himself? Even if it is completely natural for God to be moral, if God caused a law to come into being because it is already inherently moral, then was God not the creator of the moral? In which case is God subordinate to a higher law?
If God is the creator of morals, and no law contains morality unless it is from God, then God is that good in which the laws come from. One should not murder because God said not to (all biblical criticism aside, for the sake of argument, I am assuming that God directly gave Moses the Decalogue with the above commandment). There is no other reason that one should not murder aside from the fact that God said not to.
This is almost uncomfortable. I think most people, even nonreligious people, would agree that murder is wrong. It is unkind, it produces grief and anger in other persons, and is often motivated by selfish greed or malevolence. If one were to say that the law is only moral because it is from God, then what is one to make of every atheist who agrees with the law? What be their motivation? It seems that there are two responses to this. Either these atheists are hiding a secret belief in God, or the laws are somehow moral even outside of belief in God's divine command.
But if we say that morality exists outside of God's command, then does it make God less? Does it mean that God did not "create" or "invent" morality? or that morality exists apart from God? What would this imply? I really don't know, honestly. Perhaps morality and God are inseparable, and that God is somehow morality. When 1 John describes God as love, it directly states that God is love. The way the letter reads, it seems as if the morality in which I speak of is love, and that love is the measurement of morality. God is love, therefore, God is morality. Sin is therefore lawlessness (as it states in 3:4). When you sin, you are going against love, against morality, therefore against God; this is lawlessness. But could it also be stated that lawlessness is sin? In this case, is it only sin because it broke the law of love? that it broke the law of God? This seems to lead back to the previous comments that sin is only sin because it breaks the law of God (which also happens to be the law of love).
Where does this put us then? It would seem to me that morality is the law of love, which is also the law of God. It does not appear that the law of love is separate from God, but that it is inseparable, but still knowable. The law of love is present in culture and society, and so much so that I believe we can see the consequences of disobeying it, and the benefits of following it. It is for this reason that atheists can still believe in the law of love, but not for reasons of God. One could also argue that the law of love is inside every human being as part of our divine image from our creator.
Therefore it seems that we should not murder people because it would be against the law of love and the law of God, not necessitating that one needs to believe in God to follow the law of love.
I feel like I am not bring the Bible into this enough, so I wish to comment on certain biblical themes. Here's an example: The bible does not have good rape laws. The laws on rape are to the extent that unless a woman is out in a field, it is not rape. If the woman is raped in the city and is married or engaged, she is to be stoned to death as well as the attacker because she did not cry out, therefore it mustn't have been rape. The attacker is punished not for rape, but for violating another man's property (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). Furthermore, if the woman who is raped is unattached, then the attacker must by law marry the woman(Deuteronomy 22:28-29). This would mean that if a man wanted a woman for himself, it would be completely lawful to rape her, and then admit to it in order to ensure he would be able to do so for as long as he desired. Women were not allowed to initiate a divorce, so the woman is trapped.
What this example demonstrates is that biblical law may not be compatible with the "law of love" which I have equated with the "law of God." My response to this is that the culture in which these Deuteronomistic laws was very patriarchal and simply did not treat women with the respect that we feel is owed to them today.
The importance of this example was to demonstrate a biblical law as being separate from the law of love. Does this mean that the Bible is not from God? In a case like this, I say yes, and that is the topic of another discussion, and it shall suffice to say that the Bible was written in a culture by men with their own worldview. In this case, it is the worldview that women were property.
If, then, the laws of the Bible are not completely compatible at all times with the law of God, how are we then to distinguish laws against murder from laws corrupted by cultural bias? This I will address further later, but will return to an original point of inquiry.
The question remaining from above is whether or not God is independent on morality. I am not led to believe that he is. Can it be, then, that God acts outside of morality? Could God commit a sin? That is, could God do something contrary to the nature of love? I would assume that most would find that question rather easy to answer, and that obviously the answer is no on all counts. Then can God murder? This may seem elementary, but I must pose the question anyway. The response would likely be that it is not murder for God to kill someone, because it is his right to do it. He is bringing us to him. Murder in the world is a banishment, whereas when God kills a body it is a uniting with God (unless the person goes to Hell, which, although the topic of another discussion, will be for the sake of simplicity referred to as a judgment deserved). Could God commit rape, then? Again, the obvious answer (Please don't give me any "God can do anything" alright? That would again be another discussion) is no. God would not do such a thing, even if he was a physical being that could (Jesus is also another discussion). It seems now that God follows his law quite well. Is it also, though, that he expects us to be like him? If we bring up Jesus just for a moment, and go under the assumption that he was God, then one might be inclined to believe that God wants us to be like him, and showed us what that is through Jesus. I believe that is a very basic Christian belief. But I would call attention to one of the most known speeches of Jesus. In the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5), Jesus says to love your enemies, and to be perfect as God is (vs. 43-48). In this case, we are commanded not to hate our enemies, and not even to wish evil on them. We are to love them as we would love ourselves, we are to pray for them. This is considered in Christianity as one of the most holy and great laws that one could follow.
So here is the climax.
If we are to be like God, and that means to love and pray for our enemies, then what does God do to them? Does God send his enemies to Hell?
Does God hold humans to a higher standard that he holds himself?
If one argues that we should love our enemies because it's not our place to condemn them, but God's, then that is saying that God would not follow what Jesus said in Matthew 5.
The law of love, which is the law of God, seems to say that God does not send people to Hell, because that would be unloving.
Now one may bring the Bible in it again. Yes, the New Testament Jesus talks about Hell (mostly Matthew), and I would say that a discourse on Hell belongs to another discussion, but since I brought it up, I will only say briefly that just as I have reviewed biblical rape laws and concluded that they were the product of a certain society, and not divine commandments, the same may be said of any discussion of Hell in the New Testament (since it's not in the Old Testament), and that I will discuss that on another occasion.
This was completely unplanned and minimally organized or structured before actually writing it, and it probably raised more questions that it asked, but I must say that I do not have answers for everything here, but that I am ever on a quest for them. Not that I will ever know the answers, but it is worth looking. This is the nature of my mind, and I do tend to enjoy this confusion with great satisfaction.
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