The Myth of Meaning: 12 Ethics as Divine Shadow — Moral Imperatives Reconsidered

The Problem

Moral frameworks often appear as if they descend from some higher authority. Even secular ethics frequently imagines obligations as binding, universal, and objective — echoing the imperatives of divine command, but stripped of God.

The Distortion

This is theology’s shadow in morality. Ethical principles are treated as pre-existing and immutable, rather than emergent. Humans are positioned as the subjects who must discern and obey, reproducing the structure of divine law in a secular register. The illusion persists that morality is discovered, not enacted.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational ontology, moral imperatives emerge through interaction and alignment within relational networks. Ethical significance arises from the negotiation of potential and actual, from the patterns we enact and sustain collectively. There is no pre-given law; there are relationally produced obligations that hold meaning only in context.

Takeaway

Ethics as divine shadow is theology repackaged. Relational ontology reframes morality as emergent, contingent, and participatory: obligations are meaningful because they are enacted in the flow of relational processes, not because they exist independently of them.