{"id":2580,"date":"2024-06-25T16:23:14","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T22:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/newgenerationsexplorefaith\/?p=2580"},"modified":"2024-06-25T16:23:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T22:23:14","slug":"i-know-what-you-did-last-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/newgenerationsexplorefaith\/2024\/06\/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"I Know What You Did Last Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Just kidding. I can\u2019t even remember what I did last summer.<\/p>\n

What Did You Do Over Summer Vacation?<\/h1>\n It\u2019s a common question in US schools: \u201cWhat did you do during summer vacation?\u201d Sixty days of fun! There I was at one of daughter\u2019s homes, enjoying our stay, seven hundred miles away, when I got the call: \u201cOur home air conditioning is not working.\u201d I guess I could have let them roast, or pay a lot of money for a hotel.<\/p>\n Choices \u2013 go with the crowd or your own way. Image by Geralt on Pixabay, CCO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n In ninety-degree humid weather, and four people in the house, this was an emergency. Not that I had air conditioning for the first twenty-two years of my life. I have memories of working in the hot wheat fields, loading heavy bales of hay onto a wagon and stacking them in a hot, poorly ventilated barn. Regardless, we cut our visit short and went home. Times change.<\/p>\n Fortunately, I had planned for this and had a new, high efficiency HVAC unit in my garage. Intuition. Over the week, in sweltering heat and humidity, we replaced the old unit. I was tempted to take shortcuts, but by adhering to EPA regulations, we prevented further global warming and other issues, despite the increased cost.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t like increased costs, but one chlorine atom in older types of freon can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules, which is what happened to the ozone layer that protects us from skin cancer and eye cataracts. Restricting freon release let the ozone layer heal.<\/p>\n After a week of driving followed by a week of exhausting heat, bone weary, I was looking for a day of downtime. This morning my wife greeted me with, \u201cI want you to look at the dryer.\u201d Argh!<\/p>\n I have the answers. But having a lot of knowledge, education, and experience working in various fields is a curse. It means you get to do everything.<\/p>\n My AI beta reader would tell me this preface has little to do with the following blog article. Bah, humbug! It\u2019s relevant!<\/p>\n Now this is what I\u2019m talking about: \n\u201c\u2026 applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.\u201d \u2013 2 Peter 1: 5-9 (NASB)<\/p>\n (I love it when AI corrects the Bible verse \u2013 those interpreters don\u2019t know how to write. \u2639)<\/p>\n I also have answers in religion<\/h2>\n I study God. I\u2019m just a speck to God, but God loves this speck, so God lets me live and continue to irritate and challenge everyone. The God of the universe, who loves all people, including all on this planet, and any potential people on billions of other planets, lets me live and study God.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always this way. The beginning phase of Judaism is in stark contrast to being human and making errors. For around 20 offenses, the penalty was death. These death offenses included hitting or cursing your father and mother, having sex with an animal, disrespecting the Sabbath (weekly holy day), having sex with a slave who is engaged, adultery, being a medium or sorcerer, and disrespecting God. Oops!<\/p>\n Like Judaism, the earliest Greek law, founded by Draco, had death for all offenses. Other ancient cultures, like the Sumerian and Assyrian, were a bit more understanding and lenient.<\/p>\n Law holds inherent value, yet I\u2019ve always maintained that creating a law inevitably leads people to find ways to circumvent it. Is this what we want? It\u2019s something to ponder when we create new laws and punishments, and I write about it in other forums.<\/p>\n Maybe I deserve death. I\u2019ve been in death situations many times. I won\u2019t enumerate. I\u2019ve broken a few laws. The point: God lets me live. You too.<\/p>\n Christianity differs from other religions<\/h2>\n Even as a fundamentalist, I never believed that all people were bound for Hell. This is a misunderstanding of Scripture used to ensnare people because people don\u2019t believe in the power of God and love for spiritual growth, so they use Hell to circumvent the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n I researched the development of major religions up through the time of Christianity. They all have a notion of forgiveness. So what makes Christianity different?