Christianity is not about ethics

Christianity is not about ethics - it is in a sense not even about religion, is in many ways anti-religious.


Jesus did not really preach ethics and disapproved of the ethicists, devout Sadducees and Pharisees of His day - He came to save us from religion in a sense. He did not preach against the Law but he preached something much greater than the Law.

Ethics is what non-believers imagine Christianity is about whereas Christianity teaches us to ask for divine grace not to follow an ethical code by our own efforts. Certainly in  Romania you feel that ethics is not at all central to Christianity. Ethics in the Romanian Orthodox Church seems peripheral while the liturgy is central. And Romanians combine an instinctual religiosity and interest in the otherworldly with a realistic appreciation and understanding of the worldly. This is I suppose why people in the Orthodox countries are more religious and in many ways less moral than in Western countries. Things here tend to be about people and emotions not rules.

Eugene Ionesco's remark is very true: religion in Romania means something completely different from what it means in Catholic or Protestant countries.