Chipping Away at Our Moral Foundation

Recently I was sorting my files and I came across an article written by my Father in 1980.  As I read it I realized how appropriately it speaks to contemporary social concerns.  I reproduce his concerns here.


THE RELIGION OF MORALISTIC CHIPS
                             by Weston Hare      March 20, 1980

The Thesis of this essay is:
 The inherent morality of the Christian religion has been, to a considerable degree, been put on the museum shelf and a superficial morality made up of "chips", slogans and decals has replaced it.

  A minor example would be the smiling face symbol.  A more general example would be the "Rights" explosion.  You may think that these are flowers and fruits of Christianity growing on the Christian tree.

Well, let us consider this.
The basis of the morals of Christianity and Judaism are the Commandments of God:  "Thou shalt not kill",  etc.      Start with that one.  The U.S. Supreme Court recently said:  It is proper to kill children before birth at the will of the mother.

Now, last I heard, we kill 1,200,000 babies each year by abortion.  Why would the Supreme Court undertake to become conspirators - before-the- fact - of annual  "Megamurder" (mega meaning a million)?
If God believes abortion to be killing, why should they legalize that?  Taking an awful chance, aren't they?

Well, the reason for doing so is clear from the next Commandment.
 "Thou shalt not commit adultery".
Clearly the Moralistic Chip religion has to squirm out of that one, because they have all sorts of ideas beyond THAT barrier. To rationalize these ideas, they invented birth control.  And they reason that if unwanted children do not result from disobeying this Commandment, surely God would excuse us for putting this also on the shelf.
Because, Love, they say is of God.

At this point, they have fallen into a trap invented hundreds of years ago, when the English language made the word - LOVE- much broader in meaning than Greek & Latin words.

The English word came to include three Greek words for lust, unselfish love and marital love.   The King James version of the Bible (370 years ago) avoided this trap by using the word "CHARITY" for unselfish love.

But, by the turn of the century and probably earlier 'love' often included all three.  So, now, at this date, in many high places, the word includes adultery and even homosexuality.

God disapproves of the former and according to the Bible (even newer versions) literally 'hates' the latter.

So I guess it is a trap, all right.  So they put that Commandment regarding adultery on the shelf and have many superficial chips or decals to take its place. 

Take another Commandment "Thou shalt not covet - anything that is thy neighbor's". 

That is a pretty good one for getting along together.  But it is too much for the 'chips' religion.

It has been substituted by the "Rights" explosion of moralistic chips.

Now we are told among other things that it is our Right (nay, duty) to sue anyone (especially large organizations or insurance companies) for millions of dollars, it any of our "Rights" defined by the chips are violated.

Clearly, if a person may gain more by having some "Rights" violated than he could earn by a lifetime of hard work, no-one would fail to covet things belonging to his neighbor.

Therefore, the Rights Explosion (Let the chips fall where they may) is nothing but a Pig Factory making the people more like pigs than people.  The word "Sue-ee"  has long been used to assemble pigs.  Ask any farmer.

The Rights explosion also destroys families and the normal passing along of social principles.

Children have 'rights' and need not obey their parents, they may sue their parents, or have contempt for them.  They are to call - 800 - numbers if they think they are abused in any way.  Therefore there must be a tendency to let the kids go uninstructed.  Good parents may produce unworthy children because they are talked out of  "bringing up children in the way they should go" and the children are talked out of believing them anyway.

So here we have another Commandment put on the museum shelf:  "Honor thy father and thy mother."

Enough of that for the present,
but of what does this situation - The Moralistic Chips Religion - remind one?

Clearly it reminds one of the legalistic "Chips Religion" taught, in place of the laws given to Moses, by the Pharisees when Jesus came to the earth.  Jesus went to great extremes to condemn the Pharisees (as children of Hell, sons of Satan, hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind, a generation of vipers, etc. etc.)

They had  made up a large number of replacement rules (chips) which essentially put the basic mosaic laws aside and substituted others, which often relieved the leaders from obeying them.

I have not studied them in detail but clearly they were offensive to Jesus.

It seems to me that we are now being given by the Moral Establishment a similar, substituted, superficial religion which may well be no more respected by Jesus than the Pharisee's religion was then. 

It would be wise to shy away from the Chips Religion and adhere to the more deeply seated program of the Bible. 

 Then, should Jesus return to the earth, we would be on His side, rather than on that of the Neo-Pharisees who seem to be in charge of much of the teaching today.