144 Sermon Illustrations on Morality

Sermon near Election Day. Romans 2:17-24

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VALID VALUES

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I. Values are Popular.

A. Politicians are focusing on it.

B. Has America lost its values?

II. Problem: Our Values Vary.

A. Cultural War?

B. In the Conflict of Values, Christians are losing.

III. Is the Bible all that clear on its values?

A. The Bible is a hard book.

B. Key values in the Bible.

1) Healthy living.

2) Sexual standards.

3) Society must be protected.

IV. Values alone are not enough. Romans 2:17-24

A. "Do as I say, not as I do."

B. Lived values carry the most weight.

C. Analyze your personal values.

Europe and the United States continue to draw on the moral capital of Christian faith, the overflow of grace. Yet polls reveal that a majority of Americans are anxious about the future (Gallup polls say eighty-three percent of Americans believe the nation is in moral decline).

Historian Barbara Tuchman, who has won two Pulitzer prizes for her writing and surely does not represent the alarmism of the religious right, worries about moral bankruptcy. She told Bill Moyers of her concern over:

. . .the loss of a moral sense, of knowing the difference between

right and wrong, and of being governed by it. We see it all the

time. We open any morning paper and some official has been

indicted for embezzlement or corruption. People go around

shooting their colleagues or killing people. . . . I ask myself,

have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than

from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think

that they have.

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

The role of human conscience in revealing to us God's will and standards. Conscience is innate in all people, but the norms or standards vary from culture to culture.

A missionary to northern Brazil observed a very nervous and fidgety native with sweat on his brow enter the village and seem very uneasy even in the presence of his friends. Later, the missionary had learned that this fellow had just killed a man of another tribe. Although in this society it was not considered wrong to kill a member of another tribe, this man was obviously under the pressure of a guilty conscience. While societal norms do set the conscience, there is also the witness of God in the nature of our relations with other human beings that overrides the errant social standard.

Book review. Duin shows how singles can deal with sexuality without denying it. Reviewer says she is unrealistic, suggesting that sexual expression results in promiscuity.

#797

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Even psychiatrists see the value of guilt.

Dr. Willard Gaylin is the professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. In a recent article he wrote: "When you have actually done something morally wrong, it is always good to experience guilt - always."

If you never experience guilt, you have no standards of decency.

Rev. Robert Williams was ordained as an Episcopal priest though a practicing

homosexual since he claimed to be monogamous. Addressing a symposium on gay

marriage he said, "If people want to try [to be monogamous], OK. But the fact

is, people are not monogamous. It is crazy to hold up this ideal and pretend

it's what we're doing, and we're not." He later replied to a question, "If

you're asking me do I think Mother Teresa ought to get laid, my answer is

'yes'." He declared that celibacy is unnatural and spiritually inhibiting,

and monogamy is just as bad.

The liberal bishop John Spong called on him to resign. Homosexuals are at

every level of the Episcopal church.

*1109

Relativism in ethics usually justifies sin and puts down conventional morality. Our souls tell us this is wrong.

I have vivid memories of a photograph I saw years ago. It appeared in a newspaper during the racial turmoil that swept the United States in the 1960's.

The picture is of a black American with his hands tied behind his back. A chain was looped around his neck and fastened to a tree limb.

As he hung there, members of the Klan took a butane torch and burned the initials KKK into his chest. They kept burning him, slowly, until he died.

As a Christian, I feel that what they did was wrong.

If situation ethics is true, then what they did might be wrong. Or it might be O.K. It all depends.

Terry Anderson was taken hostage by Lebanese terrorists in 1985. His sister Peggy Say has spent years seeking to have him released, even pestering foreign governments. (She is a member of an American Baptist church in Pennsylvania.)

On August 24, 1990, Irish hostage Brian Keenan was released. Peggy went to see him. He had been in Terry's room and found his Bibles. Terry was doing a historical study of the Bible and had learned French from his roommate. He had a Bible in French as well as a Catholic and a Protestant Bible in English.

Peggy asked Keenan, "Is Terry mad at the AP [he was a reporter for them]? Is Terry mad at the government? Who's Terry mad at?" Keenan looked puzzled. "He's not mad at anybody, really," he said. For the hostages, the five and a half years had been like they'd been for us, their families: cyclical. It's almost like the stages of grieving: first the denial, then the anger, finally the acceptance of what is. The hostages had passed through all those phases, and in the last year or two they had become very introspective, very moral.

They had made a pact with one another, Keenan told Say: they would do things with their lives on the outside that would have value, that would be moral, that would make a better world. And each would see to it that the promises they made in captivity were kept. If anybody started straying, the others would phone him up and say, "Hey, get back on line here." [1413]

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(see #1475) A task force of Presbyterians produced a statement promoting "justice-love" which overturns Biblical morality. Exerpts from the report are given.

The people of God have often faced ethical dilemmas. For example, if it is wrong to kill one’s son and it is wrong to disobey God, then what should Abraham have done when God told him to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22)? God commands obedience to the king, but the king commands the murder of innocent male children. What should the Hebrew midwives do (Exod 1)? The Scriptures enjoin obedience to parents but one’s parents insist that he not serve God. What is the responsibility of love (Matt 10:37)? The Bible forbids lying but the lives of God’s servants can be saved by intentionally falsifying. What should Rahab have done (Josh 2,6)? The queen commands that all God’s prophets be killed. A man defies her and hides one hundred of them. Was Obadiah right (1 Kings 18:13)? The Bible demands obedience to human government (Rom 13:1-2), but the king rules that all should worship an idol. Were the three Hebrew children wrong in disobeying the authorities (Dan 3)?

Besides these biblical examples there are many examples of moral conflicts which are instanced in human experience. Should the doctor take the life of the mother or the unborn baby, if both cannot live? Is it right to push someone out of an overcrowded life boat to save others? Should one first save his father or the man who just invented a cancer cure? Is it morally right to return a man’s gun to him if he demands it in order to kill his wife? There are several responses which one may make to such conflicting ethical situations. The four basic ones will be reviewed here in terms of the Christian biblical ethic of love.

