Fifty Shades of Morality? No, Only One!

Once morality loses its true center it loses its direction, foundation, and even all meaning.  The center of morality is God, without Him there is no true or real morality.  Morality can be lost in two ways, one) not believing in God, and two) distorting morality and or God in my image and likeness.  In the first way, if there is no belief in God the person will have a hard time rationalizing and justifying any type of morality since nothing has true meaning, all is left to the individual.  In the second way, sometimes more subtle, people who need to justify their bad behavior will begin to distort Truth, morality in this case and in the process the object moves inward to self and not towards God, hence both God and morality become twisted.  The second way is much more prevalent as there are very few atheists in this world.

I bring this up because of how backwards, upside down, and hypocritical a good part of society has become, since it has lost its anchor – its center.  A few of my good brother priests have already touched on this in the last few days with the release of the film, “Fifty Shades of Gray.”  The film has to do with sexual perversion, a relationship based on control, fear, violence, and sexual degradation, with the object here being the woman – the one who is being manipulated and abused.  One would think that there would be a great outcry especially since it shows violence towards women.  Think for a moment back to when Ray Rice, running back for the Baltimore Ravens attacked his fiancé in Atlantic City.  The outcry against him was tremendous, and rightly so, he did a horrible violence towards that young lady.  Afterwards there were commercials, the sappy one with athletes, actors, and musicians staring into the camera and saying, “No more,” some of them crying, and it could be some of them were being genuine, nevertheless the movement against women’s violence took off, but when it comes to this movie, those same folks are remaining silent or even enjoying a film like this.

Here is where it gets a little complicated.  When a person loses their center of morality, the foundation becomes weak, i.e. you flap around in the wind, are taken and swayed by every breeze, your head one minute is upright and the next minute it’s not.  A person becomes duplicitous and extremely relative in their beliefs and principals.  As an example, if a movie came out degrading Christianity, there is an element in society that would welcome such a film, but if a movie came out degrading Islam, that same group would get into an uproar, how could you do this, this is not compassion or understanding, etc.  So, when a movie like “Fifty Shades of Gray” is released it is acceptable, because it is art and the artists should be allowed to express themselves.  With that reasoning can I make a movie that is racist against different people?  Would that be acceptable?  It would not, so you see when you lose your moral center you are all over the place with no foundation, on the one hand you defend this but not the other, why, because morality is now based on me.

Our bigger problem is not “Fifty Shades of Gray,” but the loss of the center.  This movie is just a symptom of the disease.  Another example in case I am not making sense is this.  In New York recently they were trying to pass a law to allow girls under 18 years of age to go into a pharmacy an obtain the after-morning pill without the consent of a parent or guardian and at the same they were trying to pass a law to up the age to 21 to buy cigarettes.  Do not misunderstand me, I do not approve of smoking cigarettes, but I bring up the absurdity of some people’s morality.  How can you ask us to accept a girl without her parent’s guidance and approval to obtain such drugs but won’t allow the same sixteen year old girl to buy a pack of cigarettes?  You can see now the great moral dilemma in which we live.  Once you lose the center you can justify anything, approve anything, condemn anything and pick and choose according to me and not according to God.

What then is the answer?  It is simple and can be asked in direct and brief question?  A person has to ask themselves, “Whom do I serve, God or myself?”