“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
Olympic officials, politicians, corporate managers, college professors who want to impress their classes, philandering husbands, even teenagers who give parents accounts of their whereabouts on occasion all have one thing in common. They lie with impunity. Whoa! That word is no longer politically acceptable. The term misinformation is preferred to dishonesty, or we just suggest someone “may have put a spin on the truth.” Sociologist David Blankenhorn says, “What disturbs me is people are now trying to make distinctions between types of lies, some are pardonable, and some are not. The act of lying is not enough for censure” (Mary McNamara, “The Truth About Lying,” L.A. Times, August 27, 1998, E-6).
What some think of as little white lies, the slight bending of the truth, the omission of certain details or the padding of others, has become so common today that even numbers of Christians see no moral obligation to being completely honest and forthright. So where does this leave us? It leaves us with scandals in Olympic Figure Staking, and major corporations in deep distress because the scrambling of truth destroys the foundation of trust and integrity the business was built upon, and the dishonesty of public officials makes us wonder, “Whom can you trust to tell the truth? Anyone?” And the collapse of society as we know it looms on the horizon.
OK, that’s an extreme view, right? Not in the least. History bears out that frightening reality. It’s also the life-theme of social ethicist Michael Josephson, who has taken his crusade to business, education, and government. As a renegade in the ‘60s, Josephson condemned almost everybody in public life. His training as an attorney prompted him to look for the loopholes, the ethical contradictions of people, which were not very hard to find.
Eventually, he rejected the relativism of the ‘60s and began to realize that society is facing a moral crisis. No longer is something right or wrong, moral or immoral. We have become amoral, which means about anything goes; and when every person does right in his own eyes, there is no foundation for integrity. The result? “Drugs, violence, sexual laxity, family disintegration, declining civility, surging prison populations, and civil noninvolvement.”
Josephson sees sports, though, as the window for kids’ attention, and he spent the latter third of his life preaching and teaching ethics and morality. He believes there are six pillars of character: caring, fairness, responsibility, trustworthiness, respect, and citizenship. He believes these are bulletproof and universal, and when he is challenged, he retorts, “Which of these do you not believe in?” (Lee Green, “The Indisputable Mr. Scruples,” L.A. Times Magazine, March 10, 2002, pp. 11-13).
Now, no thinking individual would deny there has been a moral drift in society in the last half of the twentieth century, one that does threaten the future of society as we know it; but the question is how do we turn it around?
Morality is not legislated, it’s personal, stemming from your views of right and wrong, and who is to decide what is right or wrong. Lacking this we drift with the changing cultural tides, without an understanding of what constitutes a straight line, an honest response, and faithfulness to our marriage vows. That’s where God and religion come into the picture. Long ago the prophet said, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
Resource reading: Micah 6:6-8.
