Faith and the Search For Morality

People who have a strong faith—you know, religious God-fearing people—confound me. They talk a good game, but when life comes around they seem that much more susceptible to temptations. Is their devotion because they recognize that weakness in themselves and want to be better? Is that why the slips seem more glaring?

Of course the poster child of this is the Christian televangelist, Jim Bakker, whose hedonistic ministry tainted almost the entire profession and bilked millions of money that some could ill-afford to pay. But the public face of these falls from grace is so large that I think it makes it easier for the less headline-inspiring acts of common lives seem less dubious in comparison.

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen Muslims consume alcohol by choice. Or Christians who engage in adultery. Don’t even get me started on Jews eating pork. The thing is, faith is voluntary, at least to a degree. You know the rules, so it seems less than righteous to blatantly transgress. Some will say that many of these are “victimless” sins, ones whose consequences will visit only the sinner. I disagree. I think the cumulative effect of these transgressions is to dilute the moral code that is implicit in any faith.

Let me use Scarlet* as an example. She was raised Christian and has accept Jesus Christ as her personal savior. Nonetheless, at thirteen she ran away from home and not long after found herself pregnant. Soon after turning fourteen, she gave birth to Dawn. Needless to say, she found this experience rather bracing and wanted to help gives others the benefit of her real world experience. She began giving lectures on the importance of abstinence. Fast forward to her eighteenth year. She has a boyfriend and oops…the stick changed color. Though an adult, she is still a teenager…an unwed teenager. I can’t help but wonder what sort of message this sends to each of those teens she lectured to about avoiding sex until marriage—especially since she already had first-hand experience with the causes and effects.

Growing up in the Roman Catholic faith (I’ve since moved on), I was a direct witness of any number of sins that the faithful committed, confident in the knowledge that after confession and a usually trivial penance, all was forgiven. Say what? Again, it seems like I missed a meeting about the splitting-hairs aspect of religion. See, what I was taught is that if you are truly penitent, then you’ll tend to recognize your weaknesses and be so guilt-ridden BEFORE the fact that you won’t do them. If, however, you did happen to err, then (and this is where the church and I disagree) if your are truly, absolutely, 100% sorry, then you have no need for the confessional. On the other hand—and I feel safe in saying that all Catholics do this—you usually aren’t really sorry; in fact, you’re inwardly happy that you have something real to confess (making up interesting sins gets old really fast).

And from all of this, I think, a society eventually crumbles. After all, if you are a lawmaker who has a habit of breaking his covenant with God, then how hard is it to pass DUI legislation (say) one day, and drive home drunk on another. Whether or not he gets caught is irrelevant. The willful commission of the act is enough.

Now, I don’t expect us to be paragons. We’re only human, after all. I think my hope is that more of us would take up the banner to be a better person today than I have been in the past. I think if you string enough successful days like that together, in the end you end up having a life that no only you can be proud of, but that the people you care about can be proud of, too.