Finding Your Moral Compass

In childhood our parents fulfil that role, but then most of us graduate. Some people in the world transfer that parental responsibility to a religion, a military structure, a political party or politicians, and end up disappointed or worse.

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Good post and I enjoyed the article. I agreed with and followed the article until the end where he talks about moral reasoning. I read the article twice and the entire point #3 five times and I have to say I don’t quite understand what he considers moral reasoning. I think lots of people in and out of the church are rigid and from what I see its often innate rather than learned. I feel left hanging with end statement about “there has to be a way of thinking about those rules.”

I’m not sure many institutions teach people how to think about morality. Seems you have to take a philosophy course in college to do that. Ive lived a pretty worldly life surrounded by lots of good non LDS folks and they seem as likely as not to have similar moral philosophies. Maybe its a criticism of Christianity rather than Mormonism.

Ill say I like and agree with the three broad points but didn’t quite follow the reasoning especially about rigidity and moral reasoning.

My over simplified view is that many disaffected – certainly not all – don’t believe the doctrines or history. Therefore no reason to live by those doctrines or history. Not much else changes. Maybe that’s the point., that morality isn’t the primary consideration.

Thanks, hawkgrrrl, for making this topic.

(I’m Andrew S, the article author, just to clear that up). I just wanted to address some of Roadrunner’s comment:

I agreed with and followed the article until the end where he talks about moral reasoning. I read the article twice and the entire point #3 five times and I have to say I don’t quite understand what he considers moral reasoning. I think lots of people in and out of the church are rigid and from what I see its often innate rather than learned. I feel left hanging with end statement about “there has to be a way of thinking about those rules.”

I’m not sure many institutions teach people how to think about morality. Seems you have to take a philosophy course in college to do that. Ive lived a pretty worldly life surrounded by lots of good non LDS folks and they seem as likely as not to have similar moral philosophies. Maybe its a criticism of Christianity rather than Mormonism.

Ill say I like and agree with the three broad points but didn’t quite follow the reasoning especially about rigidity and moral reasoning.

My over simplified view is that many disaffected – certainly not all – don’t believe the doctrines or history. Therefore no reason to live by those doctrines or history. Not much else changes. Maybe that’s the point., that morality isn’t the primary consideration.

In the discussion on the site, someone pointed out (and I concede) that the LDS church does teach a form of moral reasoning — I just find it utterly inadequate. That reasoning basically equates to, “Moral rules exist as God’s commandments. Things are moral or immoral ultimately because God says so.”

The reason why I find this to be inadequate is because if one stops believing in God or stops believing what the LDS church says are God’s words about what is right and wrong, then there is no way to account for that person’s morality after that point. So, for a believer who adopts this moral reasoning, it is incomprehensible how a non-member or non-believer could be moral. If a believer who has adopted this reasoning as his/her sole or primary form of thinking about morality, then when s/he has a crisis of faith, then perhaps s/he really won’t have a solid moral foundation afterward.

I think there are plenty of ways to think about morality other than in a “divine command theory” sort of way. I didn’t want to support specific formulations (although broadly, I probably would support any moral foundation that talks about harm/care and fairness…which, as commenters pointed out in the discussion, that’s a narrow range of the moral foundations actually available to people…see Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations research for more information on that), precisely because I don’t want to give the impression that you need to have a formal philosophy education to think about morality in a systematic way. If that is the case, I find that to be extremely sad, since most people will never take a formal philosophy class.

I should hope that more institutions than a liberal arts philosophy department at universities teach how to think and reason about morality, in contrast to what Roadrunner says that many institutions might not teach how to think about morality.

At the very least, I would want any institution (whether it is family, church, school, military, work, etc.,) to teach people that a basis of our morality is harm/care — moral questions are questions about harm being caused to others, or a responsibility to care for others.)

(As I noted before, this can be problematic, since this is just one foundation possible. But I think it’s a better start than to base morality purely or primarily on the authority of God. In other words, if God tells you to kill your son or to kill the guy keeping your records, the main/primary/only relevant question is not, “Well, is God a valid authority?” or “Am I actually listening to God?” One should have an internal dialogue based on care and harm. I think that many people have reservations against scriptural stories such as this precisely because they do understand that their moral sense takes these things into consideration. And one should recognize that this sort of internal dialogue can occur when one is not part of the church, or when one does not believe in God, or even in spite of one believing in God or being in the church.)

So, to try to bring this around to your last point:

My over simplified view is that many disaffected – certainly not all – don’t believe the doctrines or history. Therefore no reason to live by those doctrines or history. Not much else changes. Maybe that’s the point., that morality isn’t the primary consideration.

Where my 3rd point about moral reasoning comes in is here. If one’s only understanding of morality is, “What God has revealed through the church,” then they are believing in moral because of the doctrines. It would then follow that if “many disaffected…don’t believe the doctrines” and have “no reason to live by those doctrines,” then that would lead to a collapse in morality!

I think the reason that you can say, “morality isn’t the primary consideration” (when someone doesn’t believe the doctrines or history) is because you implicitly ground morality in something other than church doctrine. This is my point about moral reasoning — when you have a way of thinking about morality, it doesn’t have to be grounded in church doctrines. If you seek to stay loyal to your significant other , it’s not because you are “following the Law of Chastity,” but because you recognize independently that infidelity causes interpersonal harm, etc., I fear that when people say that disaffected Mormons will lose their morality, what they are actually admitting is that they don’t think such disaffected members have independently reasoned about why various moral rules exist in the first place. If that is the case, why is that? I don’t think that’s an “innate” thing.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I have been watching a video presentation by Pastor Andy Stanley about Guardrails. He uses guardrails as a metaphor for a system of personal standards that will alert the conscience prior to the danger area.

