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M Morality
"The bulwark of religious training is vital if the line is to be held against the forces of corruption, crime, and disloyalty. I believe that men imbued with spiritual values do not betray their country. I believe that children reared in homes in which morality is taught and lived rarely become delinquents."
— J. Edgar Hoover
Source: "12,000 Religious Quotations," ed Frank Mead, Baker Books, p. 482.
Topics/Tags: Young people; Teaching; Morality
Dietrich Von Hilderbrand summed up our present American scene in the following 1970 appraisal:
"Our basic attitude of life is one of claiming rights and shunning responsibilities. We have ceased to appreciate the blessings of life, such as health, the beauty of nature, human friendships and love, and then to respond to them with gratitude. Gratitude is the key to happiness. We feel that life owes us the fulfillment of every desire, and if we do not receive this we feel bitter and we feel entitled to take advantage of others. Any question of moral good and evil is eliminated."
_________
Nearly 30 years have passed since these observations, and little has changed. Can we learn to live with gratitude?
Source: "Proclaim," 1983 #4, p. 39.
"Most people recognize the moral and ethical components of dramatic issues like abortion or end-of-life medical decisions. Other questions like "Should I cheat on my spouse?" or "Should I rob a bank?" call for moral judgments, too, but the answers are so obvious for most people that they hardly think about them - whether they choose to act in what they know is the proper way or not.
"But ethical questions permeate many less dramatic and more ambiguous everyday situations:
"How do I balance the time and energy obligations of my work and my family? How much should I pay my employees? What should I do with the child of my husband's first marriage who is disrupting our new family? How am I spending my money? Should I "borrow" a copy of my friend's software? If I know my employee is having troubles at home, should I treat her differently? What should I do if I know a neighbor's child is getting into serious trouble? How do I react to a sexist or racist joke?"
— Jeffrey Weiss / The Dallas Morning News
Source: "Everyday Ethics," Dallas Morning News online edition, 10/10/98.
"You don't need a WWJD bracelet not to become a drug addict, not to cheat on financing a car, not to lie to a neighbor. These are decisions that are made in the warp and woof of our daily lives."
— Rev. Gerald Britt, pastor of New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas
Source: "Everyday Ethics," Dallas Morning News online edition, 10/10/1998.
"I'm worried that, in this society, when you have a plumbing problem you hire a plumber, and if you have an electrical problem you hire an electrician, and if you have a moral problem you hire an ethicist."
— Rev. Charles Curran, ethics professor, Southern Methodist University
Source: "Everyday Ethics," Dallas Morning News online edition, 10/10/1998.
Topics/Tags: Ethics; Morality; Specialization
Religious landlords in Alaska can refuse to rent to unmarried couples, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meeting in San Francisco, ruled Jan. 14, 1999. The ruling applies to several other Western states and could override their state housing discrimination laws.
The 2-1 decision was a victory for two landlords in Anchorage who refused to rent rooms to unmarried couples because it offended their religious beliefs, news reports said. Circuit Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said the law interfered with property owners' free exercise of religion.
The decision will be tough to sustain in terms of constitutionality. Attorney Clyde Wadsworth, who filed a brief on behalf of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a homosexual-rights group, said lesbian and homosexual couples "will be swallowed up by that exception by landlords who claim a religious exemption," the Los Angeles Times said.
Still, the very fact that the decision could be rendered at all reminds us that God's "old-fashioned" laws can still be very much applicable to modern society.
Source: www.religiontoday.com, 1/16/1999.
Topics/Tags: Legislation; Morality; Law; Marriage
"The single greatest loss in my time has been the idea that we are all moral agents. Religion helped a great deal here. Religion taught that we are accountable for our own actions. Tribute is still paid to it today, but all that we have been talking about indicates that nobody really expects it anymore."
— Bill Moyers
Source: The Washington Post (quoted in First Things, Dec. 1992). Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 7.
Topics/Tags: Morality; Accountability
Don't bother adjusting your TV. The problem seems to be the images piped out of Hollywood. That's the conclusion made by a study of 104 leading television writers and executives. Conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the study found that Hollywood's views run far from the mainstream of public opinion. Some examples:
- Though 85 percent of Americans believe adultery is wrong, only 49 percent of TV writers and executives do.
- Everyone else is less likely than Hollywood to say a woman has a right to an abortion (59 to 97 percent).
- While only 4 percent of Americans have no religious affiliation, 45 percent of the TV writers and executives have none.
Source: Reported in Newsweek, 7/20/92, "To Verify," Leadership
Topics/Tags: Morality; Entertainment; Television; Influence, evil
[The Ten Commandments] require no justification, nor can they be argued away. They are not dependent upon circumstances, nor may they be set aside because of special considerations. They are not propositions for debate. They are not suggestions. They are not even (as a recent book would have us imagine in the jargon of our day) "ten challanges."
They are exactly what they seem to be--and there is no getting around them or (to be more spatially precise) out from under them. But the only thing new about them is their articulation at this moment amid the terrifying fires of Sinai. They have been received by billions as reasonable, necessary, even unalterable because they are written on human hearts and always have been. They were always there in the inner core of the human person--in the deep silence that each of us carries within. They needed only to be spoken aloud.
— Thomas Cahill
Source: Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews
Topics/Tags: Commandments; Morality; Righteousness
Recently, Leadership Magazine commissioned a poll of a thousand pastors. The pastors indicated that 12 percent of them had committed adultery while in the ministry -- one out of eight pastors! -- and 23 percent had done something they considered sexually inappropriate.
Christianity Today surveyed a thousand of its subscribers who were not pastors and found the figure to be nearly double, with 23 percent saying they had had extramarital intercourse and 45 percent indicating they had done something they themselves deemed sexually inappropriate.
One in four Christian men are unfaithful, and nearly one half have behaved unbecomingly!
Shocking statistics! Especially when we remember that Christianity Today readers tend to be college-educated church leaders, elders, deacons, Sunday school superintendents, and teachers.
Source: R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man (1991)
Browse By Topic M Morality