The First Way: There Is Only One Absolute Duty of Love

The Second Way: There Is Always a Third Alternative for Love

The Third Way: Performing the Least Non-Loving Act

The Fourth Way: Subordinating the Lower Laws of Love to the Higher Ones

The Scriptures give ample illustrations of the principle that higher commands take precedence over lower commands. Jesus said that love for God is more important than love for parents, even though both are commands of God (Matt 10:37). Peter made it clear that the command to obey human government was not higher than the one to preach the Gospel (Acts 4). The Hebrew midwives (Exod 1) and the three Hebrew children (Dan 3) were all commended for disobeying human government when it conflicted with a higher ethical command. Abraham’s intent to kill Isaac was morally right only because it was put in irresolvable conflict with his direct obedience to God’s higher command to obey Him (Gen 22).

Three things are clear from these and other biblical examples. First, there are real conflicts among God’s commands which are personally unavoidable by the individual. Second, a man is morally obligated to follow the highest command when he cannot do both. Third, God does not hold men guilty for following the highest command. Rather, God commends them (cf. Abraham, Hebrew midwives).

This raises one final question, namely, in what sense is this view absolute when it allows that one is not obligated to follow some (lower) ethical laws when they conflict with higher ones? There are three ways in which it may be said that all commands based on God’s nature are absolute even though they must sometimes be subordinated to higher ones.10 First, they are absolutely binding as such on the particular relationship toward which they are directed. Lying as such is always wrong. And in relation to another man’s life, it is never right to murder him, and so forth. However, what is absolutely binding as such in a simple relation is not necessarily the right course of action in a complex situation where one must decide between two commands as conflicting. Secondly, when there is a conflict, it is an absolutely binding ethical obligation to follow the higher law revealed by God in His Word.

Finally, implied in the above is the truth that God has established absolutely the very order of commandments based on their proximity to His very nature as holy and loving. In short, some things are more godly and more loving because they are more Godlike. And Scripture is the only true source for knowing precisely the ordering of God’s priorities. If we are wrong in ethic judgment, then, it is because as Jesus said, “You do err not knowing the Scriptures” (Matt 22:29).

A knowledge of the priority of values has two very important implications. First, by knowing which commands are higher and which are lower, one knows which “evil” is the greatest good in the more rare irresolvable conflicts. Secondly, an awareness of divine priorities enables the Christian to distinguish the best from the merely good in the more common everyday choices. For it is not only a good to choose the lesser “evil” in unavoidable conflicts, but it is also an evil to elect the lesser good when there is no unavoidable conflict. In this latter respect ignorance of the biblical priority of values leaves the Christian vulnerable to the perennial temptation to sacrifice the best on the altar of the good.

George Will writes in MEN AT WORK: “Baseball umpires are carved from granite and stuffed with microchips … they are professional dispensers of pure justice. Once when Babe Pinelli called Babe Ruth out on strikes, Ruth made a populist argument. Ruth reasoned fallaciously (as populists do) from raw numbers to moral weight: ‘There’s 40,000 people here who know that last one was a ball, tomato head.’

"Pinelli replied with the measured stateliness of John Marshall: ‘Maybe so, but mine is the only opinion that counts.’”

Christians are also pressed by the weight of numbers aligned against the moral law of God. But the Christian knows that in the end, only one opinion counts: that of the beneficent Umpire of all humans affairs.

In “A Pretty Good Person” Lewis Smedes writes:

The white people of New Orleans were scared. So were the black people. A federal judge had ordered the city to open its public schools to black children, and the white parents decided that if they had to let black children in, they would keep their children out. They let it be known that any black children who came to school would be in for trouble. So the black children stayed home too.

Except Ruby Bridges. Her parents sent her to school all by herself, 6 years old: the first, and for a little while, the only black child to learn a lesson in a white New Orleans school.

Every morning she walked alone through a heckling crowd to an empty school. White people lined up on both sides of the way and shook their fists at her; they threatened to do terrible things to her if she kept coming to their school. But every morning at ten minutes to eight Ruby walked, head up, eyes ahead, straight through the mob; two U.S. marshals walked ahead of her and two walked behind her. Then she spent the day alone with her teachers inside that big silent school building.

Harvard professor Robert Coles was curious about what went into the making of courageous children like Ruby Bridges, and went down there to find out. He talked to Ruby’s mother and, in his book “The Moral Life of Children,” tells what she said: “There’s a lot of people who talk about doing good, and a lot of people who argue about what’s good and what’s not good,” but there are other folks who “just put their lives on the line for what’s right.”

#1976

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It is almost impossible to exist in our society without being exposed to sexually explicit literature, movies and songs, not to mention clothing styles.

When I was around 7 or 8 my mother took a station-wagon-full of my friends and me to a drive-in theater. We loaded up on popcorn and candy, and waited for Bambi to begin. But first there were the previews of upcoming attractions. Before my mom could slip into reverse, we caught an eyeful of the classic movie, "Prisoners of Desire."

It was apparently about a female prison where the inmates were exposed to the most degrading perversions. The preview left nothing to our young imaginations, and my mom had a tough time explaining the significance.

#2454

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Politicians should preach morality.

New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman issued a warning to the Republican party against involvement in divisive “moral” issues. The Daily Record editorial applauded her, saying, “Preach tax cuts, not morality.” For “The Party of Lincoln” to announce that it had no interest whatsoever in the great moral questions of the day would be to renounce its legacy, its very foundation.

The Republican Party owes its existence to debate over the “moral issue” of slavery. It provided much of the impetus for purging the nation of the immoral legacy of Jim Crow. Every generation confronts its “moral” questions in the political context, whether those moral issues be slavery, equality of the sexes and races, gay rights, or what have you. To suggest the majority party in this state and country should take no position on these questions boggles the mind.

For all law is essentially a codification of society’s moral compass. If someone can show me a law which is objectively true, provable without reference to subjective standards of right and wrong, I will eat the page upon which it is printed. Is insider trading objectively “wrong”? It’s illegal, but that simply means that society, acting through government, has determined that such conduct violates accepted notions of fairness; it is “immoral” and, hence, made illegal.

One cannot objectively prove that discrimination against members of a particular group – race, sex, religion, – is “wrong.” Society accepts this as a given, as a moral guide, and legislates accordingly. Although one would, these days, be hard-pressed to discover a passionate advocate of enslaving blacks, that was not always so. Forests were leveled to produce the paper used for books defending the practice. The bloodiest single episode in American history had its roots in what was essentially a debate over the morality of a legal, if execrable practice.

