Christian Morality Is Not Just Natural Morality

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT’S right! Christian morality goes beyond natural morality that pursues only some earthly and temporal goals. It goes beyond these earthly goals, not suppressing them, but elevating and purifying them to the supernatural order.

And that’s because Christian morality is based on the most basic identity of man as God’s image and likeness, sharers of his divine life and nature. We are not just natural beings. We are meant to go and be supernatural. Otherwise, we can only go infranatural. There is no such thing as a purely natural state of man.  We are given a choice of whether we want to go up or to go down.

More than anything else, Christian morality is not simply based on what is reasonable or what is acceptable by a wide consensus of people. While all these criteria or standards are considered, what distinguishes Christian morality is its being animated by nothing less than God’s grace. And love for God and for everyone, including our enemies, is the beginning, end and everything in it.

In other words, to have a good moral sense is none other than having an abiding awareness that all our human acts, starting with our thoughts and desires, and then our words and deeds, should be good in the sense that they ought to be inspired and oriented toward nothing less than love for God and for others.

That’s why St. Paul once said in his praise of charity (love of God): “If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

“And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

“And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing.” (1 Cor 13,1-3)

No human act is good unless it begins and ends with God, and as a corollary, with others. This has to be made clear because we often supplant that truth with our own version of goodness based on practicality, popularity, and other worldly criteria that in themselves are good, but can only be truly good if they are related to love for God and for others.

In other words, the goodness of our human acts does not depend on us alone. It depends fundamentally and indispensably on God. We cannot help but think theologically if we are truly concerned about the morality of our human acts.

That’s because more than just depending on our own individual consciences and collective consensus, we need to depend first on faith, the gift God gives to us to start sharing who he is and what he has, since we are his image and likeness and adopted children of his, expected to share in the very life of God. And faith gives us a basis for hope as we go through this vale of tears of ours, and then also for charity.

We need to make a conscious effort to get in touch with God, because only then can we fairly think that we are moral in our actuations. That’s why we need to pray, to act and live in his presence, always purifying and rectifying our intentions, etc.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com