Anything we may conceive of doing or being a part of needs to be based upon something fundamental. Whether you are planning to build a shed, a house, your life, or a moral framework, a sound foundation is essential; without something solid to build upon any undertaking will fail; it would be like building your house on sand.
Building on a solid foundation
This refers to what will be basis of the project, what its underpinning will be. Everything must be based on something; a house upon its foundation or a life upon a moral framework or a plan to transform society based on spiritual reality.
When building a house the foundation must be appropriate for the environment in which it will be built; the foundation must rest on something firm like bedrock. Houses can be built in many types of places but each time having a strong appropriate foundation is the most important aspect of planning.
This is also true for our life planning; we need a strong moral foundation before going out into the world. Education could participate in a spiritual awakening if it would help youth to develop life plans and encourage character development. There is great need for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-gratification. Upon such a foundation religion may contribute its spiritual incentive to the enlargement and enrichment of mortal life, even to the security and enhancement of life eternal. (Urantia Book 2086.3) Our lives need to have a firm moral foundation if we are to avoid the many negative influences surrounding us.
This even goes for our civilization, it needs a proper foundation. Building a civilization on an inadequate foundation would again be like building it on sand and our secular civilization certainly has such an unstable base. It is clear that such a civilization cannot last because there is no guiding principle behind it; nothing of lasting value is holding it up. True religion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eternal foundation and the guiding star of all enduring civilizations. (Urantia Book 1013.10) The evidence our society is unstable resides in the constant stream of violence, hatred, greed and other materialistic excesses; such a civilization cannot long endure.
The life of Jesus was rock solid because it was based on a firm faith in the presence of our Heavenly Father in his life. The faith of Jesus was childlike in its total simplicity and this became a solid moral foundation upon which to build his matchless life.
This foundation might be building a house on bedrock or it might be basing our life on spiritual reality. Physical objects may appear and disappear but our Heavenly Father is constant. Since our foundation must be solid and unchanging what better foundation could we have than the Creator of all things? When we have such a moral foundation we will be less vulnerable to misleading thoughts.
Importance of moral foundations
We need a proper moral foundation before we can possibly make any spiritual progress. We must use our Heavenly Father as our foundation, using His will to guide our choices. If we are totally sincere we will certainly know what is according to God’s will and what is not.
Suppose we have a certain ideological goal that we greatly desire to achieve. We may feel this goal is so vitally important we are obligated to pursue this goal focused entirely upon what we wish to attain. The problem with this approach is that there is no foundation, nothing to base our decisions on, and nothing to guide us. In effect the goal becomes also the foundation; therefore a solid foundation does not exist, there is no moral underpinning. Because of this lack of foundation the goal has immediately been lost because the foundation does not exist.
When we recognize our Heavenly Father as our moral foundation, this goal will still remain our paramount objective but now we have a foundation against which we must measure each proposed action. Never should any goal be so important that we destroy our moral foundation; the moment this happens the goal is forever lost. It is therefore imperative that each action is validated by our moral foundation; that is the only possible way to attain any goal.
Our foundation needs to be strong enough to support whatever superstructure we wish to build on it, even a soul of immortal destiny. If we have our Father as our foundation, if we base our lives on God, there is truly no limit to what we can accomplish throughout all future eternity.
Spiritual resources
People with faith have several spiritual resources for moral support. The most important of these is the spark of God dwelling within each normal human being; knowing that our Heavenly Father is in intimate contact with us is a great comfort at all times. There is also the Spirit of Truth, which gives us a conviction of what is truth. We are certainly not alone; it seems that way only when we reject spiritual reality.
Spiritual foundations are firm and enduring; they can sustain us through trying times and terrible events. These are the foundations that can uphold us as we work toward our eternal future. It is on such a foundation that we must build our lives, our efforts to reach out toward God and our efforts to help our sisters and brothers in need.
In times such now we particularly need a firm foundation based on spiritual reality; in times of social change it is imperative that we have a solid moral foundation so that we cannot be swept away by the tides of change, so we will not fall prey to suggestions to take us away from doing our Father’s will.
We certainly need a solid moral foundation for the times ahead.
Further Reading
“Light of Truth: Anticipating the Triumph of Righteousness”
