Dang. And Ethics....

Oops. So... grade for weekly posting-- F. Sorry team

Grade for diet for this week, D+. Had a serious relapse yesterday, ate most of a thing of crazy bread and drank a DP. It was just so good. Gained a pound back. I'm still at minus 12 pounds for the month, hoping to rally this week and end up at minus 17-20 or so by a week from today, so I have my work cut out for me. Hopefully I can finish strong.

Language grade- 0. I have done nothing on it and am ashamed of that.

Reading grade- A-. I have read well, but have a couple books that I need to put to sleep this week. Next week is vacation so will only read fiction that week, should easily kill 2-5 that week.

Loving spouse grade- B?- I'm making a more concerted effort to ask questions and listen better, but still much improvement to do.

Ethics:
I have been thinking a lot about ethics this past couple weeks. I spend (too much) some time on reddit.com while at work, and probably 95% of the vocal posters there are aggressive atheists, meaning they can't let a post go by without criticising Christianity. And we probably deserve quite a bit of criticism.

However, one criticism I believe is off-target. Many will say that they do not need some "flying spaghetti monster" to tell them how to be a moral person. I think they couldn't be further from the truth. I want to submit that the only biblical measure of ethics is relationship.

Now, this idea is certainly not original with me, but I'm not sure who to credit with it, so I just want to at least claim that I am not taking credit for the idea.

Some of us like to pretend that there are two ideas floating around of "good" and "evil" and that they are completely objective. I think "good" and "evil" are 100% subjective. They are completely and totally products of relationship. No rule is arbitrary, but every part of good ethics is relationship.

The only correct relationship from human to human is one of altruistic love. The only correct way to view others is that they are more important than us. That is the only ethic we are called to.

The only correct way to have relationship from human to God is one of obedient love. The relationship of creator to creature places us where we might sometimes follow God's command even if it seems arbitrary for us. The reason being that God has revealed himself in and as love, thus if we are to be in correct relation to him, then we must trust that he has our best interests in mind. We will never completely understand, but that is not for the creature to decide.

The difficulty is determining what God told us to do and when he told us to do it. If someone claims that they were told by God to blow up a building, does that mean we trust them and hand them some C4? I think we have to judge each instance separately, but I think we can generally say that blowing things up is not in line with love. So if God is love, then God would not command us to do something unloving.

Blowing up a building is an easy target (pun intended), but what about something like telling someone the brutal, honest truth? When is that appropriate? I think at that point we have to judge ourselves and ask our creator for wisdom. We will end up in gray areas, but we must constantly be looking at motivation and examing ourselves constantly.