Moralism Quotes & Sayings

Being Lutheran is about having the theological roadblocks cleared away. No good works. No law pretending to be Gospel. No popes or piety. No moralism. Just the Gospel loudly and clearly proclaimed. — A. Trevor Sutton

A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism. — Allan Bloom

The moralism that passes for Christian faith today is a devastating hobby if you have no intention of submitting your life fully to God and chasing him in Christ. — Matt Chandler

The inner lawyer, the rose-colored mirror, naive realism, and the myth of pure evil - these mechanisms all conspire to weave for us a web of significance upon which angels and demons fight it out. Our ever-judging minds then give us constant flashes of approval and disapproval, along with the certainty that we are on the side of the angels. From this vantage point it all seems so silly, all this moralism, righteousness, and hypocrisy. It's beyond silly; it is tragic, for it suggests that human beings will never achieve a state of lasting peace and harmony. — Jonathan Haidt

Moralism and ignorance are responsible for the constant stereotyping of prostitutes by their lowest common denominator
the sick, strung-out addicts, couched on city stoops, who turn tricks for drug money ... The most successful prostitutes in history have been invisible. That invisibility was produced by their high intelligence, which gives them the power to perceive, and move freely but undetected in the social frame. The prostitute is a superb analyst, not only in evading the law but in initiating the unique constellation of convention and fantasy that produces a stranger's orgasm. She lives by her wits as much as her body. She is a psychologist, actor, and dancer, a performance artist of hyper-developed sexual imagination. — Camille Paglia

Pragmatism, consumerism, self-help moralism, and narcissism are simply the symptoms of a disease that is, at its heart, theological: — Michael S. Horton

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality. — Tullian Tchividjian

This does not, therefore, mean 'the gospel reveals justification by faith as the true scheme of salvation, as opposed to Jewish self-help moralism'. When we unpack it fully, in the light of subsequent passages in the letter, it means:
The gospel - the announcement of the lordship of Jesus the Messiah - reveals God's righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, his dealing with the sin of the world through the fulfilment of his covenant in this Lord Jesus Christ. He has done all this righteously, that is, impartially. He has dealt with sin, and rescued the helpless. He has thereby fulfilled his promises. — N. T. Wright

Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own — Rollo May

The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions. The revolutionary refutes the perverse, unhealthy kind of pleasure, because it is not his kind of pleasure, because it is not the sexuality of the future, but the sexuality which results from the conflict between instinct and morals, the sexuality of authoritarian society, a debased, smutty, pathological sexuality. — Wilhelm Reich

As American culture changes, the scandal of Christianity is increasingly right up front, exactly where it was in the first century. The shaking of American culture will get us back to the question Jesus asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?" As the Bible Belt recedes, those left standing up for Jesus will be those who, like Simon Peter of old, know how to answer that question. Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed. Good. — Russell D. Moore

And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism. — Barack Obama

Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won't know the difference between moralism and what you're offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there's a difference - that what they really rejected wasn't real Christianity at all - will they even begin to consider Christianity.2 — Tullian Tchividjian

Innocence could be lost more than once after all. — Selena Kitt

The gospel of Jesus Christ is an offense to both religion and irreligion. It can't be co-opted by either moralism or relativism. — Timothy J. Keller

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: "the immoral people
the people who 'do their own thing'
are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution." The advocates of self-discovery say: "The bigoted peole
the people who say, 'We have the Truth'
are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution. — Timothy Keller

The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history. — Glenn Greenwald

Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed. — Russell D. Moore

Would you please be open to the possibility that the gospel, real Christianity, is something very different from religion? That gives many people hope that there is a way to know God that doesn't lead to the pathologies of moralism and religiosity. — Timothy Keller

So whose side is Jesus on? In The Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits ask the ancient Treebeard whose side he is on, he answers: "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side ... [But] there are some things, of course, whose side I'm altogether not on."3 Jesus's own answer to this question, through the parable, is similar. He is on the side of neither the irreligious nor the religious, but he singles out religious moralism as a particularly deadly spiritual condition. — Timothy Keller

The worst mockery God can make of a moralist is that He compels him to be a
solipsist. — Kedar Joshi

