Morality

Over the past few years, Christians have often been warned that we're "on the wrong side of history" in regards to same-sex marriage. Robert P. George, a law professor from Princeton and co-author of What Is Marriage, said:

I do not believe in historical inevitability …. No good cause is permanently lost. So, my advice to supporters of marriage is to stay the course. Do not be discouraged. Do what the pro-life movement did when, in the 1970s, critics said, 'The game is over; you lost; in a few years abortion will be socially accepted and fully integrated into American life ….' Speak the truth in season and out of season …. Keep challenging the arguments of your opponents, always with civility, always in a gracious and loving spirit, but firmly.

If you are told that you are on 'the wrong side of history,' remember that there is no such thing. History is not a deity that sits in judgment. It has no power to determine what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong. History doesn't have 'wrong' and 'right' sides. Truth does. So, my message to everyone is that our overriding concern should be to be on the right side of truth.

In a 2022 behavioral study, researchers explored the connection between anger and moral courage. While participants were supposedly waiting for the study to start, they overheard two experimenters plan, and then execute, the embezzlement of money from the project fund. (The embezzlement was staged.) The participants had various opportunities to intervene, including directly confronting the experimenters, involving a fellow participant, or reporting to a superior.

Depending on your perspective of the events of the last few years, you may or may not be surprised to learn that only 27% of participants intervened. (Other experiments confirm the natural human inclination towards passivity). Interestingly, researchers found that the more an individual reported feeling angry, the more likely they were to intervene, showing that anger can serve as an important catalyst for moral courage.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Often the anger of man does not achieve God’s purposes, but there is a place for “righteous anger” at what is wrong and evil.

Twenty years ago, at the moment of its IPO announcement, the most powerful company in the world declared that “Don’t be evil” would be the orchestrating principle of its executive strategy. How did Google intend not to be evil? By doing “good things” for the world, its IPO document explained, “even if we forgo some short-term gains.”

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO at the time, had some private doubts: as he would later explain in an interview to NPR, “There’s no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” But Schmidt came to believe that the absence of an authoritative definition was in fact a virtue, since any employee could exercise a veto over any decision that was felt not to involve “doing good things.” It took 10 years for the company’s executives to realize that the motto was a recipe for total, corporate paralysis, and quietly retired it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible offers a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to business ethics than Google's original motto, providing guidance on positive actions rather than just avoiding a vague negative motto (Micah 6:8).

Jana Monroe had a distinguished 22-year career in the FBI, including in the FBI Behavioral Science Unit. She knows in depth the disturbing depths of human depravity that FBI agents must cope with. In her book, "Hearts of Darkness,” Monroe covers a variety of topics and issues, including her dismay over the often-light sentences given to guilty lawyers, judges, and cops.

For a brief period of her time, Monroe was placed in charge of the FBI’s Financial Institution Fraud department in San Diego. They had received reliable information that there was blatant public corruption in the local courts. After two years, the tireless work of FBI agents and federal prosecutors resulted in the indictments of two local Superior Court judges and a prominent local attorney.

However, Monroe was deeply disappointed by the lenient punishments. One judge and the lawyer received 41 months in prison, and the second judge received 33 months. Monroe writes:

When those sentences were handed down, I immediately thought of all the people doing hard time in serious prisons for being stupid enough or otherwise desperate enough to rob at gunpoint a convenience store where a good haul might be a hundred bucks.

No matter how the money gets stolen - at the point of a gun or by cooking the books - there are repercussions that the law is too ready to ignore when the crook works in a paneled corner office and belongs to all the right clubs.

I strongly believe in ethics. Those to whom law enforcement and justice have been entrusted - police officers, FBI agents, district attorneys, especially judges - are obligated (serve) with integrity and honesty. When they don't, they deserve no better treatment than a guy who tries to knock over a 7-Eleven.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Monroe is right. Lawyers, judges, and law enforcement officers represent government, law and order, righteousness, and indirectly God (Rom. 13:1-7), and must therefore be held to high standards when they blatantly disobey laws and are guilty of crimes.

