Blogs For Victory

Interesting statement quoted by Allahpundit:

“The presenters did differ on where a secular morality might come from. In his new best-seller, ‘The Moral Landscape,’ Mr. Harris argues that morality is a product of neuroscience. (The good, he argues, is that which promotes happiness and well-being, and those states are ultimately dependent on brain chemistry.) Others believe morality is bequeathed by evolution, while still others would argue for ethics grounded in secular philosophy, like Immanuel Kant’s or John Rawls’s. But all agreed that nonbelievers are at least as moral as believers, and for better reasons…”

But what of a man who is happy in sloth? Or greed? Or sexual excess? The trouble with people who say they can be as moral without as with a divine moral code is that they are fooling themselves. Its really not that shocking a thing – even believers fool themselves on this matter. Non-believers just fool themselves more comprehensively.

It is only when belief comes in that a person fully realizes how creepy he is. A non-believer – or an alleged believer who doesn’t really examine his conscience – is a person who has an “at least I’m not as bad as all that” attitude. A man looks at the world and sees a tyrant or a murderer or con artist and figures, “well, I haven’t done anything like that and I’m fairly kind and generous to those around me, so I’ve got all the morality I need or, indeed, can be expected to have”. This is actually a blind – an unwillingness to really examine one’s life and actions.

When a person finally kneels and realizes that he can’t do it on his own, that is just the first baby step towards becoming a better person. It is after that point where the life really gets examined and the believer starts to say, “goodness, did I really do all that? What was I thinking?”. A review happens and all those acts of jealousy, rage, infidelity, theft, sloth, gluttony just come rushing in – to be reviewed, for the first time, in the light rather than hidden in the darkness…that pitch black sheet we put up between our real actions and our desire to love our selves. The person who refuses to believe never goes through this process – and will blindly go through life uncorrected and, even, unaware of just how much pain he is spreading around.

Being good is not just the absence of being a complete rat bastard. Being good means that act of generosity when one is concerned about one’s own finances. That willingness to forgive the person who is in the wrong. That understanding that the error we see in others is often far less than the errors we know are within our selves. That firm desire to love the unlovable. When we do that, then we have become good – then, and only then, have we done something worthy. A person who never examines his conscience because he is already “good enough” never gets there.

It is really rather impossible for a believer to get a non-believer to understand this. Even harder is making them understand that the act of surrender – that embrace belief which combines repentance with the prospect of redemption – is so easy, once done. Taking the step is hard as it requires a break down of that worst of human sins, pride – but once the step is taken, the rest of it becomes easy. Even those times – and they are inevitable – when the believer backslides and drifts back in to error become both endurable and easy enough over with.

Our world is awash in lies. The lies are designed first to take away things from us here on earth (our liberty, our wealth, our self respect) and then, ultimately, to take away from us the life of the world to come. It is pitiable that some men are endowed with such great gifts of intellect and then use it in a petty and mean campaign to prop up their own self-regard. They don’t need that old, worn out Christian morality…they are smart enough to figure it all out on their own. Fools! No one is smart enough to figure anything out on their own – the greatest geniuses of all time only figured out a tiny, end-of-the-journey bit of truth…others, humble and great, had gone before them and done most of the work.

If everyone would at least show the humility necessary to understand our dependence upon others for our very survival, it would then be no great leap to figure out there was one greater than all who did all the real work of salvation.