Part II: Are we more moral than we used to be?
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t’other day about the dreaded m-word (sh! the m-word is morality. sh!), I was interested to see this quote from John Adams in a Fourth of July newspaper ad:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Yeah! What he said. So then, are we more moral than we used to be? I thought it was a no-brainer. So did an atheist I talked to (well, argued with) recently. The problem is, we both had totally different answers.
The atheist — a man in his 20′s (as so many of the virulent online atheists seem to be) — thought we were. He thought his generation was more moral than mine, that mine was more moral than my parents’, and so on. His proof was that progressively since the start of the 20th century, sexual mores had gotten less restrained, traditional values had become more obsolete, differences between the sexes had been greatly lessened, attendance to institutions like churches had been steadily going down, societies had become more radicalized.
In short, we both looked at the same trends. He pronounced it good, sound and laudable. I pronounced it bad and symptomatic of the spiritual disease that exists in the world apart from the Kingdom of God.
To be fair, he didn’t think the aforementioned things were the best that his moral generation had to offer. But the best wasn’t that much more encouraging to me. Environmental, egalitarian and multi-cultural issues seemed to trump almost anything; they certainly outranked anything I would’ve labeled virtuous.
Does it matter? Well, it did in this instance. If we had understood our basic difference on the matter, we might have saved some time … or at least understood how pointless it was to keep talking.
I also think it’s something that Christians should know about non-Christians. Goodness knows, there’s room here for Bible quotes about what it means when a people starts getting iffy on the basic definition of morality. But more than that … this is bad. I’ve been frustrated with Christians that want to blur the line by saying that if immorality is rampant now, it’s no different or no worse than in medieval and Biblical times.
That might sound open-minded and upbeat, but it ignores a basic human dynamic: we don’t stand still, and neither do our times. We aren’t in pre-Christian times. With every generation subsequent to Christ’s coming, the Gospel has spread and the world has been more and more Christianized (which is something the atheists would be the first to acknowledge, though they detest that fact). Once a Christian ethos has been introduced, it can’t just be forgotten — just ask Julian the Apostate and his many, many imitators. Whether we like it or not, the new rules are in place, and we are responsible for what we know. Or, to quote a footnote from the Orthodox Study Bible:
Judgment is severe for those who reject Christ after experiencing His grace. In contrast, those who have never known Christ due to genuine ignorance are without sin in that regard (Jn 15:22-24) and are instead judged by their God-given conscience (Rom 2:12-16).
We might be inclined to regard the brutishness of our ancestors and preen ourselves on our progress, but it’s a dangerous game. More is asked from us with the passage of time. Neither the Old nor the New Testament forbade the owning or selling of slaves. But the seeds of that revolution were planted in the first centuries of the Church. It wouldn’t have been immoral in the fourth or fifteenth century to own slaves; it is now.
In short, the stakes are higher because we have come farther. I suppose this is one of those places where I feel a thrumming of dread whenever I listen to the tone of rhetoric out there. We hardly seem to know what it is to be a moral people anymore, let alone to want to work at it. But if we don’t, do we deserve the blessings that came with that inheritance? And can we rise to the challenges that meet us going forward, since so many things seem to be poised for a fall right now?
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