Americans' trust in government has hit an all-time low. But that lack of trust hasn't always been a part of the American experience. A chart published by the Pew Research Center shows the dramatic decline.

For example, in 1964, 77% of Americans said they trusted the government. Then the collapse began during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, which overlapped with the Vietnam War. The 1970s—thanks to Vietnam and Watergate—sped up the loss of faith in the government (62%).

After a slight resurgence during the 1980s, the trend line for the past few decades is quite clear. With the exception of relatively brief spikes that overlap with the first Gulf War and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the number of people who trust the government has been steadily declining.

By 2024, only 22% of people said they trusted by government.

The collapse of our collective trust in the government—and, by extension, its ability or willingness to help solve problems—has massive reverberations for politicians. They are considered less-than-honest brokers by large numbers of the American public, meaning that everything they say or do is viewed with suspicion. Sadly, this lack of trust is the new normal.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) God is the source of our help, hope, and trust. (2) Our need to pray for our government and to be salt and light in our community.

Editor’s Note: You can view all 66 years of the survey results here.

Generation Z isn’t convinced monogamy is the best relationship structure, and more than half of them are considering relationship styles long considered taboo in American culture.

New data from Ashley Madison, the dating website built for affairs, found Gen Z was over represented among new signups to the site, regardless of if they were married or not. In 2022 alone more than 1.8 million Gen Z joined (of which more than one million were from the U.S.) representing 40% of all signups.

More and more Gen Zers, like reddit user r/Marmatus, are sharing their experience of having non-monogamous relationships. Marmatus wrote:

It’s nice having the freedom to explore your sexuality safely and ethically with other people. The thought of going an entire lifetime only ever having one sexual partner is not something I’d choose for myself. There are only so many experiences that one person can give you.

Ashley Madison’s Chief Strategy Officer Paul Keable said he thinks what makes Gen Z different when it comes to non-monogamy is the way this generation understands shame. He mentioned the prevalence of premarital sex–something that’s most Americans feel is no longer morally wrong. Studies have found that premarital sex is practically universal in America with 95% of survey respondents saying they had sex before they were married.

Leanne Yau, a relationship expert said,

What is it about exclusivity that is so precious to society, particularly given that infidelity is extremely common in monogamous relationships? I think the normalization of queer rights and kink becoming more mainstream and people exploring their desires has opened people to the transformative power of exploring your sexuality.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sin has consequences, as God’s Word so clearly says. Any generation who thinks that it can live in defiance of God’s standards is headed for destruction. Both Sodom and the world of Noah’s day learned this difficult lesson by way of God’s judgment.

In his article “How America Got Mean,” David Brooks laments what he calls “the de-moralization of American culture.” Brooks notes that “over the course of the 20th century, words relating to morality appeared less and less frequently in the nation’s books:

According to a 2012 paper, usage of a cluster of words related to being virtuous also declined significantly. Among them were bravery (which dropped by 65 percent), gratitude (58 percent), and humbleness (55 percent). For decades, researchers have asked incoming college students about their goals in life. In 1967, about 85 percent said they were strongly motivated to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life”; by 2000, only 42 percent said that. Being financially well off became the leading life goal; by 2015, 82 percent of students said wealth was their aim.

Set adrift into the vast expanse of amorality, where do people turn? Where within modern society can one find a moral compass that imbues life with meaning? For some, the overwhelming choice made is politics, which, like any idol, consumes everything it touches.

If you put people in a moral vacuum, they will seek to fill it with the closest thing at hand. Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized.

According to research by Ryan Streeter, at the American Enterprise Institute, lonely young people are seven times more likely to say they are active in politics than young people who aren’t lonely. For people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: The line between good and evil runs not down the middle of every human heart, but between groups. Life is a struggle between us, the forces of good, and them, the forces of evil.

If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and lawless disorder through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination. Sure, you’ve left the moral vacuum—but you’ve landed in the pulverizing destructiveness of moral war.

