Could it be that sin has something to do with the weight of my wallet? In light of the dramatic convergence of countless political scandals and the nation’s dire economic crisis in this past year, it seems rather timely to raise the question, “does immorality cost a society?” If citizens are honest with themselves, and they determine that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes,” are they willing to continue to pay that high price?
These concerns are increasingly relevant considering the current financial climate in America. The woes of Wall Street, flurry of foreclosures, and insurmountable national debt have taken center-stage in the media. Whether it be acquiring college loans or disappearing retirement funds, everyone is touched by economic downturns. But will the American public open their eyes and muster enough honesty to see where their morality (or immorality) may at least further the troubles of their country?
It would take much ink to recount the scandals associated with those in the political arena in the past year. Names such as Elliot Spitzer (NY Governor), John Edwards (Former Presidential Candidate), and Rob Blagojevich (IL Governor) have all taken their turn as the punch-line to cocktail-party jokes. However, rather than rehashing the moral failures of these and others, it would be more useful to see the correlation between the immoral values our society has come to cherish so deeply and see the financial implications of those values.
From the outset, we must concede this much: autonomy costs. Though the word itself may seem a bit foreign to some, just remember that whenever most liberals (e.g. the ACLU) use the word freedom what they really mean is autonomy. This is the type of freedom that believes one’s personal pleasures and happiness trump the well-being of others, including country, community, and even family. Autonomy says the fact that America is a free country by necessity means I can live however I want, but additionally others are hindering my freedom by imposing any sort of restraints or accountability for my choices. I want to begin by taking this understanding of freedom as it pertains to a society’s sexual standards and examine the financial repercussions.
Abortion has continued to be a notable issue in our country for well over 40 years now. If anything, it will become more accessible and even less restrictive in the next four years. Homosexual marriage has emerged as the new “civil rights” for the political left to work toward in the past dozen years or so. It appears that embryonic stem-cell research soon will no longer have to rely on private funding to take place, for tax-dollars will now be available to further this agenda. Without giving a theological defense of these issues, let’s simply consider the possible financial ramifications of both.
Though “the federal government spends nearly $500 billion per year to promote contraception…the non-marital birthrate to sexually experienced teens stands close to the highest level ever. (Heimbach, True Sexual Morality, 457). It seems that throwing a few dollars at a moral problem doesn’t always resolve things. Additionally, as the federal government continues to support agencies, clinics, and organizations committed to abortion on demand, more and more taxpayer dollars (paid by citizens who may indeed be opposed to abortion) are being used to allow the silent holocaust to continue.
As we reflect on these questionable trends, we inevitably are reminded of that fact that the same line of thinking about the nature of human life that underlies pro-choice ideology is also that which is advocating embryonic stem-cell research. Again, millions of dollars are invested into research (that has yet to yield results) that is at best is ethically questionable, if not downright immoral. In the midst of this hatred for the sanctity of human life, one wonders if some of the Social Security woes would be the same as they have been in recent days if there were more American taxpayers paying toward Social Security, such as the 40 million+ people who were conceived and aborted since 1973.
Gay marriage certainly has more economic repercussions as well. Consider the fact that many major US companies have for years now been extending the same benefits to the domestic partners of homosexual employees that traditionally would have only been given to those married to spouses of the opposite sex. In the name of “civil rights” and equality, more funding is provided to those in relationships that statistically tend to be more promiscuous, and short-lived. Additionally, relationships that are biological closed to the possibility of producing life are those invested in with the dollars of those who were conceived by the natural union of a male and female.
In considering both these hot-button social issues, one must remember that underneath both of them is the issue of sexual ethics. In best understanding this, the massive study performed by J.D. Unwin in the 1940s is helpful. Unwin was a sociologist who set out to find out if Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis was true concerning sexuality. Freud said that sexual energy always needed to express itself, concluding that if it didn’t it would have negative consequences for society. Essentially Freud was advocating sex without restrictions. Unwin then set out years later to try to confirm if Freud was correct in his ideas. Unwin studied 6 major civilizations throughout history, and 80 lesser societies around the world. This entire study covered 5,000 years of human history. What he found was not what he expected to find.
