Morals

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.

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.

When government officials in the state of Georgia decided to streamline the licensing process by allowing drivers to upload their own photos, they didn’t anticipate the unintended consequences. But recently, they decided to be a bit more, er, explicit in their instructions.

A recent Facebook post from the Georgia Department of Driver Services read, “Attention, lovely people of the digital era. Please take pictures with your clothes on when submitting them for your Digital Driver’s License and IDs.”

Because social media is often a domain for memes and practical jokes, people questioned whether the need for such clarification was warranted, but officials insisted they had indeed received a significant number of photos where the subjects were in various stages of undress. “It’s real, and it’s insane,” read one official response.

Still, the people responded with jokes and asked for more instructions: One wrote, “How much clothing? I feel like y’all are asking a lot in a vague way.” Others said, “I have questions … Enough to raid the fridge at midnight? Enough for a trip to Walmart? Brooks Brothers’ suit?”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our social media age people expose every detail of life for wide consumption, but that's not how God intended us to live. Some things should remain private.

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.

Seventeen percent of evangelical women between the ages of 15 and 44 have had sex with another woman, according to data gathered by the CDC and analyzed by Grove City College sociology professor David Ayers. Among evangelical men, the percentage who’ve had sex with other men hovers around five percent.

Changing attitudes toward same-sex relationships—in the US generally and among older and younger evangelicals specifically—have been well documented. The same-sex experiences and orientation of younger evangelicals, however, have not been widely reported.

The CDC surveyed about 11,300 people about sex, sexual health, and attitudes and preferences. More than 1,800 of those people were evangelical, as defined by their denominational affiliation. Looking at that subset, Ayers was able to determine that roughly one percent of evangelical women identify as lesbian and about five percent say they are bisexual. Among evangelical girls aged 15 to 17, more than 10 percent identify as bi.

Ayers asks,

Why are so many younger evangelical females today open to sex with other women? The simple biblical teaching that all sex outside of marriage between one man and one woman is sinful is hardly secret or subtle …. And yet, among younger people especially, it has been quite a few years since biblical beliefs and practices have been the norm among evangelicals.

Modern society has made sex easy and emptied it of its God given meaning. Sex has been redefined as a self-determined commodity that results in frustration and despair.

Author Jonathan Grant argues that this has occurred in five phases:

1. The separation of sex from procreation (through contraception)

2. Then the separation of sex from marriage (with the rise of cohabitation)

3. Then the separation of sex from partnership (as sex becomes temporary and recreational)

4. Next the separation of sex from another person (through the explosion of online pornography)

5. Finally, the separation of sex from our own bodies (through questioning the very categories of “male” and “female.”)

In making sex so easy and individualistic, we have cheapened it and thereby emptied it of its power. We tried to make it simpler, and we ended up making it smaller.

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.

In a blog post, author Jonathan Van Maren writes:

It wasn’t until I was doing the research for my book The Culture War that I began to come across analyses highlighting a darker aspect of the TV show Friends legacy that I’d never considered. Ashley McGuire of the Institute for Family Studies wrote, “In reality, Friends was a decade-long Hollywood experiment in testing the moral limits of Americans and desensitizing viewers to harmful sexual behavior … the show made a punch line out of casual sex and hookups and portrayed them as consequence-free. No STDS, no trips to the abortion clinic, no staring at their phones waiting for the one-night stand to call. Just a good laugh over the last condom in the apartment and a porn marathon.”

TV sitcoms tell stories; stories have storytellers. The cast and crew of Friends wanted to push the envelope, knowing that TV is a frequently a feedback loop that not only reflects culture but also drives, shapes, and informs it. Friends was the second show on TV to depict a same-sex wedding, decades before the landmark Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges and a year before Ellen DeGeneres famously came out. Ross Geller’s wife leaves him for a woman and marries her—he walks her down the aisle after her bigoted and homophobic father declines to do so. NBC was braced for a backlash when the episode aired, expecting thousands of angry phone calls. They got only two.

When someone stands up for his/her beliefs in the face of adversity, they are called a “moral rebel.” A prominent example is the case of the sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. He seemed too big to fall until actors Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan courageously came forward, risking their careers if unsuccessful. Moral rebels also confront a bully or correct a friend who uses a racist slur.

Secular psychologists say moral rebels have high self-esteem and are confident of their own “judgment, values and ability and thus that they have a social responsibility to share those beliefs.” The Christian outlook says “Exactly!”

The moral rebel isn’t afraid of occasional embarrassment or a lack of social harmony. They are far less concerned about conforming to the crowd. So, when they have to choose between fitting in and doing the right thing, they will probably choose to do what they see as right. The Christian outlook says “Exactly!”

