I dug around on my hard drive a bit and found all my old essays and projects I did during university. I have decided to post them all here on my blog. Not all at once, but maybe one a day or week or so. This will provide me with a good place to back them up and hopefully the information they provide will be helpful to others as well.

The first essay I will be posting, entitled ‘Why Religious Ethics Made Me Think’, was written for my ICT Ethics class in my Honours year. We had to choose one ethical principal that made us think the most and write about why it made us think the most. I chose religious ethics. Or more specifically, religious ethics in the Christian faith.

Read on for the essay…

1. Introduction

This paper will discuss why the ethical theory based on religion made me think the most. I will discuss “The Golden Rule” (Lötter, 2006) and how following this rule will help in ethical decision making. I will also discuss a (seemingly) logical loophole I found with this rule and how I came to a solution that made logical sense to me. This paper also includes a section on love and the importance of love when making ethical decisions. This paper will predominantly focus on Christian beliefs and teachings.

2. The Golden Rule

In this section I try to make sense of the Golden Rule. I discuss the Golden Rule and I also discuss answers to questions that I asked myself regarding the Golden Rule.

2.1. Background

The Golden Rule is a principle followed by most major religions in the world (Lötter, 2006). Although the wording of the rule may change from religion to religion, the basic underlying idea stays the same, which is: Treat others the same way that you would like to be treated.

The Golden Rule is at the basis of all Christian ethical decision making. In the New International Version translation of the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). The fact that the biggest religious figure in Christianity says it Himself, certainly suggests that following this rule will lead to the correct ethical decision when faced with an ethical dilemma.

But what about masochists? What about people who like inflicting pain on themselves? If the Golden Rule is to be followed, then it means that people, who like being hurt, may hurt others.

2.2. A Logic Loophole?

The fact that if someone likes being hurt, then they may hurt others, really made me think.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses wrote “love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 9:18b). Jesus also said this in the New Testament (Matthew 22:39). This verse is the Golden Rule said in another way, but with one major difference: The word “love”.

Without love for your fellow man the Golden Rule means nothing. In 1 Corinthians 13 God describes the meaning of love. In verse 5 of this section is what finally cleared up what I thought was a logic loophole with the Golden Rule. Verse 5b of 1 Corinthians 13 says that love is not self-seeking. In other words, if you love someone, you will not want to use that person for your own personal gain. And this makes perfectly good sense when you combine this fact with the Golden Rule.

If you truly love your fellow man, as all Christians should, then treating them as you would like to be treated is not enough. You must put yourself in their shoes and try and figure out how they would like to be treated. You must respect other people and must not use them as a means to an end.

3. Christian Love

This section explains the role and importance of love in Christian ethical decision making.

3.1. The Importance of Love

To love is the most important human characteristic to have in a Christian’s life. 1 Corinthians 13:13 supports this fact, where it states: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

In the New Testament Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was. Jesus answered by stating that the most important commandment is to love God with your entire heart, soul and mind. Jesus also stated that the second most important commandment, which is just as equally important as the first one, is to love your neighbour as you love yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). This love for God and the love for your fellow man is also the basis for the nature of love of Agape (Moseley, n.d.). Agape is the love of God for man, man for God and man for the rest of humanity.

By loving God in the way that He describes that He should be loved means that one should follow His word, in other words, live like the Bible tells you to. And by following the Bible, a lot of decisions can be made when you are faced with ethical problems. Sure, there are some problems that the Bible does not address, but thankfully we were blessed with the ability to reason between right and wrong. The Golden Rule, as described above, and the love for your fellow man plays a big part when trying to find the correct solution to an ethical problem.

According to Robert Roberts, an author for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in his 2006 paper entitled “Emotions in the Christian Tradition“, love plays a very big part in the life of a Christian and further states that Christian emotions, like love, are important ethical indicators of the characteristics of a Christian (Roberts, 2006).

4. Conclusion

The Golden Rule is a pretty solid rule to follow when faced with an ethical problem, but only if this rule is combined with love. Love in God and love for your fellow man are equally important to a Christian and this love plays an intricate and crucial role when debating between right and wrong.

This paper tried to explain that treating people the way that you would like to be treated is not enough and that you need to respect the feelings of other people and thus treat them in a way that they want to be treated and that this is only possible by loving them.

Bibliography

Lötter, H.P.P. (2006). IT Ethics [Honours] Lecture 2 Ethical Theories. Lecture Notes. University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Moseley, A. (n.d.). Philosophy of Love. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available from http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/love.htm. (Accessed 2 October 2006).

Roberts, R. (2006). Emotions in the Christian Tradition. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotion-Christian-tradition/. (Accessed on 2 October 2006).