Possible Preaching Angle

1) Church, conflict in; Disagreements; Could we retitle this illustration “How the Church Got Mean?” Have church members allowed taking political sides to divide their unity in Christ? Have we changed our cornerstone from Christ to a political leader we hope can set America right? 2) Arguments; Politics - When the moral anchor of biblical Christianity is abandoned then the tyranny of politics can take its place. People begin to fight political battles with outrage, exaggeration, and censorship. But life is far more than politics and perhaps the revolutionary message of Christianity can still be found by the walking wounded of the world.

In an issue of CT magazine, author Jordan Monge shares her journey from atheism to faith in Christ. She writes:

I don’t know when I first became a skeptic. It must have been around age 4, when my mother found me arguing with another child at a birthday party: “But how do you know what the Bible says is true?” By age 11, my atheism was widely known in my middle school and my Christian friends in high school avoided talking to me about religion because they anticipated that I would tear down their poorly constructed arguments. And I did.

Jordan arrived at Harvard in 2008 where she met another student, Joseph Porter, who wrote an essay for Harvard’s Christian journal defending God’s existence. Jordan critiqued the article and began a series of arguments with him. She had never met a Christian who could respond to her most basic questions, such as, “How does one understand the Bible’s contradictions?”

Joseph didn’t take the easy way out by replying “It takes faith.” Instead, he prodded Jordan on how inconsistent she was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories.

Finding herself defenseless, Jordan took a seminar on metaphysics. By God’s providence her atheist professor assigned a paper by C. S. Lewis that resolved the Euthyphro dilemma, declaring, “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.”

A Catholic friend gave her J. Budziszewski’s book Ask Me Anything, which included the Christian teaching that “love is a commitment of the will to the true good of the other person.” The Cross no longer seemed a grotesque symbol of divine sadism, but a remarkable act of love.

At the same time, Jordan had begun to read through the Bible and was confronted by her sin. She writes:

I was painfully arrogant, prone to fits of rage, unforgiving, unwaveringly selfish, and I had passed sexual boundaries that I’d promised I wouldn’t …. Yet I could do nothing to right these wrongs. The Cross looked like the answer to an incurable need. When I read the Crucifixion scene in the Book of John for the first time, I wept.

So, she plunged headlong into devouring books from many perspectives, but nothing compared to the rich tradition of Christian intellect. As she read the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and Lewis, she knew that the only reasonable course of action was to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If I wanted to continue forward in this investigation, I couldn’t let it be just an intellectual journey. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). I could know the truth only if I pursued obedience first.” I then committed my life to Christ by being baptized on Easter Sunday, 2009.

God revealed himself through Scripture, prayer, friendships, and the Christian tradition whenever I pursued him faithfully. I cannot say for certain where the journey ends, but I have committed to follow the way of Christ wherever it may lead. When confronted with the overwhelming body of evidence I encountered, when facing down the living God, it was the only rational course of action.

Editor’s Note: Jordan Monge is a writer, philosopher, and tutor. She is also a regular contributor to the magazine Fare Forward and for Christianity Today.

In the summer of 2023, Heather Beville felt something she hadn’t in a long time: a hug from her sister Jessica, who died at age 30 from cancer. In a dream, “I hugged her and I could feel her, even though I knew in my logic that she was dead.”

Like fellow Christians, Beville is sure that death is not the end. But she’s also among a significant number who say they have continued to experience visits from deceased loved ones here on earth.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 42 percent of self-identified evangelicals said they had been visited by a loved one who had passed away. Rates were even higher among Catholics and Black Protestants, two-thirds of whom reported such experiences.

Interactions with the dead fall into a precarious supernatural space. Staunch secularists will say they’re impossible and must be made up. Bible-believing Christians may be wary of the spiritual implications of calling on ghosts from beyond. Yet more than half of Americans believe a dead family member has come to them in a dream or some other form.