<\/p>\n Judgment. They all believe in judgment, or karma, or some kind of retribution for sin, or weighing good deeds versus foul deeds with the balance determining outcome. Judgment is an excruciating overlord that makes people feel they deserve a nasty fate and keeps driving them in that direction. The apostles understood this. They didn\u2019t all understand there will be no judgment for Christians.<\/p>\n Judgment is the weight of wrongful things we have done hanging over us like a black cloud. It\u2019s our conscience giving us a sense of inescapable doom. It pushes us into a downward spiral because we believe we are condemned anyway and can\u2019t recover.<\/p>\n Those in other religions ask themselves the question: \u201cDid I do enough benevolent things in my life, or did I commit such grievous acts that I can\u2019t be forgiven?\u201d<\/p>\n God lets me live. I live without that horrendous weight. I live knowing that I\u2019m acceptable to God. It\u2019s understandable if we can\u2019t live with ourselves for things we\u2019ve done, but we have to move on and become the people we should become. It\u2019s a gift from God and we can be gifts to ourselves and others.<\/p>\n Jesus focus on love and forgiveness<\/h2>\n Jesus was a Jew and came from Judaism. He changed the focus for people from one of legalism, punishment, and certain condemnation to love and forgiveness. After finishing his work with the Jews and being crucified, he instructed his apostles to take this message of forgiveness to everyone.<\/p>\n Jesus didn\u2019t tell his apostles to take Judaism and its many laws to all nations. He told them to take the simple Good News of forgiveness that leads to a better and eternal life. We all worship the same God. There is only one creator God. Everyone struggles and does harmful things that develop negative karma. We all need this good news.<\/p>\n Accepting the Good News doesn\u2019t necessarily mean conversion from one religion to another. Conversion in some countries results in a death sentence. It means asking God for forgiveness and following the Way Jesus showed us to live, the way of love. Love can\u2019t get you into serious trouble.<\/p>\n Christianity is different. You ask God for forgiveness and God remembers it no more. (Micah 7:19, Hebrews 8:12.) It\u2019s buried so deep it can\u2019t be remembered. You don\u2019t face judgment for wrongful deeds if you try to do better. This is spiritual growth. This is what life is all about. Love.<\/p>\n Christians forgive others in the same way that they receive forgiveness. This is integral to Christianity. If they don\u2019t, then they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n This forgiveness ends the endless cycle of guilt that drags people down. Each day we start anew, striving to become better individuals and growing in our spirituality. We don\u2019t have to worry about judgment, condemnation, punishment, or anything related. We are free to progress in our lives to an abundant life in which relationships are good and the paralysis that comes from wrongful acts is gone.<\/p>\n Praxis\u2013what does this mean to you and I?<\/h2>\n I talked to three people just this week about moral conduct. One was worried about wrongful things done decades ago. Another was worried about an employer requiring fraud in documentation. Another was worried about an employer who has charges for fraud in other states and appears to be doing similar things now.<\/p>\n Immoral, unethical, and illegal deeds can come back to haunt in various ways. They destroy our sense of integrity.<\/p>\n Once you begin doing fraud, where does that leave your conscience and commitment to moral and ethical responsibility? Slippery slope?<\/p>\n \u201cThe effects of moral injury [to self or others] can include feelings of guilt, shame, anger, sadness, anxiety and disgust; beliefs about being bad, damaged or unworthy; self-handicapping behaviours; loss of faith in people and avoidance of intimacy; and loss of religious faith, or loss of faith in humanity or a just world. \u2013 Open Arms<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to avoid tough choices when employers are disdainful of the law and try to circumvent it through fraud. You can get another job. You can talk to HR or legal, if those departments exist, but then expect the executive officer to find surreptitious ways to get back at you. Will it be career suicide? Will another job be better or worse? Difficult choices.