Even well-intentioned, deeply religious or otherwise “good” people can be profoundly wrong on questions of morality. Their passion in favor of injustice hardly constitutes a reasonable basis for ending debate on the issue involved. Not that they don’t try to stifle debate; for decades, the slave power succeeded in cutting off debate on the subject in Congress.

In some recent polls, a majority of the American people felt that the country is experiencing, or has undergone, a great moral decline. Babies have babies, drug abuse, epidemic violence, and – yes – abortion, are but some to the great moral issues of our time. Does the Daily Record truly believe these issues should not be the subject of debate?

The governor suggest that some issues should not be, and what good conservative could disagree? Government certainly ought not be the ultimate arbiter of all areas of conduct. Some aspects of life are, and quite properly ought to be, none of anyone else’s **** business. The question, though, is where one draws the line. That is not always an easy question to answer.

Should government prohibit interracial marriages? It did, in many states, for quite some time. Should government be able to prohibit large families (i.e. more that one or two children)? I’ll wager you could find passionate advocates for such a position, even outside of China.

But even questions involving purely personal decisions – whom to marry, what career to pursue, with whom to have sex – are subject to societal regulation. One may not marry one’s sister, pursue a career as a burglar, or have sex with a 13-year-old without facing governmental sanction. And quite properly so.

Invective and ad hominem attacks – referring to one’s opponent’s as “yahoos” – accomplishes precisely nothing. Thankfully, the Governor does not engage in any such thing. Her laugh line – that politicians discussing morality is problematic – begs the question: if our elected representatives do not, who will?

#2875

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Shame can’t be legislated, but must arise out of the “moral sense” that exists in all humans. Theologian Richard John Neuhaus thinks that shame faded away not in the moral relativism of the 1960s, as is usually argued, but in the Pollyannaish 1950s, when spiritual leaders like Norman Vincent Peale argued that “you could have the positive side without the negative, which is philosophically and practically impossible.” After all, adds Neuhaus, “we SHOULD dislike much about ourselves, because there is much about ourselves that is not only profoundly dislikable but odious. It’s not for nothing that the Ten Commandments are put in the negative.”

Properly calibrated, shame falls somewhere between mild embarrassment and cruel humiliation. The goal is not mere retribution but conformity - good conformity, the kind that makes it easier for people to form communities. Somewhere along the line shame picked up a priggish, finger-wagging connotation that has lingered in our moral attics. But now the pendulum seems to be swinging again, this time away from making people feel good when they do bad. I’m OK, You’re Not.

In the wrong hands, shame is the nitroglycerin of emotions. WWII was largely the result of the humiliation of Germany after WWI. ... But if the means of provoking shame are rooted in hardheaded compassion, the results can indeed be redemptive. The kneeling technique with juvenile offenders and other techniques that show signs of success depend not on imposing shame but imposing punishment - then giving the person a choice of feeling shame as a way back to the fold. [Examples of legal impositions of shame given.] Requiring a father who is not paying child support to stand outside the courthouse with a sign stating NEED JOB TO SUPPORT CHILDREN may have been “a throwback to the days of the stockades,” as an Indiana court said. But agencies that help people collect child support say that one of the most effective and little-used techniques available is for the wife to carry a sign denouncing her ex-husband outside his office.

Shame’s usefulness against crime is limited. Public humiliation tends to harden people. “Bringing back a stigma is not going to work for people for whom it was never there to begin with,” says Judge Joe E. Brown. But the public is open to a little humiliation. Author David Anderson calls this “expressive justice.”

“A stronger sense of shame about illegitimacy and divorce would do more than any tax cut, or any new government program, to improve the life circumstances of children,” says David Blankenhorn. “Compassion doesn’t mean accepting whatever other people do. And judgment doesn’t mean being hard-hearted.”

This raises the larger problem with shame: it’s so much easier to judge others than it is to judge ourselves. Child abuse and drunk driving are easy. But single-parenthood and divorce strike close to home. Restoring shame requires being judgmental. That makes people uncomfortable. Indeed, breaking through to a clearer sense of shame may require nothing short of IN-tolerance, a word that has received a bad rap in recent years. Shame means being intolerant of certain types of behavior that are either illegal or simply destructive to the social contract. If the public believes that those who transgress will be called to account, its cynicism may ease a bit. That could make a little more finger-pointing worthwhile.

[Sidebar on “Megan’s Law” and vigilantism in New Jersey.]

"Dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful," Thomas Robert Malthus wrote in his celebrated, infamous ESSAY ON POPULATION in 1798. It began an intense debate that is being repeated now. Others blamed poverty on rapid industrialization but Malthus argued England was subsidizing indolence. The Poor Laws, he wrote, "create the poor which they maintain."

In 1834 England set a new course and decided to stigmatize the able-bodied dependent poor. They would be deemed "less eligible" for assistance and called PAUPERS. They would receive relief only if they worked for it, in a poorhouse. This "had a shock effect that was very real," writes the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. The number of paupers "decreased substantially after the passage of the law." The money spent on poverty declined from 6.7 million Pounds Sterling to 4.5 million per year, on average, during the decade in which the law was passed.

As they tackled dependency, the Victorians had two distinct advantages that do not exist now: a rapidly expanding economy and - far more important - a universal and unequivocal moral code. In any case, the problem was less severe. Rates of illegitimacy were halved in the 19th century - but they declined from 7 percent to less than 4. Today there are whole slum neighborhoods where traditional family life has ceased to exist. The cause is government handouts, loss of jobs, television, predatory marketing and a mass culture that has descended to the most primal common denominator. [Examples of talk show topics, heavy on sex.]

The problem of moral decay in society cannot be solved by laws, or censorship or by merely changing the behavior of the poor. It requires a broad recognition that civilization is fragile and we are slip-sliding toward turpitude. It requires liberals to acknowledge that morality is not relative - and conservatives to admit that enterprise must have limits. It is not so easy to "hold disgraceful" the dependent poor if the rest of society is shameless.

Princeton hires a pro-death ethicist vilified by the rest of the world.

Australian ethicist Peter Singer at least minces no words when he argues that the disabled and the unwanted should be killed. Not just passive euthanasia, but active, eugenic euthanasia for infants, the sick, and the elderly- everyone, to use his words, whose "life is not worth living."

