When I had to take Ethics in seminary, I thought that it was going to be a course that told us not to embezzel funds from the church, don't have affairs with female staff, etc., which, to be honest, seemed ridiculous to an overly optomistic and naive seminarian who was going to go out and save the world!  I soon found out that ethics and theology are intimately related; it had less to do with what not to do, but what to do and why you do what you do in the way you do it.  In short, your ethics, your guiding principles for life, are drawn from and related to how you percieve and understand God working in the universe.

What guides our actions?  1 Corinthians 16:14 (as well as many other places in the New Testament) identify our guiding ethical principle as love.  Let ALL that you do, be done in love.  If I visit someone and console them with comforting words; that is to be done out of love.  If I make a sacrifice, it is done out of a sense of duty that arises from love.  If I CONFRONT someone; if I make a stand for justice and say; "What you are doing is wrong - stop it!" even that is done out of love.  I love you just the way you are, but too much to be at peace with letting you stay that way!

You know as well as I do, that we are human and we don't always measure up to this ideal.  Certainly, the church often falls short.  I wonder what would happen if we decided as a church to become more intentional about adopting this as our guiding ethic; do all you do out of love.  Would our policies, our actions, our words, our pet projects, our anger all stand up to this test?  Where does this come from?  From love, or somewhere else?  And if the answer is somewhere else, we really ought to get rid of it!