Article in Stretton Focus, August 2013
If you walk up to Pole Bank or climb Caer Caradoc, you will certainly be standing on high ground. From there on a clear day the view can be quite breath-taking as you look at what can’t be seen from ground level.
You can also stand on high ground in a moral sense. That is when you look at life from an altruistic point of view. From there, other people’s needs are seen and felt just as much as, if not more than, your own. You see situations where there is clearly something wrong: injustice, abuse, corruption or cruelty, and you feel compelled to do something about it. So you write to your MP, or you join Amnesty International, or you make a donation to Red Cross, or however else you feel led to respond.
Standing on high moral ground is not a case of ‘looking down’ on anyone, but of ‘seeing through’ some plausible façade, behind which someone may be justifying what you have become critical of.
People with a religious outlook on life, and a belief in God, should obviously be standing on the moral high ground. From the vantage point of Goodness, Beauty, Truth and Love (which is as good a working definition of God as I can think of) we should be able to see more clearly where things have gone wrong, or are going wrong, and need to be put right.
We should also be seeing more clearly that any religion worth its salt is not primarily about saying you believe this, that or the other, and wanting to convert others to the same belief. Not so much about ‘believing’ the Truth, but ‘doing’ the Truth. Even Eliza Doolittle understood that when she said “Don’t talk of love – show me!”
Donald Horsfield