No wonder he is so controversial in Europe and his home country that his speaking appearances are accompanied by angry protests from those he thinks are better off dead and those who care about them. In Austria, a major philosophy conference had to be canceled due to protests and threats from disabled groups. In Germany, he is compared to Hitler's theorist Martin Bormann. In Australia, he has been called the country's "most notorious messenger of death." Wherever Mr. Singer speaks, protesters in wheelchairs chain themselves to the barricades that have to be erected around his lecture sites.

In the United States, however, Mr. Singer is given an endowed chair at Princeton University. He has just been appointed to the Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values. This is a prestigious position at one of America's most prestigious universities, joining a faculty that once included Jonathan Edwards and J. Gresham Machen.

British philosopher David S. Oderberg reported in The Washington Times the significance of this particular appointment. According to Mr. Oderberg's summary of his thought, Mr. Singer believes that since infants are not "rational and self-aware," they should not be considered human until they are at least one month old. Up to that time, they could be killed. Newborn babies have, to use his analogy, the same moral value as snails. As "non- persons," they are "replaceable," much like chickens and other farm animals. That is, if parents chose infanticide for a "defective" child, say, with hemophilia, and later gave birth to a healthy baby, the total amount of happiness would be greater and thus their act would be moral.

Mr. Singer's ethical theory seems to be based on a curious quasi-mathematical attempt to calculate the sum total of human happiness that would result from a particular decision or policy. On this basis, he claims to be able to show not only that voluntary euthanasia (such as physician-assisted suicide) and non-voluntary euthanasia (for the mentally incapacitated who cannot decide for themselves) are morally justified. He also believes that involuntary euthanasia for anyone who has become a burden to society is a moral act.

Not only is Mr. Singer purportedly an expert in bioethics; he is a major theorist for the animal-rights movement, the author of Animal Liberation and Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Although he defends animals, strictly speaking, he does not believe in "rights" (as in "human rights") at all: He dismisses them as "a convenient political shorthand" with no basis in any kind of divine or natural objective moral order. Nevertheless, it is ironic that while Mr. Singer equates the life of a newborn baby with that of a snail, he would be likely to urge that the snail not be mistreated.

Not that Mr. Singer isn't qualified to be a bioethics professor at Princeton, at least according to the prevailing academic standards. Research content seldom sparks controversy-unless it leans in conservative directions. What counts more in American academia is the amount and the "importance" of one's publications. The online bookstore Amazon.com lists 38 books published by Mr. Singer. These include, significantly, a number of introductory overviews and edited collections of readings used as college textbooks.

Universities responding to the call for "values education" and liberal arts colleges trying to replace their old theology requirements are now instead requiring a course in "ethics." Very likely, they are using Mr. Singer's textbooks.

America is having to wrestle more and more with ethical dilemmas, especially those posed by the new medical technologies. Since religious teachings are ruled out of bounds by policymakers, our country is turning to secular experts for guidance on moral issues. Hospitals set up "ethics boards"; bureaucrats hire consultants to draw up policies; and universities such as Princeton establish a Center for Human Values and bring on recognized authorities such as Mr. Singer.

The mere invocation of "ethics" may do more harm than good, serving as a process of rationalizing what is actually profoundly unethical. The value of "ethics" depends on the worldview upon which they are founded.

There was a time when Christians and non-Christians alike could agree that certain moral truths are "self-evident," that human beings have been "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Today, with the very concept of a Creator jettisoned by the intellectual establishment, these truths are not self-evident at all, but in fact are coming under harsh attack.

In today's thinking, rights are endowed not by God but by the culture-or even the government. And what the culture or government sees fit to endow, it can also take away.

Contemporary Americans turn instinctively to the academic establishment whenever they need "expert" advice, but secularist academicians may be the very worst people to turn to today for moral expertise. They are the most likely to hold the postmodernist myth that culture creates values. And since the academic subculture gives more status and more endowed chairs to those who are "progressive" (advocating cultural evolution) and "cutting edge" in their fields (advocating ideas that are radically new), the kind of moral advice that will emanate from our halls of learning is easily predictable.

There are major exceptions, of course, such as Mr. Oderberg, who teaches at the University of Reading in England. His critiques of Mr. Singer exemplify the service academics should be rendering. But those looking for an expert on the intractable moral issues of our day would do better simply to ask a pastor or another leader who has studied the Bible, believes in it, and can apply it in a sophisticated way.

Preparing such experts used to be the mission of Princeton University. Now it endows a Center for Human Values that decenters human values. Now it hires an ethicist who dismantles ethics, whose teachings if put into practice would establish, as Hitler never could, a culture of murder.

[see also #4680]

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In the last few weeks the newspapers have been full of stories about sexual misconduct -- and conservatives are horrified. We're shocked because the titillating exposes involve, not Hollywood stars but prominent conservative leaders.

Among them is Newt Gingrich, who is embroiled in a nasty divorce case. Court documents reveal that, at the same time he was espousing family values, he himself was involved in a secret extra-marital affair.

Then came the explosive charges involving George Roche, president of Hillsdale College. According to press reports, Roche carried on a two-decade affair with his daughter-in-law, Lisa, who was also Roche's personal assistant. The ugly story came out after Lisa tragically committed suicide.

Many Christians are deeply troubled by these events. They're asking, how can people stand for high moral principles and then behave this way? Are we all hypocrites?

I think an experience I had with George Roche may help us understand what's going on.

A few years ago, I spoke on the subject of ethics at one of Hillsdale's national conferences. I took Dostoevsky's famous question, "Can man be good without God?," as the title of my lecture. I argued that man cannot be good without God, that the human will is rebellious, and that only the power of God's Spirit can enable us to live a moral and righteous life.

Afterwards, Lisa Roche called to tell me that George Roche wanted to publish the address in a school periodical. When I received the edited version of the speech, I was dismayed to find that all references to Jesus had been eliminated. I called Lisa to protest and she told me that it was their policy not to use the Lord's name in any of their publications. My response was, "Then forget about publishing the speech."

After lengthy negotiations, George Roche agreed to let me make two references to Jesus Christ.

I think the title of my speech, "Can Man Be Good Without God?" turned out, sadly, to be prophetic -- and maybe helps us understand this tragedy.

What Roche was trying to do at Hillsdale, as I understand it, was to create a strong pro-family, pro- traditional values institution, but keep it secular. Many politicians try to do the same thing, giving us the impression that we can create a good and just society on our own, without reference to a transcendent moral authority, and sustain it on our own strength -- that is, apart from Jesus. But it just doesn't work.

