Saturday, January 10, 1998

Those little white lies really add up

By Tom Schaefer / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

You're faced with a choice between telling a "little white lie" and thereby possibly getting the job you've always wanted, or telling the truth and probably being denied the job.

What do you do?

If you immediately say you wouldn't lie, think again. How many times have you shaved the truth to your advantage (quietly urging a spouse or child to say you're not home when the phone rings, or telling the boss you're sick when you're not)?

Such insignificant lies, you might say, in no way compare to the serious crimes others commit -- murder, rape, robbery, to name a few. That's true, if you judge deeds only on a pragmatic and not a moral basis. The fact is, pragmatism has become the guiding principle of conduct in our society. And we're paying a heavy price for it.

In the current issue of "Books & Culture," Philip Yancey traces the influences that have contributed to our moral indifference and to the outright rejection by many people of any moral guidelines.

"Individuals and societies have always been im-moral to varying degrees," Yancey writes. "Individuals (never an entire society) have sometimes declared themselves amoral, professing agnosticism about ethical matters. Only recently, however, have serious thinkers entertained the notion of un-morality: that there is no such thing as morality."

Yancey, author and theologian, ties together some of the philosophical threads that have formed this current non-moral construct: Friedrich Nietzsche's disdain for Christian virtues and values and his elevation of the basic human drive he called the "will to power"; Jean-Paul Sartre's credo that each person is free to invent his or her own values; and George Williams' contention that all behavior is based on self-interest and is genetically programmed.

Common to these thinkers and contemporary social theorists is a denial of any moral authority, a.k.a. God, that guides or judges a person's behavior. But if there is neither guide nor judge, Yancey contends, who's to say what is appropriate behavior?

"Lest I sound like a cranky middle-aged moralist," he writes, "I should clarify at the beginning that to me the real question is not why modern secularists oppose traditional morality; it is on what grounds they defend any morality."

To what code of conduct does anyone appeal if morality is relative? Community standards change. Laws are amended or repealed. No wonder we find ourselves as a society unable to agree on a code of behavior.

Consider: A minor can have an abortion without parental consent but needs permission to have her body pierced to wear a ring. Giving condoms to minors is said to be a pragmatic way to deal with sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, but encouraging abstinence is criticized as an imposition of narrow-minded morality.

"It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them," wrote the novelist Flannery O'Connor. "This is a generation of wingless chickens."

Czech president and noted writer Vaclav Havel describes the results of a civilization without a moral center, which is to say, without God, in this way: "I believe that with the loss of God, man has lost a kind of absolute and universal system of coordinates, to which he could always relate everything, chiefly himself."

Without such coordinates, an individual is left to decide for himself or herself what is good and right. And we're painfully aware of the destructive results.

Rather than rail against the immorality of our age, each of us needs to examine his or her own moral code: Do I reflect the anything-goes conduct of this age or adhere to the rules inscribed by a higher authority?

Here's a short test to see where you stand:

Do you lie when the truth would make you uncomfortable or accountable for your behavior? Do you cheat when honesty would force you to face the consequences of your actions? Do you violate any of the primary rules of moral conduct, common to most major religions, when it's expedient? And, most important, do you recognize the One who has set the moral foundations of the universe and to whom you and I will answer one day?

"Eliminate the Creator," Yancey concludes, "and everything is on the negotiating table." Lying, cheating, killing, adultery: You decide what is inappropriate.

Just be ready to pay a higher and higher price for a society increasingly indifferent to morality.

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(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer(at)wichitaeagle.com )

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(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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