MORAL OBLIGATIONS

I recently heard this in the night: ‘We can never put back on to the tree what we took from it… but we can take care of the tree…so it may produce more. This principle is true on many levels.’

It reminded me of something I read from Alexander McCall Smith, professor and author concerning ‘moral obligation.’  

“We can’t have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We do have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak. That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on.”

Taking care of the trees that are in our ‘moral space’ is a moral obligation that balances the consumer necessity with the supply necessity. It seems like common sense and moral sense to do so.

“A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.” Jesus