Advent Pt. 3 - Origins

I sat bewildered at what had just happened. I couldn't believe that Facebook had changed again. It all too often caves into the waves of change allowing its users to sit and complain about it for a moment and then get used to its new form. Yet this new form of Facebook completely alters social networking. You can now trace a person's life on this timeline all the way back to their birth. 
It's a shame how a lot of people can't do that. A lot of people can't trace their origins. 
While this new moralism is still preaching a gospel of peace and love, it is a peace and love with no foundation. Unlike how the Israelites can looks back on how God led them out of Egypt to justify their faithfulness and how Christians can look back on Christ's death and resurrection to justify their new life, new moralists can't look back on everything. Rather this new moralism is a synthesis of beliefs from different religions. 
So where are its origins?
I don't believe that Jesus came up with the moral structure explained in the Sermon on the Mount out of nowhere. If He did, then the flaws of His structure would have caved in over time. Yet it still has a firm foundation in society today. New moralists partake in this structure because they are still preaching the same gospel of love and peace. The only difference is that they have secularized it. An example would be someone would love their neighbor because they are a fellow American and not a creation of God or cause Jesus said so. Therefore, a rationality was introduced to justify their means.
One of the greatest threats to our philosophical age is the justification that rationality provides. 
People who partake in this new moralism seek to be justified in their own rationality rather than by God in their actions. But in doing so, they effectively deny their roots. 
The ironic thing is how rationality has actually blurred our origin instead of make it clearer. 
This Advent season, as we love, as we give, as we toil, as we do anything and everything under God's grace, we need to realize that we are only doing that because of our origins. If God didn't send His Son, then we wouldn't be celebrating Christmas. If God didn't send His Son, then we would have no reason to love and to give this season. 
So there is a way to redeem the secularization of the Advent season and that is to reconnect the new moralism that has doused our culture to its origins in Jesus Christ. 

"Let them give thanks to the Lord

for His unfailing love

and His wonderful deeds for men."

-Psalm 107: 8, 15, 21, 31

Advent Pt. 2 - Morality

It's funny how we go about morality in a subjective manner. As humans, we are all moral beings given the idea that we have the power to discern right from wrong. But we have different definitions of what is right and what is wrong. A person who robs a bank could justify his actions by saying its morally right. This is because morality is defined through culture as to what culture believes is right and wrong. But beneath it all, if everyone has some different sense of what is moral then the culture's perspective of morality is permeable and manipulable, giving in to the law of the jungle stating that whoever is in power has a say of what is moral.

An example of this situation came to me just recently. Last week I took up a job buying back books from students on campus. My main intention in doing this job was to make people happy and serve them in a loving way. So I researched one of my books for class with the bookstore and found that they were buying back the book for a cheaper price than I offered. So I emailed my whole class and told them that I was offering a better price and that I would just sit outside the final and buy their books from them. Well one person, unaware that I was telling the wholesale price of the book at the bookstore and not the market price, sought to react to my email in a bad manner. He said that I was screwing people over. Now here are the two clashing moralities: I, wanting to help and serve people, and the other person, wanting to react to injustice. Both sides are serving an ultimate good, but one side goes about it in a malicious manner.

But if we doused this situation in the standard of morality that the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus presents, we find that they not only serve an ultimate good, but a beneficial good. We both could have gone about this situation in a more loving manner and build each other up rather than seek to tear others down.

There is a new moralism (as Pope Joseph Ratzinger calls it) that is taking precedence in culture today. This new moralism can be defined by belief in a greater good by the standards of culture and promoting ideals such as love, justice, peace, etc. etc. As this new moralism is taking precedence it is still man-made which allows it to be fallible enough to allow for the preaching of a gospel of hate rather than a gospel of peace and love. In the mentioned situation we were both trying to create a peace endowed with justice but in doing so preached this gospel of hate. 

How does culture's morality affect the Advent season?

Advent Pt. 1 - The Necessity of Christ

Advent is described as this season of waiting, longing, expectation, preparation, yearning for the arrival of Christ or for Christmas. In many ways I believe we have as a culture secularized this idea. And that's okay! There is a redemption to this idea that exists.
One day, the rain was beating hard against the pavement and was pounding on me relentlessly on my journey to the car. I would have reached my car sooner if I had ran, but I was going about my journey in an odd way. I was taking big and scattered steps. Why? I was trying to avoid all the worms that had been washed out onto the sidewalk. I saw them scrambling to get back into the dirt where they were "safe." While I was looking like an idiot trying to get to my car, I had enough pity on them not to step on them. 
The funny thing is, when God looks down on us, worms that just crave the dirt, He doesn't pity us but He loves us. 
Yet the worms knew no better than to go back to the dirt. In their eyes, if they see some giant figure looming over them, they are naturally going to run. They needed some other worm to guide them out on to the smooth surface of the sidewalk and let them know that they are going to be okay. 
We see many times in the Old Testament how a rain comes and washes worms onto this path of righteousness until they realized they are exposed before a holy God and try to hide in the dirt again. But then God, out of love, sends His Son down to die for us so that we can realize that we can permanently partake on this path of righteousness. 
The necessity of Christ permeates deep within our being. Yet in this secularization of the Advent the idea of being needy of salvation in Christ has become blurred by a new moralism. This new moralism isn't bad because in a tough world, it does the right thing, yet there is a way of connecting this new moralism to a greater truth. Further discussion on what this is in Part 2.