So What’s the Big Deal?

“We no longer have a moral compass.”
--Daryl Roberts, police chief of Hartford, Conn., after security cameras captured dozens of witnesses driving past a 78-year-old hit-and-run victim without stopping to help. (TIME, 06/23/08)

I try to understand how my fascination with morality must seem strange to many, but every once in a while an example so glaring comes along that it makes me think it is justified. Reiterating my interpretation of morality as that which is in harmony with God thereby enhancing the connection hopefully explains why I believe that every facet of creation experiences the pluses and minuses, the positives and negatives, the yin and yang of it. I suppose my diatribe on the fundamental immorality of Las Vegas has seemed to readers just that, an old man’s obsession with the obvious. But when something as the Hartford incident occurs it hopefully serves to illustrate how widespread the disease actually is. The phenomenon of hundreds of millions flocking to Sin City occurs only in the wider context of Eden lost and the general human tolerance of immorality. It doesn’t matter what label you attach to it—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu—if there is no intentional, conscientious effort made to achieve, maintain, and enhance the connection with the Divine the end result is still the immorality created by distraction or disregard. I cannot think that it is a good thing when the top cop of one of American patriotism’s seminal cities decries our loss of moral direction.