Morality & the Matter of Authorship

/ japfth

Context: I’m redesigning training on Moral Leadership to present to my fellow Soldiers that aligns with what the Army doctrine calls “Spiritual Wellness” and Army Pamphlet 165-19, Moral Leadership. Why? Because worldview is destiny. How one answers the “big questions” shapes the individual, the organization, and the culture. The “big questions,” per James Sire, are issues like the following:

  1. What is prime reality – the really real?
  2. What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
  3. What is a human being?
  4. What happens to a person at death?
  5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
  6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
  7. What is the meaning of human history?

To state the obvious, how one answers those questions reveals a person’s worldview. Is a person created in the image of God or is a person simply matter in motion, of no more value than rocks or flotsam? Is truth objective or is it just how anyone ‘feels’ at a given moment? Is something just ‘her truth’ but not ‘the truth’?

These questions are fundamental and unavoidable. Every worldview must grapple with them.

Text: And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39, ESV).

Encouragement & Application: There is always a God of the system, folks. Always, there is an authority. And that authority is rooted in the reality of the Author. It’s the root of the word. Who defines the terms defines the world. And when you see an individual, an organization, or a culture purport to define the terms with disregard for God as the authority, you find insanity. Ergo, moral leadership is to be rooted in the holy and wise Author who is goodness and holiness in His very nature. Moral leadership, therefore, invariably hinges upon the locus of authority. Moral leadership, if is to be truly moral, will reflect the author of the true, good, and beautiful, and that is God.

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