The Moral Compass

The moral compass. Most of us have one. Some of us were given one by our parents early on but the psychology of most children is “If I can get away with it, then I will do it. Especially if it makes me happy.” But there are times when as children we knew there was a consequence we weren’t willing to risk by acting inappropriately or selfishly. Sometimes we took the chance anyway. In my case, I would occasionally sneak out and go see my girlfriend in my parent’s car. Well, one night my dad became wise and set a rocking chair right at the front door. The only door through which I could possibly get into the house. He sat there trying to sleep, knowing any attempt to come in would immediately wake him and I can promise you, he would not be in a good mood. Then came the consequence. It was tragic for a boy of 16 or 17. No vehicle privileges or phone. I cannot recall the duration of the sentence but let me assure you, much like the scripture “A day was like a thousand years and a thousand years were like a day.”

I lived as a youth much like the Jews of the Old Testament. My moral compass was oriented towards the punishment of a vengeful God or Dad in my case.

There were his commandments, known to me as the law. I was motivated to follow those commandments by the fear or respect I would have for my father. Now, I can say at times I looked pretty fearless and disrespectful but I can assure you the respect and the fear were instilled quite successfully after a period of wandering in the wilderness.

As adults, we make a choice. Will we live under the Law? That is, will we live in fear of the police and a judge and a potential fine or jail term? Is that what will guide our life? Or, will we be guided from within, not reliant upon outside forces to manipulate our behavior so we “stay in line”, but instead on this internal “Moral Compass”?

As the disciples did, and as Christians do, we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Then as Jesus promised and as evidenced in the Book of Acts on the day of Pentecost, we were overcome by the Holy Spirit. It became our conscience. Our direction for every act and when we deviated, we felt remorse. We felt like something was wrong. Like we lacked direction. Like our compass was broken or missing and we never regained that peace until we were reconciled. Until whatever wrong we committed was made right or until we repented.

The Moral Compass or as I know it, the Holy Spirit, convicts. It guides. It motivates for the good.

  Without freedom, we cannot speak meaningfully about morality or moral responsibility. Human freedom is more than a capacity to choose between this and that. It is the God-given power to become who he created us to be and so to share eternal union with him. This happens when we consistently choose ways that are in harmony with God's plan. Christian morality and God's law are not arbitrary, but specifically given to us for our happiness. God gave us intelligence and the capacity to act freely. Ultimately, human freedom lies in our free decision to say "yes" to God. In contrast, many people today understand human freedom merely as the ability to make a choice, with no objective norm or good as the goal.

For an individual act to be morally good, the object, or what we are doing, must be objectively good. Some acts, apart from the intention or reason for doing them, are always wrong because they go against a fundamental or basic human good that ought never to be compromised. Direct killing of the innocent, torture, and rape are examples of acts that are always wrong. Such acts are referred to as intrinsically evil acts, meaning that they are wrong in themselves, apart from the reason they are done or the circumstances surrounding them.

The goal, end, or intention is the part of the moral act that lies within the person. For this reason, we say that the intention is the subjective element of the moral act. For an act to be morally good, one's intention must be good. If we are motivated to do something by a bad intention—even something that is objectively good—our action is morally evil. It must also be recognized that a good intention cannot make a bad action (something intrinsically evil) good. We can never do something wrong or evil in order to bring about a good. This is the meaning of the saying, "the end does not justify the means" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1749-1761).

Human virtues form the soul with the habits of mind and will that support moral behavior, control passions, and avoid sin. Virtues guide our conduct according to the dictates of faith and reason, leading us toward freedom based on self-control and toward joy in living a good moral life. Compassion, responsibility, a sense of duty, self-discipline and restraint, honesty, loyalty, friendship, courage, and persistence are examples of desirable virtues for sustaining a moral life. Historically, we group the human virtues around what are called the Cardinal Virtues. This term comes from the Latin word cardo meaning “hinge.” All the virtues are related to or hinged to one of the Cardinal Virtues. The four Cardinal Virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

Galatians 5:22-23

New International Version (NIV)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

When we act in the Spirit we are in accordance with God’s Will. There are times in our lives however that our humanness fogs the Spirit within and confuses us as to what the proper action is we must take. This is where two virtues of the Spirit come into play. Patience and self-control. We must take pause at times to not react hastily in certain situations where our tongue or our impulse will take to a place of regret as it so often does.

We must utilize the peaceful heart and the exercise of prayer to gain a good direction as to where to go. The examples of other Christians who act in good faith are excellent azimuths for which we should aim our compass.

