Article July 4, 1988 Issue

A sound basis for sound ethics

In a time of shifting ethical standards, the two great commandments bring stability.

James Robert Corbett

Political and governmental malfeasance; dishonesty within the professions; corporate conniving; mistreatment of children, the elderly, and the poor; bloodshed; promiscuity —every form of immorality, it seems, is coming to the surface today. And with this are coming repeated calls for higher ethics.

But whose ethics? Once we agree to the need, who is going to decide for any circle of people what is right and what is wrong? For that matter, most people share with others more than one sociological relationship. Would we therefore have to exercise simultaneously several, possibly conflicting, sets of ethics? Or maybe we need altogether new standards of moral conduct.

The answer lies in the time-tested ethics and sanctity of two fundamental teachings of Christ Jesus. A lawyer once asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus replied: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."^{Matt. 22:36–40. (See also Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18.)}

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