Father McKenzie sighs. "What's the use" he mutters to himself, "it's not like anyone is going to hear this sermon". Slowly he closes his well used Bible and takes off his glasses. For a moment he just sits there breathing slowly and evenly. He shuts his eyes and listens to the city. "All the lonely people, where do they all belong?" he asks no one. Finally he stands up, puts his things in a plastic bag then grabs his coat. Carefully he turns off the lights and walks up the stairs to the nave.
He still loves spending a few minutes each night before he goes home in silent contemplation, just sitting there in one of the pews. The church smells of candle wax and matured wood. He inhales the familiar smell and leans back. "Help," a voice barely more than a whisper from the front pew.
"Hello, anyone here?" Father McKenzie asks as he slowly walks to the front of the church.
"Help me please" pleads the voice.
Father McKenzie hurries up the chancel to the altar. Behind it he finds a young woman. She is curled up in pain, her body is shaking and Father McKenzie realises that she is barely alive.
"My dear child, what has happened to you?" He kneels next to the woman and gently lifts her into his arms.
"We need to get you to a doctor immediately, just rest dear child," he comforts the young woman as he hurries to his office with her in his arms. "911? Please, we need some help right away!!!"
Father McKenzie puts down the receiver and gently lowers the hurt woman on to the well-worn-
hand-me-down couch in his office. From the cupboard he grabs a woollen blanket, covers her body with it then sits down next to her with her hand in his and quietly prays for her while he waits for help to arrive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What if this woman would have dragged herself inside a coffee shop, restaurant, post office, pub, club, news agency, et cetera?
What would be our first response I wonder. Is there a "moral" knee jerk reaction to want to know why someone needs our help before we ask how we can help?
Is our sense of morality changing, or is morality dependent on the Zeitgeist of our times?
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannise their teachers.” Sound familiar? These words were spoken by Socrates and he died in 469 BC.
So what are morals? According to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"descriptively refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
some other group, such as a religion, or
accepted by an individual for her own behaviour or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons." (According to some, morality can not be defined, only be acted out.)
Some may say: "Easy, morality is doing what's right for most people."
Well, there is a problem with that, because apart from the idea that harming others is morally wrong in almost all societies, ........ morality can differ quite a bit from society to society; which means that your "right" may be my wrong and so forth.
Laws are often evaluated on moral grounds, however, in difference to morality, a legal system has explicit written rules and penalties, and with it officials who interpret the laws(rules) and apply penalties. Failing to live up to a society's moral standards on the other hand, does not necessarily involve any punishment. As in, although perhaps morally reprehensible, stealing your friend's car will probably have legal consequences, but "stealing" your friend's girlfriend will not.
The more I researched the concept of "morality" the more confusing it became.
I didn't seem to be able to find a unified "code of morals" yet there seem to be an intuitive sense of such in most of us, I mean, how else could we function together at all?
Perhaps there are some notions such as: do no harm, be honest, accept a duty of care, accepting responsibility for ones actions and consequences of those actions, honour and respect agreements made, treat all relationships with integrity, and so on that could be viewed as belonging in a "code of morals"?
Could be that one of the most important aspects of morality is that we each recognise our own moral values and can define them clearly to ourselves regardless of what the moral "Zeitgeist" of our time says.
Upon writing this I realise that I forgot to include "compassion" in my suggest code of morals.
A definition of compassion from the Free Online Dictionary: "Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it"
The Dalai Lama puts it this way:
"The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life."
If you like me at times suffer with a knee jerk reaction to want to know why someone needs help rather than asking how you can help, perhaps we may both do well to remember the Dalai Lama's words........"The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another."
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