RAY OF HOPE?

I have recently read two separate articles in a leading reputable newspaper by columnists both of whom have raised the same question, “Why do the public want to ascribe moral traits to their heroes?” In other words, why is the public concerned about morality?


The question was prompted by the string of high profile sportsmen, particularly in the field of golf and football, who have been exposed in their lurid and persistent adulterous behaviour. There was something of a public surge of judgemental anger against such behaviour, and particularly over the blatant treatment of their wives; it was not acceptable behaviour; it was wrong. The anger and the reproach found expression is such vivid tabloid phrases as “love rat” and “love cheat” by which each culprit was bitingly described. Even though the glossy gossip magazines dropped on the stories like unclean vultures on carrion, the underlying condemnation was evident. Something much better was evidently expected in the character of such gifted people.


The first of the columnist I read clearly belonged to the “intelligentsia”. He openly declared that he simply could not understand why people should get upset about these antics. For him it meant that people simply had not yet grown up; they had not moved into the educated and enlightened modern world where people could be free in their behaviour. If I understand his argument aright he saw the outcry as retrogressive behaviour in our developing civilised culture.


The second columnist was a sports writer. He pointed out that these sportsmen had been given a “squeaky” clean image by those business companies who used their famous profile in their advertising. The public was taken in, and should have realised that they were just ordinary men. The public expected too much of their heroes. It was absurd to get upset. They needed to adjust their expectations and (presumably) take it rather more casually.



Actually there may well be a real ray of hope here. My answer to the question is that the response of the public to such behaviour seems to indicate that there is still a basic public moral conscience that is active. If that is true it is good news! I don’t think the public have been conned by the advertisers at all. There is a deep public feeling here that if you are going to be looked up to in any way, you have to back it up by your personal life. If as a person you are shown to be deceitful, unfaithful and promiscuous, then you don’t really deserve to be looked up to. It is certainly the established fact, as the advertisers have discovered to their cost, that if the pin-up star advertising your product gets tarnished then he (or she!) ceases to attract buyers for your product. That in itself indicates that moral misbehaviour produces a massive fall in public esteem. If there is, therefore, a public conscience still, then there is some hope for society, despite the avant guard intelligentsia. There is precious little conscience evident among the latter, for which the very word “conscience” is a dirty word.



What is surprising about this public conscience is that it should still exist in our world of visual and written media which peddles in the most coarse and repulsive manner all the adultery, affairs, promiscuity and pornography that it can lay its hands on, and which the same public are soaking in day after day. It is astonishing that the same public can see and read all this, and yet retain an underlying sense that this is wrong. Why is that? It is not because we are just slow in throwing off old shackles; it is because the God given sense of right and wrong is so fundamentally a part of us as human beings. Thank God for that – there is still something for the Holy Spirit to work on in bringing conviction of sin.



Conscience can be cauterised, of course, and it can be found so nullified in so many of the movers and shakers of our society, in those who lead and steer public opinion. They will always remain puzzled by the question, “Why do the public want to ascribe moral traits to their heroes?” I just thank God the public still do! Pray God that they may continue to do so.






Bob




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