Let me give an example. One example of a personal standard is to not help attractive members of the opposite sex by giving them a job. This in itself is not a problem but it could lead to “proximity” which could lead eventually to compromising situations.

I once had an inactive female coworker with a young daughter going through a bad divorce. She was trying to come back to church and needed a place to stay. I thought about offering her a room in our home. My wife was vehemently opposed, and acted like I was horrible for even suggesting it. All these years I thought that my motives were pure and that DW had overreacted. When I saw this example of a “guardrail” the light hit me that the idea of inviting this woman into my home so many years ago was fraught with potential problems. I had thought that I had a green light to move forward and even felt like I had received personal revelation to do so (yeah, I know – in hindsight the implications of this are kinda scary), even though it was a seriously bad idea.

Another example might be the personal standard to abstain from alcohol or not eat alone with members of the opposite sex or carpool alone with members of the opposite sex.

They in themselves might not be a problem at all and if someone is stranded and needs a ride home or you are sick and need some Nyquil then to make an exception is ok. But the point of the guardrail is that even in making an exception you will feel uneasy – thus ideally preventing you from the slippery slope of disastrous consequences.

The problem in the church is that our moral code is all tied up in what is sin or not and what I can do and still hold a TR. Thus to drink even a drop of alcohol is a sin, and to mow your lawn as a shirtless endowed male is a sin, and dating before the age of 16 is a sin (sarcasm but you get the idea).

Part of the sin vs. not sin quandary is that it is so hard to understand why we must uphold our standards while others don’t need to. If a certain action is a sin then everyone that commits the act must be a sinner. Ok, maybe we can cut them a little slack because others have not been taught the full law – but surely we who have been taught and live the commandments are ahead of those others – right? We go to the CK and they go to the Terrestrial – right? What’s the point of trying so hard if I don’t get to be better than these people?

So yes, I believe that there is much that we do in the church that is a good idea and is a hedge about the law or a guardrail against danger. The problem comes from following these rules to be a good Mormon or because “God says so” and never coming to a more mature, individualized, and internalized morality.

We have used the idea of the scaffolding before (i.e. church=scaffolding). The scaffolding is good and important especially during developmental periods, but Beware of building your building without internal support.

One last point: For years I have tried to understand why some people refuse to play card games with face cards. I have never heard a GA preach against them. A fair number of members do play with face cards and this doesn’t appear to be a problem. Just yesterday I thought about this restriction as a “guardrail.” If I want to set up a personal boundary against gambling and I want the world of poker and blackjack to be so foreign to me that even playing with face cards would make me feel uncomfortable – then that would be a reasonable guardrail for me to impose upon myself. As long as I understood that it was a personal choice/standard and the reasons for its imposition and others are in no way inferior for not having a similar conviction – then it could be an effective guardrail to help me avoid even dabbling my big toe into gambling.

As to face cards, it’s ridiculous IMO to prohibit them. Prohibit gambling or excessive gambling (over the amount one can afford to lose), sure. But the argument I heard from Mormon Doctrine is that there is something Satanic about the faces and linking it to Tarot cards or whatever. Utterly ridiculous!

Anyway, there’s a great point in Roy’s comments that I wanted to cull out. Moral reasoning after the fact (meaning the conclusion is that it’s a sin, now we have to figure out why) is a little different than moral reasoning used to determine if something is a sin or degrading or harmful or whatever – where the conclusion is not determined. Buddha used moral reasoning of the latter variety. When we use moral reasoning to defend the positions that have been handed to us, it’s a step up from not using any reasoning at all, but it’s still not full moral reasoning. It’s still potentially defending the indefensible. But putting the church aside, try the moral reasoning with laws. You can see that it does require more robust thinking and evaluation. But one key difference is that our laws change and are subject to better arguments. The rules of the church are not changeable by the same process. Only when you get into a frame of mind where you can imagine they could be (because you imagine you are in a position to change them) do you begin to reason in a new way.

Also, welcome to Andrew S – sorry you got stuck in moderation. That happens on first postings until you are approved. I deleted your repeat comment and approved the first.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I have been watching a video presentation by Pastor Andy Stanley about Guardrails. He uses guardrails as a metaphor for a system of personal standards that will alert the conscience prior to the danger area.

-SNIP (great examples of guardrails)

Part of the sin vs. not sin quandary is that it is so hard to understand why we must uphold our standards while others don’t need to. If a certain action is a sin then everyone that commits the act must be a sinner. Ok, maybe we can cut them a little slack because others have not been taught the full law – but surely we who have been taught and live the commandments are ahead of those others – right? We go to the CK and they go to the Terrestrial – right? What’s the point of trying so hard if I don’t get to be better than these people?

The whole post was great and very thought provoking. Loved all the examples.

This paragraph is a really good point. People do seem to presume that higher demands equals higher achievement. I’m starting to think Mormons need higher demands to approach an equal achievement.

Like the kid at school who would never train but turn up on sports day and beat the field. While others slogged away, trained harder, and came in a close second.

Maybe Mormons have to train harder to simply finish the race. I’m comfortable with that being a requirement for me too. And of course, if the trainers going to run you into the ground, he’d better be telling you “this is the only true training program,” else you’ll quit (even if another program might be better suited to others).