Today, as parents, we know that it’s a moral jungle out there. We fear for our children’s safety, their survival, and their very souls. Body, soul, and spirit are all threatened; health, happiness, and holiness are very difficult to maintain.
“These days, no one really commits a crime, does someone wrong, or sins. Everyone who’s gone beyond the norm of acceptable and honorable behavior is not guilty but dysfunctional, with neuroses and childhood trauma used to explain sociopathic behavior and personal evil. This is in line with current thinking on “sin” and human frailty.”
In the current thinking, remorse is becoming obsolete and excuses just about cover all misdeeds. Almost every wrong action can be stripped of consequences, along with the need for feelings of remorse.
What is the cause of this deplorable state of affairs? It seems we have lost our sense of what’s “wrong” and what’s “right.” There are no more moral absolutes. Peter Kreeft explains:
We no longer like to talk about moral laws, values, and about moral absolutes. This may seem unimportant, but it is momentous. For laws are objectively real; they come from above us and command us. The formula for a moral law is “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not.” But values have no such strong bite, not absolute demand. They suggest something subjective, not objective: “my” values or “your” values or “society’s” values. Values come from us; laws come to us. We invent values, but we are under laws. Values are nice ideals to aspire to if we wish; laws tell us what we ought to do whether we like it or not. But we do like to talk about morality, a morality without absolutes. But a morality without absolutes is not morality at all. Morality means something different from doing what we please, or what we calculate will turn out all right or what works; morality means doing what we ought to do. Morality is not optional, like a “value,” but obligatory, like a law. A morality without laws and obligations is simply confusion, like a triangle without angles.
How do most of us decide what to do and what not to do, what to say and what not to say, most of the time? By three standards: (1) social fads and fashions, others’ expectations, peer pressure, “everybody’s don’t it”; (2) our feelings (“it can’t be wrong if it feels so right”)’ and (3) our desire for the easiest, most pleasant, least troublesome life. I think most of use these three standards far more often than the standard of good and evil, right and wrong, in deciding what to do. If we’re asked why we did something, how often do we answer, “Because it was right”?
Even our popular guides and teachers won’t use words like “right” and “wrong.” They use sociological gobbledygook and psychobabble like “appropriate behavior” or acceptable behavior” instead of plain moral common sense.
Very often we have to determine “black and white” in a world of “grays”: making choices for everyday moral decisions. Choosing is hard because it means discriminating, refusing, saying no to one path as we say yes to the other.
Moral choices are choices between what is really, objectively right and what is really objectively wrong. According to Thomas Aquinas, there are three parts to morality, and all three parts must be good for any act to be morally good. The three are [1] the objective act itself, [2] the subjective motive, and [3] the situation, or circumstances.
Moral laws can help us with the first part. They define which kinds of acts are good or bad, not because of our motive or intention, but because of the act itself.
The second factor in determining morality is the intention, or motive. The first factor, the nature of the act itself, is objective; the second factor, the intention, is subjective. We must always have good intentions, just as we must always do good things. Hate, greed, lust, envy, sloth, wrath, pride or despair are absolutely wrong motives, just as murder, theft, etc. are absolutely wrong deeds.
In addition to these two absolute factors, there is the third factor, which is relative: the situation, or circumstances. These are endlessly changing, and we have to make up our minds how best apply the moral absolutes to relative situations. For instance, charity to the poor may mean giving a tramp money for food, but in another situation it may mean refusing him money because he’d use it on alcohol. Or charity to the poor may mean contributing to a large charitable organization, or electing certain political candidate.
All three factors must be morally right for the act to be right. If you do the wrong thing, it is wrong, even if your motive is sincere. Perhaps Hitler was sincere in his desire to “improve” the world. But what he did was wrong. You can be sincere and insane.
If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, it is also wrong, just as wrong as doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Giving money away only to avoid paying taxes, for instance, is doing a morally good thing but not for a morally good reason.
Finally, the circumstances must also be right. If any one of these three factors is wrong, the act is wrong; if all three are right, the act is right.
There is a strong double standard in most of our society, especially the media. If any one dares to suggest that adultery is wrong, that person is labeled a fanatic of some sort. But if the same person were to denounce political corruption, he would be considered enlightened and responsible. If anyone dares to call promiscuity “promiscuity” instead of a “sexually active lifestyle,” he is immediately labeled narrow-minded.
We do not tolerate inside trading by stockbrokers but we tolerate extra-marital affairs. We do not tolerate graft and corruption but we tolerate adultery. Apparently, we are very serious about money and very loose about sex. Money is holy but sex is secular, money is worthy of respect but sex is a mere medium of exchange. In other words, we treat money like sex and sex like money. This explains why morally bankrupt individuals are voted into office.
We are too tolerant of injustice and oppression and greed and lust and other forms of selfishness. We have to learn to discriminate, to hate not the self but the selfishness, not the sinner but the sin.
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