Goldilocks
[There] lived a family of bearstogether anthropomorphically in a little cottage as a nuclear family. They were very sorry about this, of course, since the nuclear family has traditionally served to enslave womyn, instill a self-righteous moralism in its members, and imprint rigid notions of heterosexualist roles onto the next generation. [They named] their offspring the non-gender-specific Baby. — James Finn Garner

Moralism is always the cheap substitute for mysticism. — Richard Rohr

England had decidedly turned its back on any expressions of what we might call serious Christian belief. Having led to so much division and violence, religion was now in full-scale retreat. The churches of mid-eighteenth-century England all but abandoned orthodox, historical Christianity and now preached a tepid kind of moralism that seemed to present civility and the preservation of the status quo as the summum bonnum. — Eric Metaxas

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality. — Tullian Tchividjian

True Christianity is not defined on the basis of external moralism, religious traditionalism, or partisan politics, but on the basis of a personal love for Jesus Christ and a desire to follow Him no matter what the cost (John 14:15). — John F. MacArthur Jr.

We make a fatal mistake when we try to force Scripture to offer redemption to those who want to go to heaven but who don't want a relationship with the living God. By trying to offer some minimal standard of conduct that will allow them to qualify for salvation while continuing to to pursue their own agendas, we distort the gospel and destroy its power, and we concoct legalistic games to give them a false sense of security. — Wayne Jacobsen

Moralism beats this drum: If I improve, then I'll be accepted - by God, by others, even by myself. But the gospel says something radically different. The gospel announces that everyone "in Christ" is already accepted by God because of Jesus's work for them. Therefore, no improvement, good behavior, or performance is necessary in order to experience the deep acceptance we long for and in fact strive for on a daily basis. — Tullian Tchividjian

I do not know if that theory is correct, but I do know that singling out one behavior as "sin" and emphasizing it over others provides a convenient way of dodging our own need for grace. High-minded moralism and shrill pronouncements of judgment may help fundraising, but they undermine a gospel of grace. — Philip Yancey

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity. — Brennan Manning

Deep caring about each other's fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame. The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.

These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest. The executives who brought down the major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru. — Parker J. Palmer

Any attempt to reduce the Bible to a guidebook for how to live is not only wrong, it's also idolatrous. It replaces Christ at the center with something else, with moralism. The point of the Word, the goal of Christianity, is not to teach you how to be a good person, or a good man. The goal is repentance and forgiveness, given freely to sinners, because of the substitutionary death of the God-man, Jesus. — Jeffrey Hemmer

Compared with members of other nations of Western civilization, the ordinary American is a rationalistic being, and there are close relations between his moralism and his rationalism. Even romanticism, transcendentalism, and mysticism tend to be, in the American culture, rational, pragmatic and optimistic. — Gunnar Myrdal

I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them. — A. N. Wilson

Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, reduce the love story of God for his people to the observance of burdensome duties and oppressive laws. — Brennan Manning

History is laden with belligerent leaders using humanitarian rhetoric to mask geopolitical aims. History also shows how often ill-informed moralism has led to foreign entanglements that do more harm than good. — Samantha Power

The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God. — Kevin DeYoung

Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. — Timothy Keller

Man is now a horror to God and himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will. — C.S. Lewis

Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it. — CrimethInc.

The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it "has no patience with mysticism, far less the occult." Nor does it have any time with moralism, the prescriptions or distortions we would impose on the world, obscuring it from our view. It asks, it insists rather, that we take this moment for what it is, undistracted, and not cloud it with needless worries of what might have been or fantasies of what might come to be. It is, essentially, a training in the real ... "the Universe itself is the scripture of Zen." Pico Iyer from introduction. — Peter Matthiessen

From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn. — Immanuel Kant

Jesus does not divide the world into the moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys." He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways. Even though both sons are wrong, however, the father cares for them and invites them both back into his love and feast. This means that Jesus's message, which is "the gospel," is a completely different spirituality. The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles - it is something else altogether. — Timothy Keller

Art was the very antithesis of crass moralism. — Alain De Botton

if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism. That — Barack Obama

Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness. — Robert Farrar Capon

A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle. — Paul Tournier

On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues. — Jacques Barzun