Without exception, he found that whenever a civilization’s sexual standards were high (meaning more restrictions such as monogamy), the society thrived. Commerce was good, exploration was undertaken, and other positive trends occurred as well. However, the demise of a civilization was always initiated and precipitated by a diminished set of sexual standards. In Unwin’s own words: There was “no recorded case of a society adopting absolute monogamy without displaying expansive energy . . . . men began to explore new lands . . .commerce expanded; foreign settlements [were] established, colonies [were] founded” (Hopousia, George Allen and Unwin, 1940, 82–83). In contrast, he also found, “In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on pre-nuptual [premarital] and post-nuptual [extramarital] continence [sexual abstinence]” (Hopousia, George Allen and Unwin, 1940, 84–85)
Whenever a society refuses to embrace and submit to the selfless and responsible sexual standards that monotheistic religions have traditionally taught (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism), society suffers. At the very least, it has serious financial consequences. When desire for freedom and pleasure runs wild, this pursuit ends up enslaving us. In giving people unlimited autonomy, they are given over to explore freedoms that end up enslaving them, their families, and infringing on the well-being of others (Gen. 11; Ps. 2).
There is a second step in this progression from the problem of autonomy. It is that this leads to the unwillingness to submit to limits, or restrictions of any sort. A lack of limitations or boundaries costs us. More specifically, technology costs. I insert technology here because it seems that it is increasingly evident that the reliance on technology demonstrates this unwillingness to live within certain limitations that the previous generation lived with. It is generally accepted fact in the modern world that progress, efficiency, and convenience are ultimate goods. Whatever can help our businesses, ministries, and personal lives achieve these three goods are to be appropriated at all costs. Consider small examples such as RedBox and NetFlix. These are two developments in the DVD industry that are changing the way people have approached movie rentals in incredible ways. Instead of making an intentional trip to Blockbuster to select a film, I now can conveniently grab one for a couple of bucks cheaper on my way out of Kroger or Harris Teeter (or in the case of NetFlix, I can receive my DVD selections in the mail rather than having to interact with a clerk at Blockbuster).
These same trends have impacted many other realms as well. The US Postal Service continues to lose a couple billion dollars for year in lieu of the transition that many have made from regular mail to email. While it is easily understandable why businesses resort to email for many matters, most haven’t begun to consider the multitudinous implications of online greeting cards, online-bill pay, and other such trends. These same things are true concerning independent book stores. As Andrew Keen recently noted concerning the benefits of book purchasing online, “does the closure of independent stores result in more choice for consumers? Instead of 2,500 independent bookstores, with their knowledgeable, book-loving staffers, specialty sections, and relationships with local writers, we now have an oligarchy of online megastores employing soulless algorithms that use our previous purchases and the purchases of others to tell us what we want to buy.” The financial impact on the entertainment industry due to the technological revolution is one other area that has also been significant.
Now I’m not aware of many who would argue that convenience and efficiency are in and of themselves immoral. That is certainly not what I am trying to contend here. However, are these values of the quick and easy, which naturally flow from the ideas of modernity, ones that arise from Scripture? So often churchmen and laypersons alike stand behind the Christian theme of stewardship in defense of the unbridled pursuit of technological prowess. The argument typically follows that:
A. The Bible teaches stewardship
B. Technology helps us do things cheaper, faster, and easier
C. Therefore, technology should be incorporated into all areas of life
Anyone with a basic sense of informal logic will see this argument does not follow on several counts. The one I think most significant is how biblical stewardship has been defined in secular terms rather than biblical ones. Consider the context of the many New Testament passages teaching stewardship. How frequently do the words “cheap,” “easy” or “efficient” appear? Scripture is shockingly silent on these modern values, and rather turns its focus to the willingness of the individual to take the gifts of God and boldly use them in hopes of receiving more. Commitment, honor, and faith are the values Scripture connects to stewardship – not skill or convenience for the sake of instant gratification.
Often stewardship becomes more of a friendly and helpful guise to conceal our lust for ease rather than a sacrificial, assent to the fact that God is worthy of all our time, effort, and resources regardless of whether we can offer it in quicker doses than long, protracted periods of time. Ultimately the values of temperance, self-control, or patience is forfeited in lieu of goods such as “convenience” that ultimately cost society more than we ever know. Regardless of rhetoric in mainstream culture that promotes technology as the savior of the world, these same voices lack the discernment to see the woes that are equally attached to new devices and gadgets. As Quentin Schultze has poignantly noted, “in the industrialized world, people often naively assume that technological ‘progress’ will eventually solve the problem of human irresponsibility” (Habits of the High-Tech Heart, 98). Technology cannot and will not solve the moral problems that lead to a society’s financial problems.
