For strange reasons we try to steer away from ethics as Pastor’s because we get into the arguments about the uses of the Law especially the third one. There is an ethic of Jesus that is there in the Sermon on the Mount that is unlike anything that the world would ever teach.
I just discovered Henry Link’s “Rediscovery of Man”, New York: Macmillan 1938. This is old stuff but very interesting
He writes: “The essence of Christianity is its insistence on the supreme value of the individual in the scheme of things where love, faith, and moral law transcend all man’s intellectual schemes and mechanical concepts. “In Christianity men are not the puppets of the state; they are the sons of God. They are not cogs in a machine, but creatures with souls. They are not helpless victims of an adverse environment, but rather beings born in sin, bound to suffer for their sins, but who can be born again to a new life of unlimited growth and freedom. “No matter how individuals, differing in background and point of view, read the New Testament, they will agree that the common denominator is the potentiality of personality. All men are held equal in the opportunity to develop a richer personality and a higher life, whether Jew or Gentile, Pharisee or Publican, rich or poor, whole or crippled. If anything, the possibilities of the underprivileged excel those of the privileged. For the rich, salvation is more difficult than to enter through the eye of a needle; for the arrogant intellectual it is harder than for the ignorant, but repentant sinner. But for all it is possible. “Thus the Christian concept of personality is the absolute opposite to that of the physical sciences. Whereas the natural sciences have progressively revealed man’s limitations, Christianity forever emphasizes his possibilities. Whereas the hygiene movement of medical science increasingly describes people as innocent victims of mental disorders, Christianity long ago described the same disorders as the natural consequence of sin, either the sins of omission or commission. (Pp.235-236.)
