Why be moral?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total entropy of any isolated system tends to increase over time. If human beings weren’t able to make exceptions to that law, we probably wouldn’t be alive right now. Without the structure of society and laws, violence would proliferate, schools would not exist to provide education, and scientists would not invent medicines to improve the quality of people’s lives. In a world that typically tends to move toward randomness, people reach for stability through morality.

Morality has a value of its own, independent of reward and punishment. Looking at Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we see that a life without morals is a life without restraint. Man needs a logical and stable system of morals to guide his actions, or else he loses his sanity. Even if a man is afflicted as Job is while acting morally, it’s better to be afflicted and have some stability in life from retaining one’s morals than to be afflicted and to have no meaning in life.

In the Old Testament, there is no cosmic system of karma to punish evil and reward good. I like to think that, in general, a man’s reward for being moral is ultimately a life of meaning, whereas a man’s reward for being evil is a shallow and meaningless life. But these are not incentives or rebukes determined by some higher power; rather, they are general consequences of our actions. Good and evil behaviors are not uniformly punished, but people remain moral because of the stability that they gain from applying a uniform code of judgment to all of their actions.

A common misconception in the Book of Job is that God punishes Job. God does Job no physical wrong; the Adversary is the entity that causes harm to fall on Job. However, God does nothing to stop the Adversary from afflicting Job, and at times even encourages the Adversary’s actions. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

Who knows. Maybe, as Job’s friends suggest, Job really has sinned. Or maybe God is testing Job’s loyalty. Or perhaps God just likes to play as small of a role as possible in the affairs of people so that he can watch how they sort out their problems for themselves. When it comes to the Old Testament view of God, however, I’m a firm believer in knowing what I don’t know.

The God of the Old Testament is limitless and indefinable. “I am that I am,” God tells Moses at the burning bush. If the Old Testament portrays God as so beyond human comprehension, how can we speculate as to God’s motives for allowing Job to be punished? I would agree that allowing Job to suffer is immoral by human standards, but can God, appearing before Job as a whirlwind of power, really be held to the same moral code that humans hold themselves to?