Finally, as autonomy provokes citizens to cast off restrictions and limitations, the convenience and ease offered to us by technology are welcomed. However, the pathway continues until the social climate is just perfect for greed to sprout. This is the third and final concern I want to highlight: Greed costs. Certainly it would be far too easy here to pick on corrupt CEOs, Enron, or more recent happenings such as with AIG. These are certainly gross examples of human pride and greed run amuck. But could it be that it is in the simple sins committed by average citizens that have created as significant of an economic mess as anything else? Or as it pertains to Christians, could we be guilty of being what Bruce Little refers to as “polite, little materialists?”
Music piracy has been a problem for years. The word “Napster” still echoes in the deep recesses of a few minds out there, but for many it has long since been forgotten. Programs such as iTunes in many ways have removed the stumbling block of offense created by the legal matters of acquiring music online. Though piracy certainly in many ways is more under control than it has been in years past, between 1999 and 2005 music sales dropped over two billion dollars. This coupled with the damage done to the movie industry because of such virtual theft has left a crater in some sections of the economy that many have simply forgotten about, regarding it as a distant memory, while it continues to have economic implications.
This problem of greed impacts the society from all sorts of angles. As mentioned earlier, the impact of out-of-control government spending puts budgets in the red. Equally, the corruption in financial institutions becomes so invasive that eventually unnoticed dollars and cents are stripped from the pockets of average employees and stockholders. The entertainment industry is ransacked through the creative theft of the average teenager.
As I conclude what I confess is a lengthy spattering of theories (though some are indeed verifiable), I want to offer a brief portrait of how the changing notions of ethics in American history have lead us down this pathway. Most good historians blanche at the notion that the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians. A perusal of the more significant works of Jefferson, Franklin, and others will find that most of these gentlemen were deistic in their thought, but in most cases denied the reality of key Christian doctrines. But certainly they were operating out of a Judeo-Christian worldview that had certain values and beliefs attached to it. When it came to ethical behavior, their approach would have still retained a prominent influence of deontology. Essentially, their conclusions concerning right and wrong would have focused more on the act itself. They would have believed that certain acts were in and of themselves moral or immoral. This approach held on for a good while after the founding of the nation.
We can fast-forward quite a bit down the road before the most commonly adhered to ethical system shifted to a more pragmatic, consequentialist-type of system. Certainly there were many sociological forces at work that provoked this shift, but most associate the ultimately to the pragmatists such as William James and John Dewey. Their understanding of right and wrong could be more popularly be stated this way: Morality is determined by the functionality of an idea or act. The “cash-value” of an idea is what makes it right or wrong.
It was in the latter part of the 20th century that a more pervasive form of hedonism and ethical relativism became the dominant approach to ethical behavior. Though many championed this approach to ethics, we must remember that Darwinism inevitably leads to this kind of mindset, regardless of what contemporary atheists try to argue (we also would do well to remember Nietzsche’s contribution to our troubles today as well concerning ethics). I admit I am painting with broad strokes here. But the underlying fact remains the same: We have seen a gradual but inevitable shift in our nation to an approach to ethics that has twisted traditional Judeo-Christian morality. This in turn has caused autonomy, technology, and greed to reign in our institutions, whether they be private or public.
Probably the most frustrating thing of all is to hear the voices of the pundits on network stations and the voices on Main Street cry out to the government to fix the system that handed them their set of financial circumstances. At the same time there is an equally audible voice, though more subtle, that screams “but leave my values and morality alone!” Whenever institutions, whether educational, economic, legislative, or judicial abandon the wisdom and virtues taught in the religious traditions that are what gave birth to the nation itself, in favor of pluralism and autonomy, they will also abandon the foundation for public morality as well. Regardless of what the cultural elite, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or any other group would have us believe, technology is not the savior. Autonomy isn’t true freedom. Greed hurts more than just a few people. Technology and even legislation aren’t the answer. The values embedded in the Christian tradition are what society needs to hold its institutions together in a cohesive manner. Every other substitute is just elmer’s glue.