Researchers say most people who report “after-death communications” find the interactions to be comforting, not haunting or scary. Professor Julie Exline says, “They’re often very valuable for people. They give them hope that their loved one is still there and still connected to them. These experiences help people, even if they don’t know what to make of them.”

There are several factors that come into play for a person to turn to supernatural explanations for what they’ve experienced. Prior belief in God, angels, spirits, or ghosts, combined with a belief that these beings actually do communicate with people in the world is one condition. Another factor is the relationship between a person and their loved one—“the need for relational closure” amid prolonged grief. And women are more likely to report the phenomena.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The spiritual realm described in Scripture comes with strong warnings. The text repeatedly advises against calling on spirits outside of God himself, with several Old Testament verses specifically addressing interactions with the dead (“necromancy” in some translations). Deuteronomy 18, for example, decries anyone who “is a medium or spiritist or who consults with the dead” as “detestable to the Lord” (vv. 11, 12).

Pastors can attest that grieving Christian spouses occasionally believe they have seen shadows or objects in the home moving after the death of a loved one. We can rest on the absolute truth of God’s Word that “absent from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). At death, believers are immediately in the presence of the Lord and not wandering the earth (Phil. 1:23).

Jeopardy fans were furious after the contestants on an episode failed to answer a “simple” question about the Lord's Prayer during the game. Players Joe, Laura, and Suresh were unable to give the correct answer to former host Mayim Bialik's question about filling in the blank: “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, ____ be thy name,’" Bialik said. The group made an error of biblical proportions by not even attempting to guess the correct answer as the stage remained silent until Bialik gave the answer.

But the saddest thing happened over the next day or two on X. Jeopardy fans and lots of former or current church-going people started piling on with anger and shock at the contestants' inability to answer the question. Here are some of the posts:

“That’s ‘hallowed,’ you heathens!”

“Hey, Jeopardy geniuses … It's HALLOWED. Sheesh, what a sad world we live in.”

“OOF. Watching @Jeopardy tonight, and none of the contestants knew the words 'hallowed be thy name' in the Lord's Prayer,” one user lamented.

“You gotta be kidding me no one knew ‘hallowed.’”

“Screaming Hallowed! They didn't know the ‘Our Father.’ #Jeopardy,” wrote another.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Condemnation; Mocking - Rather than mock and condemn, it would have been much more fruitful to gently instruct those who don’t know the content, context, or relevance of the Lord’s Prayer. 2) Bible; Morality; Knowledge - Is it any wonder that the world is in the moral state that it is? People are perishing and being misled because of an ignorance of God’s Word (Hos. 4:6).

Ride sharing apps (like Uber and Lyft) ratings have become almost meaningless. A recent report says, “Confusion over what constitutes 5-star behavior for certain services, combined with the guilt of potentially hurting someone’s livelihood, has people defaulting to perfect scores. Ratings padding is particularly rampant for services involving personal interactions. Everyone is ‘above average’ on some apps—way, way above.”

A customer named Mike Johnson has endured some awkward Uber rides. He once held his nose throughout a trip because the driver was carrying chopped-up Durian—the world’s smelliest fruit. Another time, he was stuck in the back seat while a driver bickered with her boyfriend. Yet another driver tried to sell him a Ponzi scheme. He rated each one five out of five stars.

Johnson explained: “They all seemed like nice people. I didn’t want them to be kicked off the app over my bad rating,” the 33-year-old New Yorker said. “Isn’t 5 stars, like, the norm?”

Ratings are so inflated that Lyft drivers whose scores dip below 4.8 out of 5 stars are asked to boost their performance. Drivers under 4.6 risk getting deactivated.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) God is not afraid to tell us the truth about our sin. 2) Christians should resist this rating inflation and be willing to speak the truth in love to one another.

Just how bad are the polls for those in political office right now? It turns out more people are putting their faith in the dead than in living politicians. A new survey finds there are more people who believe in ghosts than trust their government.

