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Tallying `Tons of Food' to help the
hungry
Pastoral Pondering: Recognize that
there
is much to be grateful for
Right
or wrong?
Morality in the world |
While differences in morals abound there a few
standards to which most cultures adhere |
By Schellene Clendenin, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Schellene at sclendenin@eaglenewspapers.com
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Definitions of morality differ from person to person.
How someone is raised can greatly affect someone’s ethical and moral
standards and help them determine what is right and wrong.
David Case, pastor of Newberg Christian Church, said being a Christian means
more than simply adhering to society’s norms.
“Christianity is about more than rules and regulations,” he said.
“It’s about our relationships with one another.”
In addition to relationships, however, Case said, he feels there is a moral
code of ethics, a standard God would ask his followers to pursue.
“I think God has a standard that hasn’t really changed, but society
has changed over the years,” he said. “The church has been guilty of changing
God’s word.”
For example, 50 years ago the church considered dancing a sin, but
that’s not so true now.
There has been a loosening of standards, some would argue, such as different
concepts of marriage and divorce. And people’s views on sex have changed over the
years. Instead of treating it like it’s a gift, people have abused it and distorted
it in ways God’s not happy with, Case said.
“Jesus hung around with people who had maybe broken the moral law,”
Case said.
His actions concerned those who felt Jesus should not associate himself with
who had fallen morally. But Jesus said that was what he had come to do, Case continued.
“When we view this thing called tolerance,” he said, “we
should learn to love the sinner and not the sin. There should be recognition that in spite
of people’s moral failings Jesus can redeem them.
“We can be part of that process. We don’t just throw them
out.”
Case said he thinks part of becoming moral is to be out in the world. “I
can be out there with the sinner; I have to be out where there is darkness and where
people are struggling,” he said.
George Hemingway of St. Michael’s Episcopal church sees morality as a
global issue with a wide variance in style by both generation and location.
“The root of the word (morality) lies in a Greek word that stands for
the means and common norms and standards of a cultural group or subset of cultural
groups,” he said. “So the mores of a group are a commonly agreed upon contract
for how cultural set negotiated its relationship.”
These mores, he said, are either written or understood by use and passed from
generation to generation and person to person. They are created by both subtle and
unsubtle language and many are further affected by gender.
“All people are moral, according to (the) set and subset standards and
mores to which they belong,” he said. “For example, gangs have mores, understood
standards of behavior.”
And when people in the gang do not live by these standards, the consequences
are severe.
Moral differences clash, he said, with the continued globalization of
the world, meaning when cultures still in the stone or bronze age, are exposed to a
society that is more sophisticated, the ideals these groups have been raised to believe do
not necessarily mesh well.
And whether people are more or less moral than they were in generations past
depends on their location within a subset of culture.
According to Hemmingway many differences are behavioral.
“One hundred years ago this nation was much more vulcanized with not as
much university of movement or nearly the level of communication,” he said. “So
parts of the United States could have a fairly integral autonomous culture without having
it impacted by somebody else’s culture.
“When you develop a super culture through communication you stand the
chance of having deep clashes over morality in subgroups.”
These clashes are not much different than global struggles occurring now, he
said. All ages — stone, bronze, industrial, etc. — are living in the world
simultaneously and moral and ethical standards of each of those cultures produce conflict
at a different level.
In example he pointed to what’s going on in much of the Islamic world as
a revolution against modernity. Modernity has different moral standards which are
structured differently than the tribal systems they currently live under. Global democracy
is repulsive to these tribal systems.
“Global morality is a multilayered cake,” Hemmingway said.
People who were raised with a more sophisticated point of view often see
people who are living in a less contemporary world as having standards and mores that are
backward. But these communities are comfortable with their standards and mores. “The
conflict comes when one tries to impose their value systems on the other,” Hemingway
said.
In a perfectly moral world, Hemingway said people would “love the Lord
dear God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.”
But what is the possibility of a perfectly moral world ever happening?
“When the kingdom comes,” he said. |
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From Nov. 8,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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