More than a few try to argue for a #PrivateMoralityVsPublicMorality and separate out morality from public affairs and discourse, and thus we are reaping the results.
Ever hear of someone talk about the “good ol’ days”? When were they, exactly?
It is easy to fall into the view that everything was once right and moral. There may be many reasons to be tempted to believe this, but of course it is a falsehood. After all, all have sinned whether now or in the past (Ro 3:23).
Having said that, the debate between public morality vs private morality certainly is an indicator that things are getting worse, not to mention the secularization of society as a whole.
Oddly enough, the same people who want to hide all discourse about religion, but Christianity in particular, and espouse a “private morality” or “private religion” or even “keep your religion to yourself” will be the same ones to decry human nature when it raises its ugly head and visibly hurts others.
Occupy Wall Street might have been many things, but it started due to the rage that people felt at the idea that some institutions are “too big to fail”, no matter how well they perform or how many get hurt in the process (as long as they don’t sit on the board, that is!).
I am somewhat pro capitalist, and I’m not ashamed of that. However, no financial model can truly work when greed takes over. There must be a strong moral fiber that runs throughout the business dealings of a society, or else it will eventually collapse as people turn on each other and devour one another.
Take media. Has it ever been more corrupt than it is today? There once were standards. In particular, the idea that journalism should be objective was codified after “The Time A Newspaper Stared Down The Country’s Largest Advertiser“. The Wall Street Journal decided to stand on its principles and actually do its main job by serving the public, in particular its readers, by serving up information.
Can we find anything close to this today? It appears that, like our politicians, we have the best news entertainment that money can buy. It doesn’t matter if it is George Soros or some conservative think tank somewhere, but our news as well as our politicians are being bought and sold, literally left and right.
Can our capitalistic society even survive in the short-term? Not without developing a sense of what businesses are all about. It is a taught but false “maxim” that businesses exist to make a profit. Left alone, however, that utterly fails. A business, like any other entity, is part of a larger culture to which it owes its existence. The more a business is profitable, the more it owes to the society within which it exists.
48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.
~ Lk 12:48
Paul Tudor Jones is a capitalist. I suppose he might initially seem to fit into the definition of a “fat cat”, although he seems to have a different focus. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Paul Tudor Jones Wants To Nudge Corporate America To Do Better“.
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones has become increasingly frustrated with global corporations’ ”emphasis on profits, on short-term quarterly earnings and share prices, at the exclusion of all else.”
HWA summed up humanity’s problems as living the way of get rather than give. As much maligned as this has become, it actually is not a bad summation. God is a giving God. God gives us life. God gives us the earth. God gives us the undeserved opportunity to be a part of His family.
Or, have we forgotten that Jesus gave even His life, and in a dreadful manner, for us?
How much more giving can anyone be?
At the heart of most of society’s problems is a severe lack of morality. It is a lack of morality because private morality is no morality at all.
The atheist is wont to argue that there is a morality without God. That begs the question: What is morality? Is it simply a set of rules that everyone agrees to? If that is the case, then societies that practice cannibalism cannot be condemned. In fact, there is an alarming sense that even the Nazis of WWII cannot be condemned on moral grounds, because, after all, morality is relative.
Simply put: Relative morality isn’t. It is an oxymoron. It simply becomes a group of norms that shift according to group wishes and desires. So, if the group desires to loot and riot, that is OK because it is the group norm.
This is why our society is doomed, in spite of the efforts of people like Jones. Unless we base our morality upon the real and living God, societal norms will continue to shift to and fro, and human passions will become as unchecked as Sodom and Gomorrah. We will destroy ourselves, just as all of the great civilizations that came before us did.
That’s the bad news. There is good news, though. Jesus Christ might not step in right away. He will wait until today’s great powers learn the terrible lesson. Another power will (re-)arise and be used to punish the United States and the United Kingdom, just as ancient Israel was punished by first Assyria and then Babylon. However, He will step in and save a remnant of believers before all of mankind destroys itself.
The even better news is that He will resurrect all believers who are not alive when He returns. He will reward the faithful, and together the saints and Jesus Christ will rebuild this wicked world that will have gone to the extreme of near self-destruction. They will give. Their focus will be on what they can give, not how much they can profit.
There will be no debates about private morality vs public morality. Jesus Christ will set down the Law, the one that has always been visible had one eyes to see. It will show what is moral and right, and it will be quite public.
God speed that day!