Who would argue with the statement that "We can not have an intimate relationship with God if our behaviors are not consistent with God's Law. But, what is God's Law? Has Creation really established any principles of conduct for His human animals?
Do the civil and morality principles we struggle with come from God or simply from influential men? Has the Powerful Energy responsible for human creation really established definitive moral imperatives for us so that if we violate them we will suffer the Pain Of Mortal Being in spite of our accomplishment and social successes?
For our part in creation, we are blessed, some say cursed, with what men call free will. As a companion to free will, Creation provided us with an entity we call conscience. Most humans inherently know what is naturally right and wrong. Most of us know what is morally right and wrong. It is apparent to some that Creation chose not to let humans grope in moral ambiguity while exercising free will.
Creation apparently chose to provide humans with a conscience, or instinct, or genetic imprint if you will to guide our social and moral behaviors. Whatever method Creation chose, the evidence suggests that God's Moral Imperatives are evident to most of His human animals. We may elect to ignore them or rationalize them to the point of extinction, but most of us understand them.
Unfortunately, power, wealth, and greed are powerful antidotes for morality. They are so relentless and debilitating in their influence on human behavior that some of us cannot avoid being sociopaths so tormented, angry, and morally bankrupt by power, wealth, and greed that only aggressive evil seems right.
Men have preached their brand of God's Morality to anyone who would listen or who could be forced to listen. Unfortunately, religious dogma more often than not is implored for political power, social control, and the accumulation of wealth.
But messengers who have an intimate relationship with God do not deliver rhetoric that is antagonistic to God's Will. When we understand that and choose not to ignore it, we will never again accede to the dictations of greedy preachers, abusive cult leaders and charlatans, the false prophet, and evil predators. Nor will we be convinced or coerced by the rants of dictators, tyrants, preachers, evangelicals, and politicians who falsely claim Him.
The Ten Commandments is a quintessential code of honorable human behavior. If the "civilized" world lived its lives by the verses commanding us to stop killing, committing adultery, bearing false witness against our neighbor, and coveting our neighbor's house, wife, manservant, maidservant, ox,ass, and other thing that is our neighbor's; the world as we know it would be a much better place for all of human kind.
Nevertheless, religiously, politically, and personally, some of us persist in violating some or all of the Ten Commandments at the same time that we insist that everyone else should obey them.This behavior cannot be pleasing to the one we call God. And while God may be pleased by lives that are guided by the five of the Ten Commandments cited above and the five preceding them in the Book Of Exodus, apparently that this not all Creation wants us to do.
If we want freedom from the Pain Of Mortal Being, we must embrace a greater morality. We must embrace the greater moral standards of the other things God want us to do. Creation requires more from us than is evident in the Ten Commandments and the many volumes of civil law, social standards, and religious dogma and beliefs. The other behaviors God expects are embodied in the Covenant Moralities--a morality for civilized people.
The covenant Moralities nurtures a morality that is required for genuine happiness. They nurture a lifestyle of personal, social, and spiritual behaviors through which we have spiritual intimacy with Creation, freedom from the Pain Of Mortal Being, and freedom from the Fear Of Eternal Being.
The absence of behaviors defined by the Covenant Moralities and the attendant absence of an intimate relationship with Creation make the Pain Of Mortal Being a constant companion. Its personal emotional buffet are persistent feelings of anxiety, emptiness, and unhappiness that no amount of illegal or prescription drugs can alleviate.
The covenant Moralities nurture a morality that promotes the evolution of spirituality and behaviors for which Creation rewards us. They release us from the pain our sense of mortality inflicts on us. They protect us from the other fears our fear of death and our fear of infinity inflicts on us--ambiguity, anger, rage, hopelessness, surrender, uncertainty, aimlessness, chaos, and loneliness.