The Necessity of Moral Structure

To be human is to establish a structure for living on earth.
I know a little girl roughly age 3. She’s both captivating in appearance, personality and in her intelligence. She’s also a terror, comparing favorably to a Catahoula Cur, demanding constant attention and frequently challenging authority. That’s because she’s about as insecure as little girls can be, living with a single mom who doesn’t quite get it. Mom does have a decent faith background, but she understands religion as rules and ideas, and completely misses the whole underlying foundation of what makes morality. She’s raising a child whom she cannot control without a constant and very forceful physical presence.
While we may argue about what it should look like, most of us realize structure is a necessity for human functioning. Take away the structure, and all you have is a highly emotional and somewhat intelligent animal. That humanity needs structure is visible in the Eden narrative of Genesis, as the other side of the command God gave to manage His creation. We cannot impose on nature what we do not have within us. It’s in our nature to do this still, and we need it to survive. That we are fallen simply complicates things, but does not remove our fundamental nature.
Our Western civilization confuses a lot of things. Raw intelligence does not equate to self order. Some of the highest IQs left to develop in a very disordered social structure typically turn out to be the most vicious predators. There are two types of predators: sociopaths/psychopaths and those insecure. In other words, whereas some few are natural soulless predators, most got that way as the means to facing down fear. The more intelligent tend to become more capricious, creative in finding new ways to distract themselves from insecurity.
IQ assessments are not a raw score, but by their nature measure only relative intelligence against some scale of human average. Yes, they are culturally derived. On top of that, intelligence expresses itself in many different ways, a whole range of talents. We have precious little academic work in the field of moral intelligence. It’s easy to get lost in questions of IQ, when the better question is not how bright someone is, but how they contribute to moral stability. The moral imperative is offering structure, and seeking a better one. Without that, intelligence is morally useless in the broader sense. A sharp mind in a bad environment seldom makes things better, and typically makes things morally worse.
Scripture makes the point not just any structure will do.
Having made much of that structure content here in other posts, I will note simply this. When I visit the home where that rowdy little girl lives, though she still pushes the limits, I have no trouble making her behave well for me for the most part (hint: it’s all about Game). Her mom is constantly amazed by this, but lacks the basic key to understanding how I do it. Already there has been three years without that good moral grounding, and the window of opportunity to turn it around is almost closed. The next best chance is waiting for the child to hit her own moral bottom and learning to listen and absorb what she needs to provide a moral structure for herself.
It’s not magic. Granted, I suppose we could say I have a gift for moral intelligence. Still, because God has demanded we all have some of this, we can only deduce it’s possible for everyone to hone their moral sensitivity and their basic understanding of the framework. When religion is good, that’s what it does. There is little calling for a prophet when folks are doing things right. I’m constantly on fire internally by what I see standing opposed to what seems the clear Word of God to me addressing our failures in this age. There are miracles large and small, each offered by God through my hands to verify His backing of what I teach.
I don’t see myself in charge of much more than my own mouth and fingers on the keyboard. The rest is just making sure I’m in the right place at the right time. It’s pretty challenging to remain sensitive to the Spirit against the cacophony of this age and my own mind. But all I’m doing is restating what’s been truth since time began.
Moral structure is God’s demand of all humanity.