The human virtues are also acquired through seeing them in the good example of others and through education in their value and methods to acquire them. Stories that inspire us to want such virtues help contribute to their growth within us. They are gained by a strong will to achieve such ideals. In addition, God’s grace is offered to us to purify and strengthen our human virtues, for our growth in virtue can be hampered by the reality of sin. Especially through prayer, we open ourselves to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and God’s grace as another way in which we grow in virtue.

The moral life requires grace. This speaks in terms of life in Christ and the inner presence of the Holy Spirit, actively enlightening our moral compass and supplying the spiritual strength to do the right thing. The grace that comes to us from Christ in the Spirit is as essential as love and rules and, in fact, makes love and keeping the rules possible.

So, in closing we must always be aware and on guard as to what our actions, emotions, and motivations are. Are they guided and in alignment with the Spirit? Or are they guided hastily and selfishly and without moral direction? Is our compass broken, unused, or not present? Who are we and where are we in relation to God’s will in our lives? These are questions I constantly ask myself as I will always be learning and growing as well as periodically digressing in my walk with Christ and the Holy Spirit. The key to it all is that we recognize our transgressions and seek forgiveness as we also forgive. We reconcile ourselves with God and whomever we trespass against. We do all of this in the most sincere form of contrition and over time the frequency of sin becomes less and less. We find God is more present in us and we or our flesh is less.

He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John 3:30

The Founding Fathers and Christianity

Although the Declaration of Independence mentioned “Nature’s God” and the “Creator,” the Constitution made no reference to a divine being, Christian or otherwise, and the First Amendment explicitly forbid the establishment of any official church or creed.

If there is a clear legacy bequeathed by the founders, it is the insistence that religion was a private matter in which the state should not interfere.

Once again, diversity is the dominant pattern. Franklin and Jefferson were deists, Washington harbored a pantheistic sense of providential destiny, John Adams began a Congregationalist and ended a Unitarian, and Hamilton was a lukewarm Anglican for most of his life but embraced a more actively Christian posture after his son died in a duel.

(When John Adams and Jefferson discussed the possibility of a more conventional immortality, they tended to describe heaven as a place where they could resume their ongoing argument on earth.)

The pilgrims, as you will recall, were, Christians fleeing Europe in order to escape religious persecution, and they literally began their stay in their new land with the words, “In the name of God, Amen.”

The pilgrims were followed to New England by the Puritans, who created bible-based commonwealths. Those commonwealths practiced the same sort of representative government as their church covenants. Those governmental covenants and compacts numbered more than 100, and were the foundation for our Constitution.

America was indeed founded by bible-believing Christians and based on Christian principles. When they founded this country, the Founding Fathers envisioned a government that would promote and encourage Christianity.

All but two of the first 108 universities founded in America were Christian. This includes the first, Harvard, where the student handbook listed this as Rule #1: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."

In 1777, Continental Congress voted to spend $300,000 to purchase bibles which were to be distributed throughout the 13 colonies! And in 1782, the United States Congress declared, “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.

Raised Episcopalian, Jefferson believed that the New Testament had been polluted by early Christians eager to make Christianity palatable to pagans. He believed that they had mixed the words of Jesus with the teachings of Plato and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The authentic words of Jesus were still there, he assured his friend, John Adams. He determined to extract the "authentic" words of Jesus from the rubble which he believed surrounded His real words. That book, intended as a primer for the Indians on Christ’s teachings, is commonly known as the "Jefferson Bible."

Written in the front of his personal Bible, he wrote:

"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator."

In 1803, at the request of President Thomas Jefferson, the United States Congress allocated federal funds for the salary of a preacher and the construction of his church. That same year, Congress, again at Jefferson’s request, ratified a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians. Congress recognized that most of the members of the tribe had been converted to Christianity, and Congress gave a subsidy of $100.00 a year for seven years for the support of a priest so that he could “instruct as many ... children as possible.”

On April 21, 1803, Jefferson wrote this to Dr. Benjamin Rush (also a signer of the Declaration of Independence):

“My views...are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.”

In that same letter, he wrote,

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.”

In a letter to William Short on October 31, 1819, he wrote:

“But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of His own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.”

You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, wrote that “some books against Deism fell into my hands; . . . The arguments of the Deists . . . appeared to me much stronger than the refutation; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”

Franklin confessed to some doubts about Jesus’ divinity, and Thomas Jefferson razored his way through the Gospels, keeping words that seemed to him to be authentically Jesus’, but cutting what he took to be the corruptions of other New Testament contributors.

The human side of all of us demands concrete answers and when we are forced to go on terms of faith we sometimes balk and seek the enlightenment of our own mind to guide us when it comes to God. I myself have had to use my own creative analogies to explain God in this world we live.

