What's The Balance Of Your Moral Bank Account? (Dennis Prager On Proper Moral Judgment Alert)

Worldnetdaily.com ^ | 03/22/05 | Dennis Prager

[goldstategop]

If you've ever heard of a Ponzi scheme – and almost every American has – you will surely assume that Charles Ponzi, the man after whom the scam was named, was a bad man. He, like everyone else who ever started the scheme, cheated people out of their money. But a fascinating new biography of Charles Ponzi by Mitchell Zuckoff, "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend," reveals that a few years before inventing his scheme, Ponzi had given a fair amount of his skin so it could be grafted onto a woman who he learned was dying of severe burns. He suffered pain from this act of incredible generosity, which saved a person's life. Yet, were it not for this biography, who would ever associate Ponzi with anything except scamming people out of their money?

I note this because it brings home a point that is often lost on most people – religious or secular, conservative or liberal – that human beings all have what I call moral bank accounts. Just like a real bank account into which we make monetary deposits and from which we make monetary withdrawals, we make moral deposits into and moral withdrawals from our moral bank accounts based on the actions we engage in during our lifetime.

Now, of course, some people make so many withdrawals – Hitler, for example – that no imaginable good act they can do will seriously change the balance from extremely negative to positive. But most people need to be assessed based on this bank account analogy.

I first came up with this idea when Clarence Thomas was accused by Anita Hill and the Democratic Party of sexual harassment. Needless to say, no one knew for sure which party was telling the truth. But I made the argument on my radio show that given all the good Thomas had done, given the absence of indications of him ever acting indecently toward women employees, his moral bank account was, to the best our knowledge, quite in the black. Whether or not he said the words "pubic hair" in a conversation with Anita Hill 10 years earlier was of absolutely no concern to me in assessing his moral character – i.e., the balance in his moral bank account.

Similarly, I wrote in this column and argued on radio that the dismissals of William Bennett made by people, conservatives and liberals alike, over revelations that he had gambled large sums of money were unfair even if one is opposed to gambling. Why? Because the gambling paled in comparison to how much good Mr. Bennett had done with his talks and books on moral character.

It was conservatives – usually religious conservatives (whose social attitudes I so often identify with) – who were particularly disturbed. If they had applied this notion of moral bank accounts to Bill Bennett, they would not have been.

Without a moral bank account, who among us, at some point in our lives, is not doomed to being perceived as having a moral balance in the red?

And at the same time, some people who have done true evil are given a free ride. I will never forget the attorney for a man who had kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered a young girl describing his client as "a good man who'd had a bad weekend." No good that murderer ever did could outweigh the evil of that weekend. What I am asking for is moral perspective. If your spouse has been a good and loyal man/woman and a good and loving father/mother for 10, 20 or 30 years and had an unfaithful night on a business trip, do all those years of deposits into his/her moral bank account count for nothing?

Without the moral perspective a moral bank account gives us, good people are usually the greatest victims of our loss of moral perspective and bad people are the greatest beneficiaries. We exaggerate the good done by the generally bad, and the bad done by the generally good.

God, of course, is the ultimate judge of us all. But in the meantime, moral judgments must be made by us humans here on earth. And to do so we need perspective. Charles Ponzi heroically saved a woman's life at a great personal price. His scheme was awful; but he was not. Likewise, Oskar Schindler saved many Jews during the Holocaust while regularly being unfaithful to his wife. Yet, we, correctly, I believe, regard Schindler as a moral hero.

I am for moral clarity and calling good "good" and evil "evil." But we lose the war against evil and the war for good when we lose moral perspective. We all have moral bank accounts, and it's good to make deposits because, God knows, we all make withdrawals.

