Christian Excellence and Morality
Henry Weiss
Tim Farron could not continue his political career due to moral conflicts posed on his Christian beliefs by an increasingly secularised society. The message of this book is that if you are a politician like Farron, you can be an excellent workman or woman, and still hold dear to your moral beliefs.

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book excerpt

CHAPTER 1 Welcome to the Morally Conflicting World Welcome to the Morally Conflicting World, a topsy-turvy world indeed! It is a world where truth is dumped in the trashcan, and lies are celebrated; where sound morals, integrity and noble character are persistently scorned, while immorality is imbibed and extolled to high heavens; where the morally conscious and upstanding are ridiculed, and the depraved are empowered. It’s a world where “Freedom of Speech” is used as a screen for filth and vulgarism, and a hammer against godly virtue, sometimes under the cloak of religion. It’s a world where politicians embezzle public funds and get away with it; as if that’s not enough, they are even granted bail and released under lenient conditions, and eulogized by swarming supporters celebrating and welcoming their ‘hero’ back from a traumatic prison experience. It’s a world where clergymen demonstrate in essence to their teeming multitudes: “Do as I say and not as I live”. It’s a world where youths are hell-bent on the craze for quick wealth, indulging in atrocious acts in a bid to enjoy crass materialism, impress their friends and oppress their foes. It’s a world where businessmen thrash sound business ethics in the face of short-term profits and earnings. It’s a world where students whittle down the high towers of intellectual honesty that promote high academic standards and originality of work, research and knowledge explosion, sustainable civilization and societal development, sense of professionalism and career advancement, creativity and innovation of tangible products and services solving real life problems; industry, diligence and enterprise, etc., but succumb to base practices of cheating and plagiarism of research work. Introduction Paul the Apostle made mention of a law antagonistic to the law of his mind in Rom7v23, “But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members”; moral relativism (the belief that defining right and wrong is an individual and personal choice, denying the presence of absolute law) is one of those laws in our members which urges us to do what seems right to us (Prov14v12). Benjamin Franklin, a man of integrity and proven character and one of America’s founding fathers, set a goal of moral perfection for himself but failed miserably realizing finally that the task he gave himself was a humanly impossible one. Even Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, had this to say in his growing up years, “If somebody did something I considered unjust, I felt that the world really had collapsed around me, had derailed and was spiraling out of control.” Albert Einstein, foremost 20th century scientist also alluded to the fact saying, “Morality is of the highest importance”. Billy Graham, America’s most popular televangelist, had this to say, “If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing; if you lose your health, you have lost something; if you lose your integrity, you have lost everything”. The truth is everyone grapples with the morality issue since we are all moral agents, but the top question is how do you manage, cope with and overcome the moral burden that confronts you? Discussion of Findings To prove the validity of this work, a questionnaire-distributing spree was embarked upon. This work started as a hypothesis in the form of a question, “Is there a relationship between Christian Excellence and Morality?” I was, however, able to induce from the responses obtained from the questionnaires distributed that there was a strong relationship between the two. The responses from people revealed quite a lot of grey areas that need to be addressed. Hopefully, in the course of the book, the searchlight shall be beamed on these questions and many more issues, and ignorance shall be exposed to the furious light of the day. Hence, responses to the questions asked are addressed below. A great percentage of respondents answered ‘yes’ to the very first question “Are Christians the light of the world according to your Bible?” In response to the question, “Do you see much shining of Christians in the world today?” quite a number of respondents answered ‘yes’ as well as ‘no’. Other responses were: “No, because most things are calling for our attention”, “Not as much as we should”, “Partially”. The next question, the third, was: “So, what is responsible for their not shining as should?” The following were their responses: “Might be as a result of their relationship with God”, “People profess Christianity (i.e. as a religion) but do not live the God-life (zoe)”, “Duplicity, ‘lust of the flesh’ (wanting to gratify their feelings), love of mundane things, a gradual lack of love for the things of God”, “Many of us are selfish, we are lazy, we have little or no concern for the lost souls, we do not see ourselves as the light”, “Sin is what is responsible for that”, “Sin is the reason, and only God can help us”, “Peer pressure, technology”, “Deflection to sin is what is responsible for Christians not shining as should”. On the next question, which asked respondents “What do you understand by effective human performance?” the following were given: “Performing effectively in any task or job given”, “Achieving God’s maximum performance for our lives”, “The proper behavior of human beings to one another”, “Effective use of one’s resources, intellect, strength to achieve something”, “A situation in which a human delivers his best possible, his peak, his optimum, on a given expectation”, “Performing at optimum. It is called ‘Highest and Best Use’ in Land Economics”, “Effective influence of man on his environment”. The next question was: “Are Christians performing to expectation in the society or being relegated to the background?” To which majority of respondents agreed that many Christians are not performing to expectation. To the question “What are those factors responsible for poor/average performance among Christians?”, we had the following responses: “Ignorance and lack of faith”, “Not believing God to the fullest”, “Laziness, shyness, fear, di