New Reminders: Values and Ethics

Ethics are the set of moral principles that guide a person’s behavior.  These morals are shaped by social norms, cultural practices, and religious influences.  Ethics reflect beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust, what is good and what is bad in terms of human behavior. Wikipedia Dec. 2023

Values are usually stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important to a person.  They become standards by which people order their lives and make their choices.  A belief will develop into a value when the person’s commitment to it grows and they see it as being important.  A value can include anything that might affect a person’s behavioral decisions at any given time.  For example, if is person is motivated by a desire for wealth, it will affect the decisions they make about how they might choose to make a living or how they invest their assets.  If they are influenced by religious beliefs, they might look to the tenants of their religion to decide what actions are appropriate.  For example, if a person’s religion dictates that it is right to “kill the infidels”.  For them, it might feel morally right to kill people designated as unbelievers.

In other words, individual values vary, depend on the person’s moral upbringing and the influences that affect what they believe is the right way for them to act.  This is why some companies, organizations and religious groups set codes of ethics about how their employees, volunteers or followers must act.  Street gangs and churches will have very different rules, written or unwritten, that their members are expected to follow.

Christian values and ethics are based on the bible, but churches need to consider community and legal standards as well.  Some churches might have considered slavery ethically acceptable, because some bible stories seem to treat it as normal.  But once slavery was outlawed in this country, that had to change.  Owning another person or forcing a person to work off a debt with no pay is now considered not only illegal but unethical as well.  Some churches might consider a tent meeting, set up in the middle of a residential area, featuring loud, rousing music late at night ethical behavior, but community standards might dictate otherwise.  We need to be kind, considerate and aware of how our behavior will affect others.  Even if, to us, there is nothing wrong with what we are doing.  We must be mindful of consequences or circumstance and respectful of the rights, claims, and feelings of others.

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.” Philippians 2:3.