Philosophy Now Forum

Religious Obedience
In religious terms with belief in ‘God’.
There is a tendency to talk in terms of acting both in obedience to god and for god [through Jesus]. Conflating or equating these two terms is a radical mistake.
1 Those who act simply in obedience are doing so blind and have ceased to be moral agents. It is the basis for the authoritarian state and worse. Value based rules are seen as absolute commandments.
2 For people to act for the benefit of others and in the name of god, is utterly different, and requires a moral or altruist perspective. With it only possible for ‘god’ to be defined in terms of fundamental values.
3 There is the third option with all individuals in society acting for their own benefit and private god, indifferent to others.
4 And all three are opposed to the rejection of life and destruction of society.
Unfortunately people will tend to see themselves as ‘altruists’ and run with that as their whim takes them.
Freedom and equality are amongst basic values that chiefly relate to both 2 and 3. Responsibility and duty chiefly relate to both 1 and 2. Ego chiefly relates to 1 and 3.

Religious Obedience

It's the same in any political order. Religion means in the Roman context being bound (to an office), as in the American expression "sacred duty." The duty is to the common advantage of the Americans. One doesn't notice this because the ordinary citizen is not politically active. They abjure their religious duty to the office of citizen.

Christ is simply the name for the body who acts as the instrument of the spirit or understanding. If one has a teaching about norms, one has the holy spirit which is to guide the actions of Christ, the one bound to this mastery of the good. The picture being of someone having mastered an art who is bound to the knowledge of the art. The trained technician, by keeping to their knowledge, obeys, and by obeying they are free. Free to make the things their art teaches.

So, wherever there is a teaching, there is the same difficulty, is the teaching correct or moral? Foreign policy in a country for example will result in killing other people. This policy may be called secular or rational.