Why it’s obvious that morality precedes religion

At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and doubt. You will recognise Matthew 25: 35-40, for its phrasing has entered the idiom: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food … sick and you visited me … in prison and you came to me … a stranger and you took me in … naked and you clothed me … ’

The story is of a king praising his subjects for these kindnesses to him. This puzzles them: ‘When did we see you hungry, and feed you … a stranger and take you in…’ (etc)? The king replies: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.’ The moral Jesus is pointing to is double-headed: by serving your fellow men you serve God; furthermore God is watching you, so you had better behave to others as you would to Him.

That second thought, more admonitory, is unmistakable in Luke 12: 40-48 (‘Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not’). This time, Jesus’s parable is of a lord who, departing his household, leaves his steward in charge. Not expecting his master back soon, the steward starts abusing his privileges and neglecting the household. Foolish, because ‘the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder’.

These are powerful parables whose message has easy purchase on the human imagination. In both, God is watching us: a kind of celestial CCTV. If we abuse any of our brothers and sisters, He will take it personally.