Recently I argued that Christians should he comfortable with theistic moral nihilism for Christians do not need moral obligations or morality but merely God annexing rewards and punishments to his prescribed behaviour. It is these rewards and punishments, in a cause and effect way, which constitutes the heart and sum of Christian ethical behaviour. One would have thought that the whole of the divine commands are nothing more than prescriptions with material consequences, pleasurable or horrible, annexed to it.
However, predictably enough, there was an outcry from Anglo-Americans at the very idea of jettisoning morality for a system of pure cause and effect, for commands followed by rewards and punishments. I think it would be useful in this point to make a connection between three phenomenon: the American love for moral postures, their existential reliance on morality, and finally, the root cause of this being the banishment of God from the civil space.
We are all familiar with the common argument that religious people are not "truly" good people because they do good out of hope of reward or fear of punishment from God, whereas the truly pure ethical and moral person does these things for the sake of being a good person, for itself basically. For Anglo-Amercians, this criticism stings particularly because they viscerally feel in their bones the need to maintain this posture of being good, moral and ethical, and it does seem to be subordinating morality to "base" material commercial transactions to suggest that we do good out of hope of Heaven or fear of Hell.
But as I have explained on numerous occasions, this is merely an Anglo-American particularity. As the Nietzche quote I never tire of presenting puts it: the English had long ago rid themselves of God and substituted Him with morality. Morality and the desire to be "good" itself has become the overriding absolute and fundamental imperative of Anglo-American societies, it is effectively their god. It is "base" and "low" to do good subordinate to material desires or objectives, e.g. the pleasure of Heaven. It is elevated, noble and pure to do Good for itself, to be Moral for itself, as the ultimate objective, untainted by base creatively pleasures and desires. However at root, this is nothing more than a posture, a mere affectation at superiority and pretensions of being able to transcend their creaturely state, a rebellion ultimately against the God who created us to be creatures, and to live and be moved by creaturely goods.
But of course this (false!) moral god of theirs is powerless to reward and punish. In the words of Shakespeare's Falstaff, can ethics or honour restore a lost limb? In fact, for the moral to reward is to debase the purity of morality. But then how could obedience to the edicts of Morality be secured, if morality has no goodies to dole out, no limb it can restore, nor dead it can raise, unlike the Holy Trinity? The sole solution, is to just posture. It has no other instrument or method for realising itself in this world then mere posturing, and shaming. All it can do is to condition the citizens, or rather the denizens, of Kant's Moral Kingdom of Ends, to react viscerally to at the mere thought of not being "a good person", to desperately need the approval of this false god, and thereby its denizens become maximally psychologically vulnerable to postures against them for being a "good" or "bad" person, and thereby secure their obedience to this false god. Morality cannot set a limb, but it can torment a well groomed and manipulated conscience.
This is why Anglo-Americans are the world's greatest hypocritical (in the proper biblical sense) moral posturers. Having banished the Christian God and his covenant of blessings and curses for behaviour, their civil order now relies on endless postures of the goodness of their character, and the wickedness of their enemies. Romans 13 prescribes love for our enemies on the ground that God will visit coals of fire upon them, the Anglo-American, being prohibited from being motivated by material consequences, must constantly maintain a permanent posture of indignation and outrage against their enemies, while praising their own side, that's the only way secular societies like theirs maintain their civic order.
Of course it was not always like that even in America. The Constitution of Maryland, interestingly to this day, retain on the books the follow clause:
Art. 36 ...nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness, or juror, on account of his religious belief; provided, he believes in the existence of God, and that under His dispensation such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor either in this world or in the world to come.
When America was still publicly religious, they understood that divine retribution, not human posturing, was what secured civic order. But now that this clause is more or less nominal and unenforceable, they turn instead to their false god of morality to secure public order, which favour they gain by endless ritualistic postures and denouncements.