The poll of nearly 1,000 people in the United Kingdom, found that 50% believe in the existence of ghosts. Meanwhile, just one in five say they have faith in the government. It also turns out that more than twice as many people believe in ghosts than trust in the media.

A belief in ghosts (50%) is more common than believing in astrology (23%) or magic (12%). In fact, 18% of respondents say they’ve had contact with an actual ghost. Luckily, many of these are not the horror movie kind of encounters—as only 23% say they’re afraid of these spirits.

When it comes to religion, Catholics are more likely to say they believe in ghosts (64%) than Protestants (53%), agnostics (42%), and atheists (37%). Although atheists are the least likely to fear a spooky ghost (17%), just one in three Catholics said the same—pointing to most people actually having a positive opinion of these supernatural visitors.

Interestingly, one in three young adults in Gen Z say they’re afraid of ghosts, making them the most fearful of any generation in the poll. Just 16 percent of baby boomers say ghosts creep them out.

Washington Post columnist Ty Burr believes the current American political climate is characterized by a sense of crass rule-breaking and flagrant boorishness. Such repugnant behavior was once regarded as an unfortunate side effect of political polarization. Now it is not only well within the mainstream but considered necessary to rally one’s political base. And Burr traces the genesis of this degeneration not to a particular political scandal, but to the release of a movie.

Burr wrote in a recent Post editorial: “Notions of entertainment and personal behavior were turned on their heads. Where audiences had once valued class, they now reveled in the joyously crass.”

Burr is, of course, referring to Animal House, the 1978 collegiate comedy depicting a fictional frat house. Starring John Belushi, Donald Sutherland and a host of other famous names, it elevated the previously unknown National Lampoon magazine into a hitmaking brand for film comedies.

Burr says he saw a preview screening of the film at Dartmouth College, where screenwriter Chris Miller was in attendance. Miller was a Dartmouth alum, and had based his film on the real-life antics of his fraternity, Alpha Delta. Burr writes:

That night, you could feel the collective mood swing like a compass needle toward a new north. The movie fed into and articulated a growing frustration with an overbearing political correctness, the fear that you couldn’t say what you wanted to without stepping on someone’s toes. Which, of course, made a lot of people want to step on someone’s — anyone’s — toes.

Burr says after the film’s end, he quickly saw its prevailing attitude reflected in the raucous student response to it:

Still burned onto my retinas is the image of screenwriter Miller being carried down Fraternity Row on the shoulders of a mob of cheering students, their faces flushed with happiness. What were they celebrating? Nothing less than the permission to indulge their privileges without guilt or responsibility.

Possible Preaching Angle:

All of us are influenced by the media that we consume and the truth--or lack thereof--within it. Let us be discerning in both our consumption and our production, of the messages we receive, counter, and amplify, so that God's character is revealed through our conduct.

According to a 2022 poll, most Americans believe the United States Congress is morally corrupt. Sixty-three percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, told pollsters they believe the House and Senate are immoral.

Nearly 9 out of 10 said morality is important to them, but at the same time, only a few people prefer a moral candidate to an effective one. The poll asked Americans:

Would You Prefer a Candidate Who Is More Moral but Less Effective?

26% More moral

19% More effective

40% Neither

15% Don’t know

Past generations of Americans viewed God as the basis of truth and morality. Not anymore. A new study shows that most Americans reject any absolute boundaries regarding their morality, with 58% of adults surveyed believing instead that moral truth is up to the individual to decide.

According to findings from pollster Dr. George Barna, belief in absolute moral truth rooted in God’s Word is rapidly eroding among all American adults. This is regardless if they are churched or unchurched, within every political segment, and within every age group. Even among those who do identify God as the source of truth, there is substantial rejection of any absolute standard of morality in American culture.

Perhaps most stunning, this latest research shows a rejection of God’s truth and absolute moral standards by American Christians, those seen as most likely to hold traditional standards of morality. Evangelicals, defined as believing the Bible to be the true, reliable Word of God, are just as likely to reject absolute moral truth (46%). And only a minority of born-again Christians—43%—still embrace absolute truth.

