The moralist and religion
February 18, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Mary Ann Brussat wrote in “Spiritual Literacy”:
“People go to religious services and yet continue to pollute, take excessive profits, encourage wars, oppress, foment political division, maintain racial injustice, and promote their own moralistic agendas at the expense of a deeply moral responsiveness to a world in trouble.”
What’s worse, those people often use religion as a badge of honor in their own materialistic quests for power, glory or money. That’s not the kind of religion and those are not the kind of people I want to know. And on top of all that, they’ll think themselves righteous. Instead of focusing on the intended spirituality of religion, they focus on theology and fundamentalism, as if those are God’s saving graces. They go through rituals forgetting the meaning of the word, which is “correct action”, not compulsion. Instead of experiencing God in their lives, they focus on devotional discipline, legalism, righteousness by works, and moralism.
They end up leading tortured lives, committing acts that create pain and suffering for others, all the while thinking they are bravely bearing their crosses and achieving righteousness, oblivious to the wrong path they’ve taken a long time ago. Yes, it is possible to lead that kind of a life, and as the Bible teaches, “by their fruits ye shall know them”. They may think they’re doing God’s work, and doing the “right thing for this country”, while they’re paving a quick way to destruction for all involved in the mess they’ve made.
I don’t even need to mention names, because you can quickly spot those people using the criteria outlined above. Many of them are prominent politicians, authors, pastors and TV show hosts, and they’re all doing their darnedest to achieve their misshapen, defective goals without regard for true morality and the rights of others. They’re “moralists”.
Robert J. Ringer described what he called “the Absolute Moralist” as:
“… looking deceptively like any ordinary human being, who spends his life deciding what is right for you… If he believes in Christ, he’s certain that it’s his moral duty to help you ‘see the light’. In the most extreme case, he may even feel morally obliged to kill you in order to ‘save’ you.”
Yes, folks, we have many deranged and prominent people like that in this country of ours.
Quotes obtained from a wonderful book which you should read, called “The Art of Serenity” by T. Byram Karasu, MD.
