done with my paper!! and random thoughts about morality and theology

i'm finally done with my spring arbor writing sample. i've been working on it for months on and off. it's on the challenges of attending spring arbor's degree completion program. basically, i'm going there because i'll only have one class one day a week. i'm going there to avoid the challenges of attending grand valley, which would force me to take a crap load of classes i don't need. so writing a paper on how challenging spring arbor is going to be was a bit difficult. but it's done, and i can finally turn it in and get the admitting guy off my back.

today was another day off that included taking niles to the park and coming to beaners (which is where i am now). class today was boring as ever. before i started this semester, i was thinking to myself if there existed, outside of christian colleges, a conservative sociology instructor/prof. and low and behold i found one, and he teaches the class i had today. well, i shouldn't say conservative as if he's pushing neo-conservative political views in class, but he's dutch reformed, graduated from hope, and was going on about morals and values today. compared to my other sociology instructors, he's pretty conservative.

lately, i've been more aware of my tendency to look for the theological underpinnings of everything. we were discussing kohlberg's stages of moral development today, and i started thinking of them in terms of human morality/laws and the kingdom of God. they're broken up into pre-conventional morality, conventional and post-conventional.

the pre-conventional stage is a child learning that some behavior is rewarded and some is punished (e.g. if you murder you go to jail). the conventional stage takes place in teen and adult years, and is where people learn how to conform to rules and begin to care what other people think of them (e.g. dealing with other people civilly, and being aware that murderers are looked down upon (usually, kind of...)). the post-conventional stage is where people realize morality doesn't come from government or laws, but that people have certain rights that transcend those institutions (e.g. despite what any government says, murder is wrong because people have a right to live.).

from a theological perspective we could say that there is a divinely intended way to live (Kingdom Of God) and there is how society says we should live. the various moral codes that societies create are an attempt to achieve an ideal/post-conventional way of living for it's people. some come closer than others to the way God intended, but all fall short in some way. religions and churches do this also. they create rules and moral codes for their followers that they feel match the way their god wants people to behave. ultimately they fall short also. most people try to achieve/defend the conventional, failing to see that it falls short of the ideal/post-conventional. in fact, the ideal usually is dismissed as utopian, unrealistic and impractical. the christian belief is that it (the ideal) is slowly unfolding and gaining ground and will one day be reality when jesus returns... well, some christians believe that anyway. others defend the conventional because they feel it's the best they have until God destroys this world entirely and creates a brand, spankin new one. which begs the question, why the hell didn't God just create the new/ideal/eternal one to begin with??

o.k. so my thoughts on this aren't entirely (or nearly) polished. i just think it's interesting that we recognize a morality that transcends society's convention. of course, this isn't anything new, it's the first chapter of mere christianity, but as where lewis is saying morality points to a source, i'm saying morality points to an intended way of living.

i don't know why i view everything thru a theological lens. my other blog is supposed to be about culture and politics as well as religion, but i usually end up writing about something theological. and, honestly, i really don't want to. i don't think of myself as a theologian. oh well, maybe this blog will get me writing about other topics.