Did I ever flip over a cartoon sent to me not long ago!
It shows a man at the pearly gates of Heaven, confronted by St. Peter, who is blocking his entrance and waving a list in the air.The man, with a look of consternation on his face, is yelling, "Sins? What do you mean sins? I thought those were lifestyle choices!"
Every day on my radio program I talk with people who have gotten themselves into all sorts of troubled, unhappy and unworkable situations because they put aside questions of what was sensible, good, right, legal, moral or holy and turned instead to what they thought were worthy, viable alternatives.
And always, they have excuses - excuses that may sound good but that don't stand up to careful examination.
"This is the 1990s, you know. Things are different now," people say to me.
But I wonder which came first - the 1990s or the "things"? Do individual decades actually produce different attitudes and behavior in people, or is it the individual people who produce those attitudes and behavior - giving others an excuse for moving away from what they know to be right or good?
Personally, I think it's the latter. The fault lies not in our decade but in ourselves.
"But everyone is doing it - it's no big deal," is another slogan I often hear.
I am struck by how scary that concept can be. Groups, crowds and mobs are not often known for moral or responsible behavior. In fact, there are plenty of studies suggesting that large groups can do things that the people involved would be ashamed to do on an individual basis.
In the final analysis, the "everybody's doing it" excuse amounts to dropping humanity to its lowest com-mon denominator.
"But I thought it would work out - I thought we were different," I'm told.
It's amazing how strongly we want to think that common sense and moral values are for the stupid, weak, uninspired, mundane "others." Clearly they aren't for us because we are special, exempt from the flaws of others in some magical way.
It's sad that we don't appreciate the commonality of our desires, needs, passions, excitement, thrills, infatuations and temptations. However unique they feel to us, our feelings are actually much like other people's and no excuse to evade moral responsibility.
Do people really believe that the negative consequences of their actions are neutralized because of their own uniqueness? Do they really think that their motivations must be acceptable simply because they come from "strong feelings"?
We should see such feelings as challenges, opportunities to acknowledge our human weaknesses and rise above them.
Recently I talked with a young woman who has lately been exploring her own spirituality. She asked my opinion about a ritual of self-denial such as the Christian period of Lent, in which people give up something they desire for a brief period of time.
Isn't this just an empty ritual, she wondered?
I think not. As a practicing conservative Jew, I compare the self-denial of Lent to the Jewish High Holy Days, which are occasions of fasting, and to the Kashrut, or Kosher Laws.
Like Lent, these customs provide the inspiration to rise to the challenge of a holy commandment. They also provide a useful experience of self-discipline and sacrifice.
The act of sacrifice, even a symbolic sacrifice for a brief time, can help us realize how our everyday life lacks a focus on the deeper meaning and motivation of our life, and how focused we usually are on stimulation, acquisition and ego-gratification.
Intentionally making ourselves uncomfortable through such holy rituals can be enlightening, teaching us something about our hidden weaknesses and potential strengths.
In truth the interplay between such weakness and strengths guides our personal decisions, not the ambience of the decade or the example of a faceless "everybody."
Sadly, we often come to this realization only after our actions have undermined our lives.