Between the Extremes of Morality

Lately, I've been thinking about two characters who fall somewhere between the ultimate extremes of morality: Krusk Bloodfist and Job of the Old Testament.

Krusk is, as you probably know, my D&D character for the Pirate campaign I'm playing in. You also probably remember that D&D's morality system (or alignment system, as it's called in the game) covers both good vs evil and lawful vs chaotic. In terms of good vs evil, Krusk is mostly neutral in that he doesn't often go out of his way to help or hurt anyone, but he leans toward evil because he doesn't mind hurting those who cause problems for him or who merely get in his way. But that's probably a topic for another day.

For tonight, I want to explore where Krusk stands in terms of law and chaos. As a pirate, he acts against the law, but as the captain of his ship, his word basically is the law, at least for his crew. He mostly looks out only for himself, which is chaotically individualistic, but he also looks out for his wife and his crew, which is somewhat lawfully collectivistic. He recently made a promise of devotion and obedience to a deity, which is a lawful act that got me seriously questioning where he stands in law vs chaos, but his devotion is to a deity who is, herself, chaotic. So, Krusk is in a strange middle area where he does some things for chaotic reasons and other things for chaotic reasons. He is both lawful and chaotic in different ways at different times.

Job, on the other hand, is much easier to fit into a simple quadrant. Job is lawful good. He is a very good person who serves God (a lawful good deity) with unshakable devotion. The extremes of morality are, or can be, quite extreme, but I think it's still fair to say that Job was and is extremely good. However, he wasn't perfect. Only one human being ever was. For my Bible Study class, I'm writing a paper in which I am to "analyze the extent of Job’s greatness [of character]." That means that I need to talk about how good he was, exactly. He was very good, but even his goodness had a limit, and my assignment is to find that limit. He wasn't perfectly good any more than Krusk is perfectly chaotic.

In fact, I don't think anyone is perfectly anything. No one is all good or all evil. Even the best people have moral failings, and even the worst people have some good in them. We tend to idolize or demonize people for simplicity, but people aren't that simple; nothing ever is. The Godhead is perfectly good, and Satan is probably perfectly evil, but literally everyone else is more complex than that. Most people are generally good or generally evil, but everyone ultimately falls somewhere between the extremes of morality.