Thoughts on Morality

It seems to me that Christians ought to be the ones on the front lines of many more causes than we currently are, and perhaps less vocal about some of the issues that we are most marked for.  This seems to not only be true in our current culture, but it seems to be historically true. 

I know it is very easy to judge those who came before us for their moral inadequacies, but morality does not exist in retrospect.  Morality does not exist in future intentions either.  Morality exists in that liminal space between our minds and our hands – what we know and what we do about it.  It may be that the concept of stewardship that is so prevalent in the New Testament also applies to the knowledge we receive.  If we have been given much, we are expected to allocate that knowledge in a way that “turns a profit,” so to speak.  So rather than saying of previous generations that they were the height of hypocrisy for not seeing what we so clearly see, we ought to wonder why we do not see what we ought to see.  Certainly, we would not want our future generations to call us hypocrites for the multitude of paradoxes we are guilty of.  What if in thirty years, the inhumane practice of factory farming animals and the inhumane treatment of animals in testing cosmetics were so looked down upon that our entire generation despised us for not doing more to stop it?  What if our future generations judged us for doing this to the ocean? 

Or that there are approximately 27 million people in slavery in the world, and that every year there are 1 million children exploited for the commercial sex trade.  And even with all this, the people who claim to be not only made in the image of God, but are meant to be ambassadors of Jesus are more known for intolerance and judgment than championing the causes of the oppressed. 

I promise you, if the world saw a culture that fought harder for the poor than our government does, and fought more for justice than our courts do, and fought harder for freedom than our constitution does, the world would fall in love with the same Jesus we did.  Medicare, the broken foster care system, failed governmental run ecological systems – all of these things exist to the shame of the Christian church.  Why is the world fighting harder to take care of the poor than we are?  If true morality exists between what you know and what you do about it, then I challenge you – what are you going to do about it?