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve observed many organizations and politicians who employ questionable leadership tactics. Good leaders shape their organization to be ethical and treat others impartially, and have high expectations of performance, resulting in excellent outcomes.<\/p>\n Others shape their employees to be unethical and take shortcuts, with notably rotten outcomes. Soon the entire organization is unethical and doing illegal things, everyone is unhappy, and everyone leaves. It\u2019s a very costly downward spiral.<\/p>\n \u201cThe right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.\u201d \u2013 Margaret Chase Smith on brainyquote.com<\/p>\n These lessons, from the likes of Enron and Madoff, are all around us if we just look. You could easily author a business, political, or religious book about the destructiveness of unethical and illegal choices on personnel and business.<\/p>\n Immoral, unethical, and illegal conduct have terrible consequences. But we can seek forgiveness and regain our moral compass, growing spiritually and fostering improved relationships leading to abundant life.<\/p>\n Jesus in John 10:10 (Message Bible): \u201cA thief [misleading people] is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.\u201d \u2013 Mark Twain on brainyquote.com<\/p>\n A new person at a hardware store recently tried to charge me 52 cents, including tax, for 25 feet of wire. I said I couldn\u2019t let them do that. I explained that 25 feet of wire at 47 cents a foot was higher than 47 cents for one foot.<\/p>\n I never want to think of myself as a thief, unfair, or your loss is my gain. I don\u2019t want to be that person.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t have integrity, you have nothing. You can\u2019t buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.\u201d \u2013 Henry Kravis on brainyquote.com<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/h2>\n** ** Our behavior is a choice. Many people would smile to themselves and pay 52 cents for their wire. Some people hate government regulations because they are costly, even if necessary, and ignore them. Other people hate others because they don\u2019t like how they live. Some people cheat because it seems to make life easy. These actions have consequences. They can be soul crushing, land us in jail, or hurt others.<\/p>\n ** **Christianity is not a get out of jail free card. The price of Christianity is you change your behavior and do what is right, even if you fail. It\u2019s up to us whether we make the easy choice or the difficult one.<\/p>\n Impact of immoral behavior:<\/h3>\n The Psychology Behind Unethical Behavior<\/a><\/em>. \u2013 Harvard Business Review<\/p>\n Editorial: Moral emotion, moral cognition, and (im)moral behavior in the workplace<\/a><\/em>. \u2013 Frontiers<\/p>\n Moral Injury<\/a><\/em> \u2013 Open Arms (impact of immoral behavior on self or others)<\/p>\n Probability Space<\/h2>\n*** ** ***What probability spaces can we open in our minds to find ways to hold others to higher standards?<\/p>\n Potential Space<\/h2>\n***** ** If you think creatively and allow your mind to wander and explore loneliness, how can we help others understand, in simple ways, the impact of immoral behavior, even if doing the convenient thing without getting caught is possible and even accepted in certain circles?<\/p>\n ** ________________________<\/p>\n ** \u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dorian<\/p>\n ** *****Our answer is God. God\u2019s answer is us. Together we make the world better.<\/p>\n Restore and recreate. Take time to celebrate life. Laugh, sing, and dance regularly, even every day. Happy<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Bible scripture verses are New American Standard Version (NASB), unless noted.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just kidding. I can\u2019t even remember what I did last summer. What Did You Do Over Summer Vacation? It\u2019s a common question in US schools: \u201cWhat did you do during summer vacation?\u201d Sixty days of fun! There I was at one of daughter\u2019s homes, enjoying our stay, seven hundred miles away, when I got the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4612,"featured_media":2583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1827,1824],"class_list":["post-2580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-impact-of-bad-ethics","tag-impact-of-immorality"],"yoast_head":"\nI Know What You Did Last Summer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Just kidding. I can't even remember what I did last summer. What Did You Do Over Summer Vacation? It\u2019s a common question in US schools: \u201cWhat did you do actions have consequences. 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