Ray Ciervo Ministries

Thomas Aquinas proposed that democracy is not a good way to govern. He suggested that although it wouldn’t intentionally legislate evil, it would have difficult time doing good. Few know that Thomas is responsible for many things we today take for granted. His view of “natural law” upon which Jefferson relied when he penned the Declaration, is substantial. The Catholic view of birth control is also based on Thomas, and not what people generally attribute to it.

Presently, we see Congress wrestling with how to bail out the struggling economy. One of the things it wants to do is put in place more checks and balances. This means more laws which means more bureaucracy. This, by the way, is another of Thomas’ points about democracy. He didn’t believe it gets much done. 

Putting Thomas aside for now, we are seeing the devolution of our society. The financial crisis America finds itself in has been coming at us for quite some time. No, I’m not going to point to the time when the Bible was allowed in public schools, although I could make some strong arguments correlating the two. Neither am I going to mention when prayer was taken out of schools, ditto. The argument I’ll make is the loss of character.

Virtue would be a better way of expressing it, but that too has gone by the way. In colloquial language, virtue has been hi-jacked. Actually, language has been hi-jacked, but that’s another blog. Virtue isn’t even a word we could consider today because we don’t know what it means. So we use the word “character” and hope we connect with its similarities. 

Everyone is afraid to speak about character because we know that as soon as we bring it up our character will come under scrutiny. It’s sort of like junior high school where we were reduced to the lowest common denominator because no one had the nerve to take a stand on something, anything. You know, something was going down wrong but you knew if you said something about it someone else would jump on you. Maybe it was just me.

Put together a system of government where things move slower than snails across sandpaper and the lack of virtue, you have a perfect place for legislation ad nauseam. Congress says they want debate on issues and not to rubber stamp anything just for results. They make it sound like they really care about doing the right thing. What they’re really worried about is doing something wrong and costing them an election. Sorry, my cynicism is showing.

Today we need more external laws to govern because there is no internal compass. In the mind of keen thinkers, this is the loss of transcendent values. It is the loss of an absolute being who makes absolute laws that are written on our hearts. Losing the transcendental means we become the final architect of beliefs and values. By some, this is called “progressive.” The idea is that we have progressed from the traditional values, as if they were arbitrarily agreed upon! This is ignorance of natural law and transcendental reality. Or, it’s the suppressing truth in unrighteousness.

When we lose the transcendent we lose the objective voice, the guiding eye, the wisdom from above. We look to the “natural” to speak to us. Not the natural law, but nature itself and that’s a huge difference. Our feelings become the most important thing about us. We begin to judge based on our feelings that are disguised in “I think.” What we really mean is, “This feels good to me.”

The loss of character began to happen around the same time words were lost to images. The turn of the 20th Century saw the advent of some of the first images in advertising. Wit gave way to image. “Turning a phrase” gave way to “posing for pictures.” The mind began to leap frog over thought loosing the imagination to processes that supplied images instead. Shadow overcame substance. How something appeared took the place of how good something actually is. Images move us emotionally not mentally. The mind doesn’t process images rationally; it accepts them without stopping to take a look at the message they convey. The impact of images is instant; they immediately evoke feelings.

And so, the 20th Century began its descent into the world of image and feelings rather than character and content. Principles lost to preferences. The major event was the assassination of character, no one’s in particular, but character in general. Slowly we saw the imposition of images, so much so that today it is estimated that over all the airwaves, in all the print media, and the internet the average American could be exposed to 60,000 images a day. No wonder our minds are soft and our feelings are exacerbated. This is the frog being boiled in the frying pan. You know the anecdote, don’t you?

If you throw a frog into boiling water - he jumps out. However, if you put him in cold water and slowly heat the water until it boils . . . You’ve got boiled frog! So it has happened with the loss of character to image. 

The measure of a man’s worth is not in his character, what virtues he possesses, but how he comes across. Can we imagine him in a position? Of course the loss of character is the loss of honesty, a basic virtue. Once, fiduciaries were supposed to be among the most honest men around. The crisis we face today in our financial industry is because character has been laid aside, virtue dishonored. There is no moral compass to point the way, instead we legislate. And, we legislate because men are not honest. Our problem is that we deny the One who could guide us with his eternal law.

Our country begins to question the wisdom of our past decisions and like a pot on a low flame the contents begin to bubble up. We see the mistakes, but don’t know how the decisions were made. Common sense tells us better - but common sense was disregarded for new aspirations. Greed drove the markets, banks, and corporations. Once character didn’t matter, anything goes. We’re now living in the cumulative result of greed and the lack of character.

What we need is a return to the transcendentals. Better, we need to turn to the transcendental One. Is there a way back? Can we regain the ground and transform our culture. Well, yes. There is hope in the God of hope. However, it is not solved in committee meetings, board rooms, or elections. It is winning one person at a time to a worldview that is seen through the lens of Scripture and of course, to Jesus.

The recapturing of character is not expressed in mega-churches, pithy sayings, good rhetoric, or any of these ploys. It begins with us as individuals by living out the truth we know. It is by making a stand for righteousness where we see unrighteousness prevailing. It is finding the issues that are important to God, like the protection of the innocent, the plight of the poor among us and worldwide, and the inequities of our systems. And, then it is doing something about it. Get involved, help out for Jesus’ sake.

Young people today believe the church is hypocritical because we say this but do that. They’ve got a good case. Their indictment is that we’ve dropped the ball concerning the poor, war, and economics. We’ve got to listen to their accusations. They’re tempted to abandon Christianity and either go completely off the track or politicize their faith because they don’t see it working out in our context. They’re just one group that has found fault.

Finding fault doesn’t mean they’re right or spiritual. Finding fault doesn’t take any great gift. Solutions are what we need - Godly solutions. For now, I’ll leave it there.