personal development on Moral Silence

Silence is evil's closest ally.

At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being “judgmental.” He found ...

One of the great truths in life is that you can only go so far as you can be trusted. Every time a well-known pastor has a moral failure, the church’s reputation is hurt. This is at least partially wh...

You know all about us–our weakness, our failing, our sin; and you still love us enough to give your Son to redeem us. Hear the cries of our hearts today. There’s someone for whom it was hard to get ou...

Shortly after I got my first driver’s license, I also got my first ticket. I was driving 15 miles over the posted 25 miles per hour speed limit and a motorcycle cop caught me red handed. I was upset a...

There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immo...

Immaturity talks when it should listen, and is silent when it should speak.

“Laws of silence don't work.... When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire...

Morality or duty . . . never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.

For many of us, silence is something we try to avoid, both in conversations and in preaching. But as Richard John Neuhaus aptly describes in his time watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his sermo...

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

All moral obligation resolves itself into the obligation of conformity to the will of God.

The Desert Saint John Climacus placed a strong emphasis on the role of silence in the life of prayer. In his guidebook to the spiritual life, he had this to say: Intelligent silence is the mother of...

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intellige...

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue."

God of justice, you repeatedly call us to action, but we so often fail to respond. Your word convicts us, demonstrating that inaction is just as sinful as the wrong actions. Lord of mercy, forgive us ...

Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...

The success of every culture hinges not on big points of morality—there will always be issues like abortion or school prayer over which people differ—but on smaller values, like being considerate of o...

Christian morality has fallen on hard times these days. No one seems to believe in it, least of all Christians. Even the word “morality” is dropping out of our vocabulary—and I do mean the vocabulary ...

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Seco...

Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you remember Christ crucified and be silent.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Ronald Rohlheiser tells a true story of a Jewish boy named Mordechai who could not be coaxed into going to school. When he turned six years old, his mother forced him to go, but the process was misera...

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Guilt is a moral emotion, perhaps the quintessential moral emotion, and is therefore about values.

It is always easier for us to want to purify other people, and attempt a moral reformation among our neighbors. (Yet) how much have I helped to make her what she is?

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue reconnected thinking about ethics back to virtue by connecting virtue to the story a life is a part of. In order to know how we ought to live, we first need to answ...

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him requires a lot of courage and know-how.