And when some do fail, as they inevitably will, their example can be especially dangerous, because Americans are tempted to conclude that if the strongest and best can't make it, what hope is there for ordinary citizens?

In reality, these very public moral failures illuminate what scripture teaches about the weakness of the human will: It is naturally prone to sin -- and that's true, even among those who espouse the most powerful pro-family teachings. The human will is not strong enough to maintain a life of decency and morality apart from the transforming of that will by the power of Christ.

No amount of disciplined education, political programming, congressional funding, or sheer determination will do it.

Without the help of the living Christ, even the most powerful among us is potentially nothing more than the next moral embarrassment waiting to happen.

___________________________

Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Has the growth of irreligion in American occurred at the same time state and federal government has expanded? A recent study conducted by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle, suggest as much.

Their survey found that there is a correlation between state spending, especially welfare expenditures, and irreligion.

Simply put, Gill and Lundsgaarde found: “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

Sweden, for instance, has one of the largest welfare states in the world and is one of the most irreligious as well. The same can be said of some other Scandinavian and European countries. In sharp contrast, countries with a history of limited government, like the United States, have significantly higher rates of religiosity.

What the Gill and Lundsgaarde study seems to indicate is that as a government grows, its citizens' reliance on God declines (and vice versa). Gill was quoted as saying in The Wall Street Journal, “[A]s the welfare state has expanded, many people have found that they can get these same services from the government without having to give a time commitment to the local church.”

While American government has grown in recent years, it has been a relatively gradual expansion. However, if Washington has its way, the growth rate of government is about to accelerate significantly.

The current Washington philosophy seems to be that the government is, and must be, the answer to all of our problems. Whether it is health care, education, mortgages, financial difficulties, the environment, joblessness and even the BCS Championship, the government is the solution.

If the believers in big government have their way, Americans will not have to trust God for anything because their benevolent Uncle Sam supposedly will provide everything. When that happens, according to Gill and Lundsgaarde’s study, irreligion will increase accordingly.

But atheists and secularists should not be too quick to celebrate the rise of irreligion in America. With the decline in religion will come a rise in immorality and crime -- especially white color crime -- and incivility.

We may have already seen an increase in the aforementioned social ills. A recent study found that in 2007 births to unwed mothers in the United States reached an all-time high of approximately 40 percent. Scams and scandals infect the financial sector of our country and civil discourse continues to erode.

While religion does not guarantee a person will be moral, lawful and civil, at the very least there is a moral authority that informs the individual conscience. In the case of Christianity, there is not only the authority of the Bible, there is also accountability to an all-knowing God.

Christians obey the government because the Bible instructs them to do so. Followers of Christ pay taxes because Jesus said to “render under to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar.” A Christian is motivated to be moral, lawful and civil because he or she is accountable to an omniscient God.

While an irreligious person can be a moral person, what is it that informs his or her conscience? Why should an atheist or secularist be moral, lawful or civil? Because the government says it is required? What accountability is there other than to the government?

Our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, wrote, “There are three points of doctrine, the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of a God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of reward and punishments.”

Adams continued, “Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these articles of faith and that man will have not a conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark; the laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.”

With the rise of irreligion will come an increase of surveillance and the evaporation of privacy. An example of what to expect is already taking place with the increase of red light cameras.

“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled by a power within them or by a power without them,” former Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop said, “either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or the bayonet.” Winthrop, who was speaker from 1847-1849, was correct in his assessment.

Man will have his behavior regulated by the fear of God or he will be forced to have it regulated by the fear of government. With the recent trend toward irreligion in America coupled with the expansion of government, the latter seems more likely than ever before in our nation’s history.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1628]

Paul's argument against the moralist can be outlined as follows:

A. Background: the moralist.

1. He judges others.

2. He is without excuse.

B. The judgment of God is according to truth: perfect justice.

1. The moralist thinks he will escape.

2. The moralist thinks God is too good to punish.

3. The moralist thinks man is basically good.

4. The moralist hardens his heart against the judgment of God.

C. The judgment of God is according to deeds: punishment or rewards.

1. The well-doer's reward.

2. The evil-doer's severe judgment.

3. Every evil-doer is to be judged.

4. Every well-doer is to be rewarded.

D. The judgment of God is without respect of persons: impartiality.

1. All sinners are judged.

2. Doers, not hearers, of law are justified.

3. The heathen have a three-fold witness.

E. The judgment of God is to be executed by Jesus Christ & his gospel.

[further detail given in advertisement.]

#3371

*

Continuation of article on how we evade responsibility:

8. AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH.

If we had no other barometer of American interest in amusement, we could

measure it by the salaries of professional athletes and other entertainers.

By this barometer, we value amusement more than good law, medicine,

government, ministry, education, architecture, or scientific research. For

these are all salary- or fee-compensated professions in which, very often, the

financial rewards pale by comparison with those for baseball players, rock

singers, and talk-show hosts. In a capitalist culture, money is how you keep

score, and in the professions, such as medicine and football, salaries and

fees separate the winners from the also-rans. Thus, the orthopedic surgeon

who examines the anterior cruciate ligament of a bench-sitting guard for a

professional basketball team is looking, and likely looking up, at his

cultural superior.

And, of course, jocks and clowns are important people. We need them and what

they do. Who doesn't need and relish amusement now and then? Who doesn't

need a partly playful attitude toward her own work? Isn't it the sin of

pride that turns so much of human life gray with earnestness? Isn't grace,

not achievement, the light of the gospel and the center of the Reformation?

Still, the value we place on entertainment suggests that it has become a

diversion not only in the sense of a playful relief from the main business of

life, but also in the sense of a distraction from it, an evasion of it, a

sometimes grim, big-business alternative to it.

When people begin to focus their lives more on amusement than on doing their

work well, raising their children securely, gaining an education, and helping

those in need, they begin to evade responsibility. The problem is that the

evasions are lots of fun and therefore very tempting to all of us. It takes

strength to resist them. When we fail, when a whole society fails to resist,

life turns around in such a way that consumerism and the hunger for unreality

converge and the spending of one's leisure becomes one's occupation. Being a

deft and knowing consumer of clothes (ones that make a statement), films,

sports events, pro wrestling, concerts, tapes, compact disks, and video

games-and especially of the entertainment products in which these things

combine-becomes a main goal of one's life and a measure of its success.

