Individualistic?

 

Is the Bible and Judeo-Christian culture, overall, more supportive of an egoist-individual ethic or an altruistic-collectivist ethic. The answer is mixed and complicated.

 

Overall, they are supportive more of altruistic-collectivist ethics, but not entirely. The idea of Yahweh or God the Father as a Creator Deity, whose Logos or Rational Principle is the spiritual force and intelligence setting up and operating nature under natural law. This recognition of reason as coursing through the veins of the universe (Humans reason as individuals, not as group members.) and that it is the rational or spiritual guidance provided by the Great Clockmaker that created an orderly universe does imply that human, made in God’s image, are to use their power of reason to bring goodness, order, cosmos and value into society—that is the individual so reasoning, and that may have contributed to the core idea in the West that the individual is sovereign.

 

Notice that God the Father as creator of the universe is an individual, not a committee constructing cosmos and light out of chaos and darkness. If being a creative individualist is good enough for our Father, should we not give it a go too?

 

Note that Jesus is referred to as the living word of God, a very rich image—here again is that archetypal role of God as rational principle and singular individualist doing good in the world, and we are to emulate this role and adopt it for our own.

 

When the person is judged for his life on earth, for his spiritual and moral victories or failures thereof, it is not his social club that is judged by God—it is him by himself as an individual, coming into the world alone, and going out of the world alone. This reality too indicates that the individual is sovereign. There is then some biblical support for egoist-individualist ethics, and also much support in the Bible for altruist-collectivist ethics.

 

We need some Mavellonialist rational egoism to tip the Bible teaching to our way of seeing things.