Alex Reich

Junior Morality

April 14, 2008

Chapter 8 Journal

 

CHAPTER 8: The Ten Commandments and the Eight Beatitudes

 

I knew the ten commandments by heart since third or fourth grade. I’ve known most of the beatitudes (I always forget one) since around eighth grade, but I have never really stopped to think about what either of them meant or what Jesus was trying to say to me in either of them. Until this course in morality and faith I had never really looked inside myself and thought, “Have I really thought about what I am doing and going to do? Is this what God would want of me?”

The exercise in which we looked at our actions and deemed them moral or immoral and then Christian or non-Christian was quite an eye-opener. I found that several of my answers were quite immoral. This wasn’t completely shocking when I first went through the list of them and decided whether or not they were moral or immoral, I knew they probably would be a mixture of both. What shocked me was that I was okay and quite unaffected by the fact that my answers weren’t moral.

Last year I think most of my answers would be quite black and white, usually leaning toward the moral side because that was the type of person I was last year. I blindly followed what I thought and was taught was right and didn’t stop to think about what I was doing and if it was what I wanted to do and what I thought was best for me at the time.

An answer that I do find quite moral, though it is hard to tell based on the question whether or not it is Christian, is to the question “what did you do the last time you were in a fight or angry with a person?” I said that I kept it inside of myself (which is how I deal with most things) and let it boil up inside of me and then I let my anger out by calling my best friend to complain and ask for advice, which really helped a lot. I think this was a moral answer because it shows that I sorted through the problem rather than let it get to me. I don’t know if it is Christian or not because it may not be according to the exact method to which Jesus preaches