Even Christian worship has been affected by the national obsession with

amusement, perhaps in part because worshipers watch a lot of television and

some of them watch a lot of televised worship. But worship does not fit the

television medium very well, just as the music of a string quartet does not

fit well into the warm-up events of Saturday night auto races. The reason,

as Neil Postman observes, is that we cannot consecrate the space in which we

experience TV religion -- it is the same room and the same screen we

associate with sitcoms, hockey games, and cartoons. Moreover, we are able,

and we know we are able, to change channels on anything, including a prayer

that lacks pizzazz. Everything about our experience of TV tells us that it

is an entertainment medium; everything about our experience of TV religion

tells us that its producers know this at least as well as we do. After

watching many hours of Robert Schuller, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, and

others, Neil Postman reports what every sober viewer can see with her own

eyes. On TV, "everything that makes religion an historic, profound and

sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no

tradition, no theology, and, above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence.

On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana."

These developments remind us that corruptions of true religion generally

proceed in the same direction as corruptions of the general culture, and that

our contemporary religion, to borrow some words from John Henry Newman, would

therefore benefit from becoming "vastly more superstitious, more bigoted,

more gloomy, more fierce" -- not because these qualities are desirable, but

because they would serve as an antidote to our superficial cheeriness,

because they would shorten the grins on the happy faces of show-biz religion.

DERELICTS

At the heart of all such evasive maneuvers lies a more fundamental evasion,

or perhaps two others. The sinner who abandons his children, or who goes on

permanent safari within his own psyche, or who shuffles back to bed instead

of helping someone who is being stabbed in the street has turned his back not

only on his neighbor, but also on God, and even, in some way, on himself. By

refusing his calling he extracts his own core, hollowing himself out to a

shell of a human being, without weight or substance.

How so? Our neighbor is God's child just as we are: to sell a neighbor short

is therefore to sell God short and to fail a brother or sister. We ourselves

are God's children: to fail God and our brothers and sisters is to shrink our

own role in the great drama of redemption and to cut some of the lines that

attach us to its center. The gospel, after all, is a portrait of the courage

of Jesus Christ -- the one who "set his face like flint" to go to Jerusalem

and meet its terrors, the one who gathered himself to undertake there the one

piece of work that was harder than the creation of the world.

The gifts of God -- vitality, love, forgiveness, courage against evil, joy at

our depths, and everything else that flows from the terrible work of Christ --

may be found only in the company of God. And we keep company with God only

by adopting God's purposes as our own and following through on them even when

it is initially difficult or painful to do so. To place ourselves in range

of God's choicest gifts, we have to walk with God, work with God, lean on

God, cling to God, come to have the sense and feel of God, refer all things

to God. Contrary to our self-interested impulses, we have to worship God

with a disciplined spirit and an expectant heart.

Despite certain modern assumptions, life with God isn't mainly a matter of

knuckling under to our superior, the image that modernity so much detests.

We do have to trust and obey, not first of all to be "happy in Jesus," but

rather to rise to the full stature of sons and daughters, to mature into the

image of God, to grow into adult roles in the business of redeeming the

world. God wants from us not numb obedience but devoted freedom, creativity,

and energy. God wants not slaves but intelligent, grownup children who show

enthusiasm for the family business.

In short, we are to become responsible beings: ones to whom God may entrust

deep and worthy assignments, expecting us to respond by making something

significant of them -- expecting us to make something significant of our

lives themselves. No one of our lives is an accident. None of us simply

finds herself here in the world. We have been called into existence,

expected, awaited, equipped, and assigned. We have been called to undertake

the stewardship of a good creation, to create sturdy and buoyant families

that pulse with the glad give-and-take of the generations. We are expected

to show hospitality to strangers and to express gratitude to friends and

teachers. We have been assigned to seek justice for our neighbors and,

wherever we can, to relieve them from the tyranny of their suffering. Some

of us have been called, in imitation of Christ, to bear unusual suffering of

our own.

But we have also been called, and graced, to delight in our lives, to feel

their irony and angularity, to make something sturdy and even lovely of them.

For such undertakings, we have to find emotional and spiritual funds from the

very God who assigns them, turning our faces toward God's light so that we

may be drawn to it, warmed by it, bathed in it, revitalized by it. Then we

have to find our role within God's big project, the one that stretches across

the border from this life into the next. To be a responsible person is to

find one's role in the building of shalom -- the rewebbing of God, humanity,

and all creation in justice, harmony, fulfillment, and delight. To be a

responsible person is to find one's own role and then, funded by the grace of

God, to fill this role and to delight in it.

The alternative is more hopeless than we ever imagined on the rainiest Monday

morning of our lives. For when we flee responsibility, we turn our backs on

God's presence and blessing, we walk out on the one work project that will

outlast every recession, and we begin the slow process of converting

ourselves into derelicts. We "hate the light and do not come to the light."

Instead, we gather all we have and make our way toward a far country, toward

the outer darkness, toward a place of self-deprivation, a place of our own

making.

********************

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., is professor of systematic theology at Calvin

Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of "Assurances

of the Heart" (Zondervan). This article is adapted from the preface and

concluding chapter of "Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin," to

be published next month by Eerdmans.

Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

#3520

*

David, let me barge in here. A few years ago, while preaching in Westfield, NJ., I attended the New Jersey Lectures [Churches of Christ]. We had invited Elton Trueblood to speak one day, and during his oration

he was saying {I do not now remember the context], "There are no absolutes." Bill Banowsky, sitting behind him waiting to speak, spoke up and said,"Are you sure?" Classic! pdub@juno.com - J. Paul Du Bois

Can 'character education' save the public schools? Our local junior high school displays huge hallway banners reading, "Respect and Responsibility -- We Can Do It Together." Respect, this year's theme, is meant to pervade the multiethnic school. (Last year compassion and caring took the lead.)

At the annual back-to-school night, our principal took a few minutes to explain the theme to us parents, then turned the program over to the cheerleaders. They illustrated respect by lip-synching a bump-and-grind rendition of Aretha Franklin's song of the same name. At the final beat, they turned around, bent over, flipped up their cheerleader skirts, and displayed the word RESPECT, spelled out on pieces of paper pinned to their bottoms. I nudged my wife: "I don't think they've completely grasped the concept." Which is roughly what I thought when I learned of the existence of a movement in the public schools to teach children virtuous character. Are educators, I wondered, really ready for this? [used 7/7/96]

Still, the very existence of the character-education movement catches your attention. For some time, public schools have been saying that values are not part of their curriculum. It is news when a substantial group in public education says, "Yes, they are."

