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What Are Moral Values?

by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
Mayflower Church, Oklahoma City

Updated August 10, 2005

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower
Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, a church in
northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at
Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely
have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma
Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years,
and hold the record for the most number of angry
letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because
I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over
by those who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose
actions are anything but Christian.

We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral
values" as having swung the election to President
Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but
we need to have a discussion, all over this country,
about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean
what are we talking about? Because we don't get to
make them up as we go along, especially not if we are
people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of
what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.
Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take
issue with those in power who claim moral values are
on their side:

When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act
as if your deceptions are justified because you are
doing God's will, and that your critics are either
unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us
who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the
faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but
immoral.

When you live in a country that has established
international rules for waging a just war, build the
United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and
then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for
the rest of the world, you are doing something
immoral.

When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life,
and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore
his essential teaching, or turn them on their head
(you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must
never return violence for violence and that those who
live by the sword will die by the sword), you are
doing something immoral.

When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are
not as important as the lives of American soldiers,
and refuse to even count them, you are doing something
immoral.

When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and
then question the patriotism of someone who
volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are
doing something immoral.

When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the
gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the
weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax
breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will
get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are
doing something immoral.

When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive
so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the
Geneva Conventions, which your own country helped to
establish and insists that other countries follow, you
are doing something immoral.

When you claim that the world can be divided up into
the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own
nation into those who are with you, or with the
terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches
your own friends and seizes control of the oil to
which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick
the habit, you are doing something immoral.

When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask
us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end
in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like
a great millstone around the necks of our children,
you are doing something immoral.

When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a
country that was once the most loved country in the
world, and act like it doesn't matter what others
think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have
done something immoral.

When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to
turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use
the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are
doing something immoral.

When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be
a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was
the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing
something immoral.

When you dismantle countless environmental laws
designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to
us all, so that the corporations that bought you and
paid for your favors will make higher profits while
our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic
world, you have done something immoral. The earth
belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.

When you claim that our God is bigger than their God,
and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is
evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to
be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the
enemy, and the enemy is us.

When you tell people that you intend to run and govern
as a "compassionate conservative," using the word
which is the essence of all religious faith --
compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who
disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry
to you for help, you are doing something immoral.

When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer
of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone
who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she
doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing
something immoral.

When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and
will set women back a hundred years, and when you
surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to
be killed, you are doing something immoral.

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a
Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or
that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I
must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people
saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the
war.

I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war
was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you
know that this war is wrong -- the only question is
how many people are going to die before these
make-believe Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt.
The claim of this administration to be Christian is
bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things
around are people like you--young people who are just
beginning to wake up t to what is happening to them.
It's your country to take back. It's your faith to
take back. It's your future to take back.

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when
your friends begin to tell you that the cause is
righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around
the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.
Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real
Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real
Buddhists--so do all the faith traditions of the world
at their heart believe one thing: life is precious.
Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the
opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity.
And believing that one has never made a mistake is the
mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith. And war --
war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and
thus the greatest failure of faith.

There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it
all: War, what is it good for? absolutely nothing. And
what is the dream of the prophets? That we should
study war no more, that we should beat our swords into
plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who
would Jesus bomb, indeed?

How many wars does it take to know that too many
people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody
came? Maybe one day we will find out.

Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of
civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and
refuse to participate in the madness.