Real and artificial morality

  • Moral­ity is not exactly a sec­ondary mat­ter in Chris­tian­ity, but it is a deriv­a­tive one. Our moral­ity should issue nat­u­rally from the plen­i­tude of our reli­gion; if it does not, it is either mere respectabil­ity or a mat­ter of instinct, or else — very often — insuf­fer­able hypocrisy.
    — “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” Fr. Alexan­der Elchaninov

    I really should dis­like it when Fr. Elchani­nov knows me too well. Given that he died 26 years before I was born, he’s got a lot of nerve. But I don’t know what else you’d call it when he focuses in so pre­cisely on a prob­lem that it’s taken me many years to try to find the right words for: that being good is not always the same as just being nice. As he says, good­ness should be the nat­ural result of a hum­ble heart com­ing into con­tact with the mercy of God and receives the teach­ing of the Church. Nice­ness is the kind of sim­ple cour­tesy that allows us to get along when stand­ing in line, bump­ing someone’s cart in the super­mar­ket or com­ing up with a com­pli­ment for someone’s meat­balls at the potluck. The first is a qual­ity so close to God’s heart that Christ told the lawyer that only one could be called good and that was God. The other is, as Father E. puts it “mere respectability.”

    Nice­ness can be just as thin and cold and brit­tle as ice, and it can deftly pass itself off to the prac­ti­tioner as moral excel­lence and real human warmth. I have met peo­ple who could say “Have a nice day” and make it sting as much as an insult. But then it occurred to me that I do the same thing when it suits me. I just like to think that it isn’t too obvi­ous when I do it, or that the latent hos­til­ity and pet­ti­ness behind some of my niceties won’t come through.

    Per­haps the dis­claimer to make is that if arti­fi­cial moral­ity is the best I can muster, I should at least do that. There’s no harm, cer­tainly, as long as I don’t mis­take it for the real thing. Glass can look a lot like a dia­mond, but if you’re offer­ing it as a gift, you should know the difference.


    Related posts:

    1. Con­ser­vatism and morality
    2. Shak­ing off Obliv­ion, rejoin­ing the real world
    3. Read­ing the lives of the saints
    4. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox
    5. “The Russ­ian Priest”: On our rela­tion­ship to the state

    December 9th, 2006 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 12.09.2006

    Oh my good­ness, he nailed it about me too. Sigh.

  • Grace

    Like I said, some peo­ple have a lot of nerve.

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