Kelly - Psalm 14

My bible notes that in v. 1 the Hebrew word for "fool" implies moral difficiency.

So my mind went racing off along lines of the interplay between morality and faith. I spent a semester in college reading and discussing John Stuart Mills' theses on Utilitarianism: the belief that there is no absolute morality - that the moral worth of action is defined by the degree to which it provides happiness to the sum of all beings. If an action causes more good than pain, then it is a moral action.

I must admit to never being the type of person who revelled in philosophy classes...even in college I could not discuss this stuff into the wee hours of the night.

But our faith teaches an absolute morality. Good and evil are defined by the Word of God. And sometimes that Word runs against the easier road of utilitarianism. And we still hit that roadblock today in our faith. Jesus' actions weren't always (weren't often?) about bringing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. He upset the leaders of the day for precisely that reason.

Jesus would leave the 99 sheep defenseless in the wilderness in order to go looking for the one lamb who wasn't smart enough to stay with the group. In our world, the Word of the Lord makes the majority of us decidedly UNcomfortable - demanding radical service and sacrifice, that we become the "least of these."

Good and Evil are absolutes in our world...but they aren't always obvious. We are asked to act on the Word of God, even when that runs counter to our common sense.