So, I do not doubt the varied beliefs of our founding fathers and their evolution as life’s years passed into their twilight.

It is not so much the argument that our nation was meant to be a Christian nation as much as it was meant to be a moral one and one that recognized individual freedom and the ability to live your life in a way that pursued your own happiness but not at the expense of another to do the same. In the time of Moses we lived by the law. Those mandates given to humanity by God so that we may acquire direction and build the spirit within. Then Jesus gave the new covenant. This involved an active role by the Holy Spirit upon our recognition of Jesus Christ as our redeemer. When that took place man was compelled from within to do what was pleasing to God.

In that line of thought I ask that you see all of our founding fathers as merely men with flaws and vices just as we all do.  They were also a virtuous group of men beyond reproach in their desire to build a nation that reflected the compassion of Christ as well as the moral, upright image that God and Christ would be pleased with.

Secular Humanism as infiltrated many aspects of who we are as a nation and through their bastardized attempts at defining what this nation is to represent we have become confused and lacking direction.

No matter the faith of our founding fathers, we must get back to what we as Christians know is right and good. We must not compromise our principles to appease those who want the absence of God for our nation.

Remember above all else, neither God nor this country needs or wants half stepping Christians who through their example invalidate their faith.  “ So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will [a]spit you out of My mouth.“

Revelation 3:16

FRIENDSHIP AND IT’S VALUE IN HUMAN LIFE FROM A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

Buddha

Jesus on Friendship

John 15:12-15 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, which someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

Greatest Friend is God

James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

How To Pick Your Friends

Proverbs 12:26 One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.

Proverbs 13:20 Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Proverbs 14:6-7 A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding. Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.

Proverbs 22:24-25 Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

How To Treat Your Friends

Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

Romans 12:10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor.

Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Colossians 3:12-14 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Importance of Friendships

Proverbs 11:14 Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

Proverbs 17:17 A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 19:20 Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.

Proverbs 24:5 A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might,

Proverbs 27:17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

C.S. Lewis Friendship Quotes

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

“Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”

“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.”

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

Seneca

True friends stab you in the front.

Oscar Wilde

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

George Washington

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Aristotle

I have had friends in my life I never thought I would lose and lost them to whatever things that come into a life unexpectedly and take away what we treasured so dear. At times we never truly understand the value of such friendship until it reaches its terminus.

As a youth, I had a cadre of friends I thought I would never lose. I carried them into high school and things would change ever so slightly and I would lose a few and gain a few due to circumstances of life as we all do. But for some reason, something in my life experience gave me this psychology within that tells me friends are valuable. When I say friends, I mean true friends. Not those who came in with ulterior motives and sought to gain what they could before they left. I mean those who came in with no expectations, gained my trust, and stuck around to nurture a relationship that continues with me no matter how long the absence or the trials  we endure.

Something with me lives in my heart. My core. My soul. I recognize it as the Holy Spirit. It tells me friendship is valuable beyond a complete explanation. It is a need of the human condition that craves interaction that enlightens in the most subtle of ways that we a good time as just that when it actually builds memories that evolve who we are, what we value, and who we become.

The recent days and months have not only been trying ones for myself but also for those I call friends. One had his day in court and came out the other side vindicated. I and many who sincerely call him friend shared many prayers for God to see him through and our faith was rewarded. Others were dealing with relationships or job loss or loss of significant people in their life and needed the real support that true friendship brings. That act of fulfilling our friendships ultimate duty, (being there) creates a bond that cements who we are to those we value so much.

I remember those who were there for me. I used those moments as a vehicle to maintain my faith and my own belief in who they believed I am. The result was an ability to hang on and make it through to the other side of a dark time where the light awaited. The light of the spirit and the sharing of the spirit through the rare and priceless thing called true sincere friendship. To be one makes us a better person and creates in us an empathetic heart that sees life beyond our own needs and concerns and tells us our true value is to of value to others. It makes us see ourselves as more than separate people leading separate lives and feeling emotions unique to ourselves. We share who we are with those we trust to share those things with and a bond is formed that (whether we see it or not) is founded in spirit and love.

I mention friendship quite a bit in my daily life.  Perhaps it is due to losing friends I never thought I would and how those losses affected me. It was a mourning process I feel in some cases I have yet to come through to other side. Those experiences gave me an insight into the real value of a real friend and how they are not merely interchangeable parts in a sometimes rapidly evolving life. Instead they are the facets we use to create a life of value, of selfless action, of prayerful intercession, and yes, spiritual growth.

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

                                                                                      Albert Schweitzer