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en it can’t be you, says Mark Wreford. And if the rules en there’s clearly something bigger out there…
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there’s something else measuring my behaviour, it’s me that’s doing the imagining. On the other hand, it’s impossible to imagine without some fuel with which to imagine. You have to know about horses and rhinos to imagine a unicorn. And, as we considered the first time we thought about the universal code, everyone’s imagination seems pretty similar here – that’s why it’s universal. So what we’re saying is that if we really accept the idea of a universal code against which everyone’s behaviour measures up, the person in charge of that code can’t be me. It can’t be you. It can’t even be human – or humanity itself – because humanity is subject to it whether it likes it or not. We can’t rebel against this law and change it by doing so – it remains intact no matter how frequently we break it. So if we’re not in charge then we’ve got to realise that there’s something, or someone, who’s bigger than us in charge of this universal code.
Now, we still haven’t yet set foot on the shores of Christianity, but a universal moral code needs to be instituted. We can’t expect moral law to evolve from the physical laws of the universe, because moral law is something we feel internally, whereas physical laws are something we merely observe through repeated practice. What remains then, is the possibility that someone – rather than some detached thing – has decided what’s good and bad. This someone has to be bigger than us and in charge of us in a way that’s a bit beyond imagination, because the imposition of this law is something that we simply cannot avoid no matter how hard we try. The sinister Santa might seem frightening, but our inner sense of the moral law is based on something much more strongly motivating than fear. What we’re rubbing up against is someone who has actually built a sense of right and wrong into us. To do that, this someone has had to define
what right and wrong is. Anyone with that kind of power is certainly bigger than I am. No matter how well I argue, there’ll be plenty of people who disagree with me, so I couldn’t possibly institute this moral code. Not only is the idea of someone bigger than me the only way to explain the presence of this moral code to which the majority of humanity feels bound, it actually gives me somewhere to place these values. Until this point, we’ve discussed a rather vague idea of a moral law without considering where it’s grounded. You see whatever finds its ultimate basis in me might be deemed completely irrelevant for you, but when we find that something is relevant for both of us that can either be coincidence or a fact that has its basis in something outside of us – like the moon. I can see it, and you can see it. We’re either both subject to the same hallucination or we’re seeing something that’s outside of us. Now when we find some-
thing that everyone experiences in a very similar way, we need to find a basis for it. With the moon, that’s relatively easy – we believe that it’s there. With the moral law, that’s more difficult. Simply believing that it’s there doesn’t tell us whether its source is personal or impersonal, caring or cold, good or bad. And because we can’t actually get outside of our sense of right and wrong, we can’t even tell whether it is right or wrong. This is why it’s so important that we understand that it comes from a person, not a force. The ultimate ground of this moral code is in the person that instituted it. This means that the moral code tells me about this person because it shows what they value: life, fairness, equality and compassion. Ultimately, they value love. Love is the one thing that’s more important than life. So remember that your conscience isn’t just yours. It’s the work of a much bigger person and it tells you what they care about.
iBelieve
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