I have on my desk a brochure from the Character Development Foundation in Manchester, New Hampshire. Intended to attract teachers to a one-day seminar, it proclaims boldly, "You can teach kids to be smart & Good!" Good is defined (in language typical of the character-education movement) by the traits of self-control, respect, responsibility, honesty, courage, caring, courtesy, and friendship. Character education claims to teach old-fashioned values to kids who are not getting them at home.

It would be hard to be against such an undertaking. Surely it is part of a school's job to help parents turn their children into decent, responsible, moderately polite human beings. Yet it is also hard to entrust character confidently to the same people who embraced the values education of Planned Parenthood.

RIGHT AND WRONG REVISITED

In Washington, D.C., I attended a national conference put on by a coalition of organizations called the Character Education Partnership. Most of the several hundred people in attendance were schoolteachers or school administrators, cheerful and energetic people who were launching character-education programs in local schools all over the country, or thinking about it. Some very large school systems, such as those from Baltimore and Saint Louis, were represented, as were many smaller places. Vocal supporters ranged from a Democratic White House aide to a conservative Republican senator, and organizations running the gamut -- from the Rainbow Coalition to the National Association of Evangelicals.

By all the signs, character education is a grassroots movement, springing up in a hundred different places. There is, so far, no "right" way to do it. Its popularity is perhaps best shown by the fact that educational entrepreneurs are jumping in, looking for a profit. At my first seminar, I met Robert Barden, a friendly, long-haired representative of the Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina. He told me of all kinds of gimmicky presentations people had brought to his school system, including a high-energy performance from a salesman dressed -- for reasons unclear to Barden -- in a NASA jumpsuit.

I hadn't gone to many seminars before I realized that character education is not the same thing as the "discipline" parents often want in school. Character education is much more upbeat and optimistic than that. As one principal told me, "Some parents want regimentation, and this is the very opposite."

Character education does emphasize clearly defined and enforced rules, but that is just one part of it. Character education tries to form the kind of person who does what is right without his being told and when he is not being watched. Strict rules and harsh punishments may prompt compliance, these educators say, but the behavior will not necessarily carry over to another environment. As Thomas Lickona, a professor of education at the State University of New York, writes in his book "Educating for Character," "Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good -- habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action."

Character education is not shy about using the terms right and wrong. Lickona notes that just a few years ago, the question "Should the schools teach values?" would be answered by the retort "Whose values?" "With remarkable swiftness," he writes, "that has changed. Escalating moral problems in society ... are bringing about a new consensus." The "rights" and "wrongs" character educators want to bring back are consensus values, those that everybody can agree on. They ardently avoid including issues like abortion or homosexuality, putting the emphasis on teaching values that are, they claim, timeless and invariable across cultures. They talk about teaching "civic" virtues, those foundations of citizenship assumed in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Character-education advocates are not very philosophical about it, though. They want to teach the agreed-on values of the community they live in. And they assert that we agree on a lot more than we realize.

For example, Robert Barden helped launch Fayetteville, North Carolina's program. One rainy night 700 interested people gathered in a school gym to decide on a list of values to teach. Every strand of the community was represented, from fundamentalists to feminists, Barden says, and he was not overly confident about reaching consensus. But to his and everyone's surprise, the meeting unanimously agreed on seven core values. Now, he says, the community is solidly behind the program.

People launching character-education programs often express surprise at the level of unanimity they achieve. The Saint Louis PREP program (Personal Responsibility Education Process) incorporates 23 different school districts, each of which chooses its own character traits to teach. Almost 50 different terms appear on their various lists: Respect and responsibility were chosen by nearly all districts. Honesty, cooperation, self-esteem, and perseverance were claimed by more than half. Traits like abstinence, reliability, and self-control were chosen by a few. What is remarkable is not the values, but the fact that schools are excitedly talking about values at all.

The "New York Times," in an article published in January of this year, estimates that one out of every five public schools has some kind of character-education program in place. Most character-education programs are in elementary schools; some are in middle schools; and a few are in high schools. The programs vary widely. Many include schoolwide recognition for kids who behave well, a virtue-of-the-month program (usually underlined by posters in the halls), literature-based lessons that emphasize moral themes (much like William Bennett's best-selling "Book of Virtues"), training for students in conflict resolution, cooperative-learning strategies like "buddy- learning," and programs to improve behavior in the cafeteria, on the playground, and on school buses.

Any of these programs can be added on individually to a school's program, but character-education leaders emphasize that a comprehensive program is best so that the various facets complement one another. Ideally, they like to offer training to the school's teachers and staff. Behind it all is an idea of what a school should be: a community of people rather than a building, a place where one generation transmits its knowledge and its morals to the next. That, obviously, is what church schools have been trying to do from the beginning. The idea that public schools can have much the same purpose and meaning is a new, invigorating one to many educators.

BEYOND VALUES CLARIFICATION

David Brooks, head of the Jefferson Center for Character Education, described overhearing a student asking his teacher whether a certain action was wrong. "That's for you to decide for yourself," the teacher said.

"I wanted to strangle that teacher," commented Brooks.

His response is typical of people involved with character education. They are weary of teaching kids that the center of the moral universe is in their heads. The notion that schools should be value neutral irritates them. Not teaching right and wrong is a value in itself, they say.

Character education often gets confused with "values clarification," a program of the sixties that explicitly rejected teaching right and wrong. The very mention of values clarification makes character-education advocates wince. Many educators see it as emblematic of a certain style of education, emphasizing the likelihood that kids, properly stimulated to reflect, will naturally choose to become caring, respectful individuals. Values clarification usually emphasized "hard case" predicaments and theoretical situations, asking kids to assign seats on an overcrowded lifeboat rather than to deal with cheating, fighting, stealing, and name calling.

Better, but still inadequate, were moral-education programs built on Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning. "Their focus was still on 'process' -- thinking skills -- rather than moral content," writes Lickona. "Teachers still didn't see it as their role to teach or foster particular values."

