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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Moral Identity and the Time of the End

Let's pray as we begin our service today, our preaching section.

Father in heaven, today, all of us come here not because We have arrived or even have the answers, but we come questioning you today and making ourself open to being questioned by you.

1 answer we do have is that we need help.

As individuals, as families, as a community, as an institution, as a church and our world, our nation, we definitely see the signs that we need help.

And some say that we need to recover the soul of the nation, and others say we need God back in the nation.

So we all agree, we need God in our lives today.

So we ask that you would come near through the power of your word.

The reason we come today is not to hear a man, but to hear your word.

We ask that your word would speak to us today in Christ's name.

Message title of message today is Moral Identity.

About a week ago I was asked by the president of the institution to teach a graduate course for our new psychology masters.

They told me we need to have a course that will focus on the establishing and sharing of moral identity.

And we want to have counselors that actually will share the morals and the identity of Christ with their patients and with those they're counseling.

We want people that will actually talk about God with the people they're counseling and be confident enough to be able to do that.

And I did not need another class to teach, to be honest.

But the more I thought about it, I said, you know, if I cannot teach a class about that, then I'm a disaster.

At least I should be able to talk about it.

And as I began to look at it more and more, and look at what that actually meant in the counseling literature, I realized that that is basically the bottom line and it's the bottom line at the end of time.

Will there be a people who have enough moral identity that it also leads to moral activity?

So I was reading a dissertation, 1 of several I read this last week, about this.

A foundational desire of evangelical educational institutions is to develop ethical motivation and encourage moral behavior.

The mission statements of various evangelical colleges provide examples of the emphasis they place on moral development.

For example, Liberty University has stated its desire to build men and women with values.

Judson College, to encourage students to embrace Christian ethics for lifelong growth and behavior.

Within evangelical educational institutions, moral development is a priority, yet often an area that receives little intentional implementation.

And that's what this dissertation was about.

In the literature review of the dissertation, there was, or right after the literature review, there was a problem statement that was posited by the author that said this.

Adolescence is viewed as a pivotal period in an individual's moral identity development.

So that would be academy age, but then all the way through the 30s, this is the primary function, the primary task of someone to develop their moral identity during this time.

Colleges have been called upon to increase both their, colleges have been called upon to increase both their ethical training of students and their research on how to best achieve this goal.

1 recent study reported that 75% of college students confessed to cheating, 70% confessed to stealing, these are evangelical schools, and 89% confessed to lying.

So the problem is that there's this goal and lip service to moral identity but there's not a corresponding activity.

In fact, very troubling to me is sometimes I hear even on this campus, well I know Dr.

Nellie told us to give our phones in, but I just turned in a phone, so he thinks I turned in a phone, but I didn't really turn in the phone I use.

Just to keep it real, this is not about evangelical schools, this is about this school.

Or I heard the sermon on the Sabbath and I heard a sermon on Sabbath observance and I actually saw inspired statements, but then I go out that very afternoon and do something totally against that.

That is a disconnect between moral identity and activity.

How many of you understand what I'm saying?

How many of you understand what I've just said?

This last couple weeks all over the news was a guy named Jerry Falwell at Liberty University who did not fall well.

He fell from being the president of the largest evangelical college in the country, 1 that pictured itself as the Protestant Notre Dame.

In an article written by CNN, Jerry Falwell's fatal miscalculation.

It begins by describing how Jerry described himself.

Last fall, as scrutiny of his leadership at Liberty University began to intensify, Jerry Falwell Jr.

Revealed to a CNN reporter 1 of the secrets of his school's success.

He said, our success at Liberty did not start with Jerry Falwell, my father, who built the religious rite and started in the old time gospel hour sermons that then led people together and they said we want to send our kids to listen to more of that.

No, it didn't start with him, said Jerry Falwell Jr.

It actually started with my grandfather who was a bootlegger and delivered moonshine to Virginia hill dwellers during prohibition.

He died when he was 55 with a hip flask in his pocket.

And what really made Liberty successful is not my father, but my grandfather.

My father became a Christian, said Jerry Falwell Jr., but he took the same entrepreneurial spirit into the religious world, and That's why Liberty is where it is today.

It's successful because of the entrepreneurial business spirit of a bootlegger, which was my grandfather.

How many can see any disconnect in that statement between the moral identity of Liberty University and the statement of the president of the university?

The wheels started coming off the cart, even though he had admitted it's not the gospel hour, it's not the gospel that's given us success, It's the business success.

And then he went on, as he was confronted about a picture that was taken on a yacht, by saying this, I'm not a moral leader.

My job was to grow Liberty's endowment, campus and student body.

I've never been a minister, he told 1 critic, pointing to his background as a lawyer and a real estate developer.

The faculty, the students, the campus pastor are the ones who keep Liberty University strong spiritually as the best Christian university in the world.

I'm proud to be a conservative Christian, but my job is to keep Liberty University successful academically, financially, and with athletics.

How many are beginning to see that the wheels are falling off the car?

Am I gonna go to a Christian school and then lie?

Am I just here because my parents sent me here?

Notice I'm talking about the president of the institution, not just the students.

My focus is on academics, finances, and athletics.

And then CNN comments, by most worldly standards, Fawell is a raging success.

1000000000 dollars in new construction, a huge burst in the endowment, but also a cut in the budget of the School of Divinity.

Streams strange to hear the heir of the moral majority's founder and leader of a school that aims to train champions for Christ disavowing the responsibility to live a moral life.

Moral identity without moral activity, they called a fatal miscalculation.

It is a fatal miscalculation to speak about your moral identity when it's not coupled with moral activity.

And in the article they made an interesting comment.

He only got like this when he got a lot of money.

The increase in the money was coupled with a decrease in morality.

Some of you might be going to school to increase your money, but just realize it could also decrease your morale.

But let's look under the hood a little bit more and see Falwell's Fatal miscalculation.

He thought that because he had grown the campus by $1 billion in construction and the endowment by $1.6 billion that he was untouchable.

Someone wrote, stop this infantile behavior and lead our alma mater with dignity as your father did.

You are not honoring your father and your mother's legacy.

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Moral Identity and the Time of the End

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