Temptation and Struggle — Conclusion

Abstract

In this final chapter, I want to take a look around and see the relationship between human living and moral decisions. It should be evident that making moral decisions is a terribly difficult thing, and in our era, not always fashionable. We have become so indoctrinated with the so-called “behavioral sciences” and “psycho-analytical” concepts that we tend to consider moral problems disguises, moral concepts meaningless, and moral decisions rationalizations of what we would do anyway. There appears to be a trend to equate “immorality” with “disease” and “morality” with “self-enhancement.” The most amazing thing about all this is that men tend to make of themselves simply aggregates of material particles whose behavior is the result of “drives,” “impulses,” “chemical imbalances,” or “childhood frustrations.” Under such influences, words like “responsibility,” “human dignity,” and “freedom” lose all significance. In fact, the whole problem of making moral decisions loses not only its importance but its very import. This simply cannot be correct because human living is a direct contradiction of such a view. Men do make moral decisions and they do, at times at least, act as moral agents.