That, in a nutshell, is what gives energy to character-education programs: they are rejecting relativism, returning to old-fashioned virtues, teaching right and wrong. The means are prosaic. Nobody, surely, gets excited about putting up foil stars in the office and nominating admirable students, staff, and parents for "Shining Star" awards. Yet people do get excited about character education that majors on just such programs. The character- education conference seemed overrun with idealistic men and women who love kids and want them to become decent human beings. A good number volunteered to me that they are Christians.

One seminar I attended was led by Michael Loren, a physician who had profited from a moral improvement program he found in Ben Franklin's writings. Loren had adapted the program for school children, but as he explained, had felt it necessary to change some of Franklin's 13 virtues. "I thought, 'Chastity -- how am I going to sell this to the schools?'" He had replaced chastity with friendship, and changed temperance to alertness. But Loren, it seemed, had misjudged his audience. Someone raised a hand and suggested that he could have stayed with the original words, and others muttered agreement.

White House aide William Galston came to talk to the conference. "We're winning," he said. "We're winning this battle. The need for this work can no longer be denied." He said that a great social experiment had been tried in America, "based on personal freedom checked only by law," and the evidence was in: "No government and no society has enough courts to get people to do the right thing. The issue is knowing the good, loving the good, and, I would add, having a settled habit of doing the good."

Regarding teen pregnancies, Galston said, "Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was a problem without a solution." But now, he said, they had winnowed half a dozen successful programs out of hundreds and found one common component: they treated teenage pregnancy as a psychological and moral problem, not as a technological or medical problem. He called for a "clear moral message of personal responsibility, resisting temptation and, in many cases, resisting intimidation." The audience responded positively to the mention of abstinence-based programs, though some attendees told me they had avoided adding any sex education to their curriculum for fear of controversy.

After attending the Washington conference I had no doubt that character education was a real grassroots movement, appealing to a broad range of educators. What I could not figure out was how seriously to take it. Was it like those congressional resolutions to favor a balanced budget: all sensibility, no teeth? Does it do anything for children?

[see also #3630-31]

Anyone, even a half-breed with five husbands or a thief nailed to a cross, was welcome to join Jesus' kingdom.

Because cartoons reveal a lot about the general drift of culture, I have been collecting a few around a common theme:

* The New Yorker magazine pictured a waiter in an expensive restaurant

explaining the menu to a patron: "The ones with asterisks are those

recommended by the religious right."

* A nationally syndicated political cartoonist drew a church building

displaying a "Christian Coalition" sign. A voice inside says, "Reverend

Falwell, Reverend Robertson, there's a gentleman waiting outside to see

you. He says he's not a Republican." Their reply: "Tell him to get lost!"

Outside the church stands Jesus.

* Yet another cartoon pictures a classic American church building with a sign

out front, "First Church of Anti-Clinton."

As recent elections show, the culture wars are heating up on both sides. Even as Christians feel like an embattled minority with their values under constant attack, the surrounding secular culture sees Christians as a growing threat.

I fully support the right and, indeed, the responsibility of Christians to get involved in politics. In moral crusades such as abolition, civil rights, and anti-abortion efforts, Christians have led the way. I do worry, though, about an increasing tendency to see the labels "evangelical Christian" and "Religious Right" as interchangeable. The gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform.

People in Jesus' time who looked to him as their political savior were constantly befuddled by his choice of companions. He became known as a friend of tax collectors, a group clearly identified with the foreign exploiters. Though he denounced the religious system of his day, he treated a leader like Nicodemus with respect, and though he spoke against the dangers of money and violence, he showed love and compassion toward a rich young ruler and a Roman centurion.

In short, Jesus honored the dignity of men and women whether he agreed with them or not. Anyone, even a half-breed with five husbands or a thief nailed to a cross, was welcome to join his kingdom. The person was more important than any category or label.

I feel convicted by this quality of Jesus every time I get involved in a cause I strongly believe in. How easy it is to join the politics of polarization, to find myself shouting across the picket lines at the "enemy" on the other side. How hard it is to remember that the kingdom of God calls me to love the woman who has just emerged from the abortion clinic (and, yes, even her doctor), the promiscuous person who is dying of aids, the wealthy landowner who is exploiting God's creation. If I have trouble loving such people, I need to ask if I have understood Jesus' gospel.

A political movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, pronounces judgment; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across lines, transcends distinctions, and dispenses grace. If my activism drives out such love, I betray his kingdom.

I recently attended a play based on stories from a support group comprising people with aids. The theater director decided to stage the play after hearing a local minister state that he celebrated each time he read an obituary of a young, single man, believing each death to be yet another sign of God's disapproval. Increasingly, I fear, the church is viewed as an enemy of sinners.

How does one hold to high standards of moral purity while, at the same time, showing grace to those who fail to meet those standards? Christian history offers few facsimiles of the pattern Jesus laid down. We give lip service to "hate the sin while loving the sinner," but how well do we practice this principle?

The early church began well, placing a high premium on moral purity. Baptismal candidates had to undergo long periods of instruction, and church discipline was rigorously enforced. Yet even pagan observers were attracted to the way Christians cared for each other and devoted themselves to the sick and the poor.

A major change took place with the emperor Constantine, who first legalized Christianity and made it a state-subsidized religion. At the time, his reign appeared to be the faith's greatest triumph: the emperor was now using state funds to build churches and sponsor theological conferences, rather than persecuting Christians for not worshiping him. Sadly, the triumph did not come without cost. The state began appointing bishops and other church officers, and a hierarchy grew up that neatly replicated the hierarchy of the empire itself.

Ever since Constantine, the church has faced the temptation of becoming the "morals police" of society. The Catholic church in the Middle Ages, Calvin's Geneva, Cromwell's England, Winthrop's New England, the Russian Orthodox Church -- each of these has attempted to legislate a form of Christian morality, and each has in its own way found it hard to communicate grace.

I realize, as I reflect on the life of Jesus, how far we have come from the divine balance he set out for us. In the sermons and writings of contemporary evangelicals, I sometimes detect more of Constantine than of Jesus. The man from Nazareth was a sinless friend of sinners, a pattern that should convict us on both counts.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

#3981

*

Honesty does not come from out of nowhere. It is a product of your moral convictions. But what do you do when your convictions are challenged? It is faith that gives you the strength to go on believing. Though I am a Christian, I respect the religions of others, and I think that they play a vital role in our society. But I don't support convictions or cults that are negative and lead only to hatred and fanaticism. Faith must be positive.

Live your faith. Don't wear it on your sleeve; roll up both sleeves and do something about it.