A moral rebel needs to have grown up seeing moral courage in action, from parents but also peers and community leaders. He or she also needs to feel genuine empathy. Spending time with and really getting to know people from different backgrounds helps. White high school students who had more contact with people from different ethnic groups have higher levels of empathy and see people from different minority groups in more positive ways.

Those who have experienced the pain of rejection are less likely to be moral rebels. They need to fit in. For the Christian a close relationship with God and good fellowship mitigates against this.

Throughout history, human beings have always attempted to regulate behavior in order for people in a society to live peacefully and productively. Religious and secular values, societal laws, education, and politics have all been used to motivate people to adopt the better sides of our nature. The great atheist nation China has begun to implement a bold new plan to foster a more moral and industrious society.

The government has begun evaluating and ranking every citizen based on their behavior. As of 2020 all citizens have a new identity number and a social-credit record. Because of widespread concerns by Chinese citizens of the prevalence of corruption, scams, and scandals, the Communist Party has developed a system that would “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

Good behavior is rewarded while bad is punished. “Rewards for high social credit—in other words, being deemed trustworthy—may include perks like free access to gym facilities, public transportation discounts, and shorter wait times in hospitals. Punishments for low social credit could include restrictions on renting an apartment, buying a home, or enrolling a child in one’s preferred school.”

Psychologists warn of the downsides: “People whose futures are tied to the score may make cold calculations about friends’ likely numbers in an effort to make sure no one becomes a drag on their or their family’s prospects. And they may decide against friending some individuals—or whole groups of people altogether.”

There is a movement within evangelicalism that is trying to argue that the Bible affirms, or at least does not prohibit, same-sex sexual relationships. But renowned progressive New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson disagrees with this approach, even though he himself also holds an affirming position.

He writes, “I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says.”

He continues:

I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While we disagree with Johnson’s conclusions, we have to admire his intellectual integrity. On this subject of same-sex sexual relationships, the Bible is clear: “We know what the text says.” The only question is whether that is the authority one chooses to live by.

Robert Coles, a former professor at Harvard published an article titled “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character.” The piece was about “the task of connecting intellect to character.” He adds, “This task is daunting.”

His essay was occasioned by an encounter with one of his students over the moral insensitivity—is it hard for him to say “immoral behavior of other students, some of the best and brightest at Harvard.” This student was a young woman of “a Midwestern, working class background” where, as is well known, things like “right answers” and “ideology” remain strong. She cleaned student rooms to help pay her way through the university.

Again and again, she reported to Coles, people who were in classes with her treated her ungraciously because of her lower economic position, without simple courtesy and respect, and often were rude and sometimes crude to her. She was repeatedly propositioned for sex by one young student in particular as she went about her work. He was a man with whom she had had two “moral reasoning” courses, in which he excelled and received the highest of grades.

This pattern of treatment led her to quit her job and leave school—and to have something like an exit interview with Coles. She reviewed not only the behavior of her fellow students, but also the long list of highly educated people who have perpetrated the atrocities for which the twentieth century is famous. She concluded by saying to him, “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?”

Rolling Stone magazine reported Angels in America actor Andrew Garfield is trying to live his life as openly as possible--including when it comes to his sexuality. Garfield explained that while he currently identifies as a heterosexual man, he is not shutting out the possibility of being attracted to men in the future.

He said:

Up until this point, I've only been sexually attracted to women. My stance toward life, though, is that I always try to surrender to the mystery of not being in charge. I think most people – we're intrinsically trying to control our experience here, and manage it, and put walls around what we are and who we are. I want to know as much of the garden as possible before I pass. I have an openness to any impulses that may arise within me at any time.

You don’t have to “know” a rule to know that you should be following it. Take, for example, the rule of ablaut reduplication. Chances are, you have never heard of it, but you follow it all the same. Writer Mark Forsyth explains in his book Elements of Eloquence:

There are rules that everybody obeys without noticing … Have you ever heard that patter-pitter of tiny feet? Or the dong-ding of a bell? Or hop-hip music? That’s because, when you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O. So politicians may flip-flop, but they can never flop-flip. It’s tit-for-tat, never tat-for-tit … If you do things any other way, they sound very, very odd indeed.

Teachers do not have to teach this rule in grammar school. But it is known all the same. Even when we don’t officially know the rules, we instinctively know we should follow them and can immediately identify when something is wrong.

Possible Preaching Angle: Conscience; Morals; Law of God – The same is true spiritually for each person on earth. God has “written the requirements of the law on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness” (Rom. 2:15). Though people try to ignore it or silence it, each one has a conscience that speaks of God’s rules.