[goldstategop]

There is no man who does not sin. Even good people sin and they do things in their life they're not proud of. Dennis Prager writes here about the need for proper moral perspective. People like Charles Ponzi and Oskar Schindler were flawed people. Ponzi scammed people out of their wealth and Schindler was a womanizer and alcoholic. While Schindler's recognized as hero, we fail to acknowledge Ponzi's moral generosity saved a person's life by donating a fair amount of his skin to relieve her suffering - and he suffered too for it. Schindler saved Jews. We all have a moral bank account just like we have an earthly one. Some people like Hitler, make so many withdrawals, they will never earn a positive moral balance. But most people apart from the truly evil, have made their withdrawals but they've also constantly sought to replenish their credits. Of course, God is the ultimate judge, but we can see imperfect people can do a great deal of good and for most of us thank God, our moral balance is never permanently in the red. Its important to make proper moral judgments so what good people put into their moral bank account - let's call them good deeds, counts for a great more than the withdrawals - let's call them sins, in the course of their lives.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[Red Sea Swimmer]

All throughout history wisdom has always flowed through the zeitgeist to the righteous.

Right now, people should be seeking out the wisest and most righteous on the planet and accepting their guidance.

The Gordian Knot of world affairs can be cut forever. Where there is a will there is a way.

We all need to take advice from a higher authority at times...

[little jeremiah]

I agree. Without moral guidance from those wiser and more saintly than oneself, one can't get out of the shackles of darkness.

Everyone has to have faith in someone.

(BTW, that cat that the deer liked to lick got eaten, probably by a hawk or coyote...)

[djpg]

The intent of the article is good: Don't be overly critical of good people who do an occasional bad thing. But the idea of a moral bank account is troubling. It may lead people to say, "My moral bank account is well in the black; therefore, I can get away with a little evil since I'll still have enough good in reserve."

I would hate to see people balance their own good and evil as if they were balancing a check book.

[goldstategop]

The author meant that even though we do sin, we constantly try to add credits to this moral bank account to make up for the withdrawals. We never withdraw enough so that we'll forfeit God's grace. The truly evil seldom replenish their moral bank account so a few good acts they do never make up for the enormity of their sin. The idea isn't that we should be able to get away with our sins; rather the idea is to look to the things that help make us better persons and to help others remember we're human. Only the divine beings are perfect in character.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[apackof2]

I think this merits some consideration when contemplating a "moral bank account"
(from a previous post)

Repenting Before We Sin

With her enticing speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she seduced him. Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till an arrow struck his liver. As a bird hastens to the snare, he did not know it would cost his life.

Proverbs 7:21-23

Dealing wisely and decisively with temptation requires strength of character. If sin is to be avoided, we must be able to interrupt the train of events described by James: "But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death" (James 1:14,15). When we feel ourselves being pulled in the direction of doing something we know is wrong, we must have the character to "draw the line" and refuse to cross it. Most people know what it feels like to hate or loathe a sin that has already been committed. But wouldn't it be a great thing to have the same intensity of feeling beforehand so that the act could be prevented?

One reason we succumb to temptation as we do is that we don't really say "No!" to sin. We often think that's what we've done, and so we're frustrated to find ourselves going ahead and doing that which we think we've rejected. But often, the actual fact is that we've not at any point really said "No!" to the act we're contemplating. Decisively rejecting sin is more than a vague feeling that we ought not to do the thing. It's more than the soft whisper of our conscience. Rejecting sin requires that we gather ourselves together, decide upon our course of action, and refuse to commit the act. It certainly does include the feeling that we shouldn't do the deed. But it must be more than a feeling. It must be a commitment -- a resolute, decisive, final commitment not to let ourselves be carried along by the momentum of temptation.

There'll surely be times when we find that we have allowed temptation to give birth to sin in our lives. At such times, godly sorrow does require character. But for all those who have enough character to feel sorry for what they've done after the fact, there are far fewer who have the character to feel sorry in advance and "repent" of the deed before it has a chance to take place.

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those we intend to commit.

Visit the WordPoints web site: www.wordpoints.com

[steve-b]

By this argument, a fire-and-brimstone preacher is entitled to pick up a hooker or at least watch a lesbian sex show now and then, so long as he keeps his "moral balance" in the black.

[walden]

"I would hate to see people balance their own good and evil as if they were balancing a check book."

I don't think it the idea will have that effect, or rather, people who WANT to do evil do that sort of balancing anyway, while those who want to do good are too often too hard both on themselves and on others for moral lapses. Praeger is encouraging the good people to keep perspective on the issue.

Besides, evil people don't read Praeger anyway. ;)