The study found that the pull of secularism is especially strong among younger Americans, with those under age 30 much less likely to select God as the basis of truth (31%), and more likely to say that moral standards are decided by the individual (60%).

As Jeff Meyers writes in his new book, Truth Changes Everything, “We live in a world where we cannot go a single day without hearing that truths are based on how we see things rather than on what exists to be seen. Truth is not ‘out there’ to be found; it is ‘in here’ to be narrated.”

You can read the full study from Arizona Christian University here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

A biblical worldview rests firmly on the idea that Truth can be known. It says that Truth isn't constructed by our experiences and feelings. Rather, a biblical worldview says that Truth exists. It is a person. It is Jesus (John 14:6).

When people refer to political corruption in American politics as a cesspool, it’s usually just a metaphor. But in one recent case, the term could be taken literally.

In early April, former Hawaii state representative Ty Cullen was sentenced to two years in prison for taking bribes in order to influence legislation restricting the use of toxic cesspools in properties around the state.

Industry analysts believe that cesspools proliferated in Hawaii during the latter half of the twentieth century. This was when infrastructure investments in things like sewer lines were outpaced by the money to be made through rapid development. New cesspools have been banned since 2016.

Cullen was charged because of his involvement in legislation that affected cesspool conversions, which are costly construction upgrades. The news has caused consternation among political players, but rejoicing from environmental advocates. Stuart Coleman, director of Wastewater Alternatives said, “We were joking that, ‘Oh, now these politicians have given cesspools a bad name.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When public servants behave dishonorably, they confer dishonor on the offices that they hold, and people lose faith in local authorities. In the same way, servants of God cause a loss of trust when they behave dishonestly.

Vicky Umodu needed furniture for her new home, so she responded to a Craigslist ad for a matching set of two sofas and a chair, all available for free. Upon arrival for pick up, Umodu was told that the owner of the furniture had recently passed, and the family was trying to quickly liquidate everything on the property. Umodu said, “I just moved in, and I don't have anything in my house. I was so excited, so we picked it up and brought it in.”

It wasn’t long before she discovered something inside one of the couch cushions. Rather than discovering a heating pad, which was her initial assumption, Umodu found cash. A lot of it. "I was just telling my son, 'Come, come, come!' I was screaming, 'This is money! I need to call the guy.'"

All told, there were several envelopes with over $36,000 in cash, which she promptly reported to her contact from the ad. Grateful for her honesty, the family gave Umodu $2,200 as reward, which she used to purchase a new refrigerator. She said, “I was not expecting a dime from him, I was not.”

A video from content creators Aperture gives a brief overview of the basic questions people ask about personal morality: "If I steal from the rich and use it to feed the poor, is that good or is that bad? If I drive over the speed limit to get my sick child to the hospital, is that good or is that bad? What is good? And what is bad? What is morality, and do you, as a person, have morals?"

Morality is what society treats as right and acceptable. They’re the standards of thoughts and actions that everyone in a group agrees to follow so they can all live peacefully. Stealing is against the law. However, a lot of people would consider stealing a piece of bread to save a homeless person from dying of hunger, moral. Driving over the speed limit is a crime, but when it could help save the life of the child in the backseat of your car, it becomes the most noble of actions.

The authors of the video say,

As humans evolve and learn new things, our morals change. This is why morality isn’t stagnant. It evolves with time. Think about issues like pre-marital sex, same-sex relationships, abortion, marijuana use. These are all things that were considered immoral long ago. But today, society is beginning to accept all of these as moral. We’ve learned to be tolerant of people regardless of their personal beliefs or preferences. And while not everyone might agree to all of these things or practice it themselves, things seem to have flipped. ...

You can watch the video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society is changing, but in the wrong direction. What was once immoral, is now considered moral as long “as no one is hurt.” But God’s law never changes because it is based on his holy nature. Society can attempt to redefine right and wrong, but that doesn’t change God’s law.