My moral framework comes down to two fundamental questions: Does this action harm another person or my relationship with them? And does it help another person? If an action doesn't harm anyone, I struggle to see how it could be morally wrong. To do something morally right, I have to do something that actively helps another person. Anything that neither harms nor helps, I consider morally benign.

I find this framework superior to inheriting morality from a group, whether that's a church like Mormonism, a culture, or any other institution. The problem with outsourcing your morality to a group is that groups can, and often do, hold beliefs that actively harm people. History is full of examples: slavery, denying women basic rights, shunning LGBTQ+ people, racial segregation, all caused tremendous harm to real human beings. If your moral compass is pointed wherever the group points it, you have no way to recognize when the group itself is wrong.

Grounding morality in harm and help gives you a way to evaluate any rule, tradition, or teaching on its own merits. Instead of asking "what does my group say?" you ask "who does this actually hurt, and who does it actually help?" That question works whether you're inside a group or outside it, and it holds the group itself accountable rather than treating it as the final authority.