Manners Rejected by the “New Morality”?

‘Woe to those putting bad for good, dark for light, bitter for sweet.’​—Isaiah 5:20.

THE 20th century saw sweeping changes in manners and morals. In the decades that followed the two world wars, the old value systems gradually came to be viewed as outmoded. Changing conditions and new theories in the fields of human behavior and science convinced many that the old values were no longer valid. Manners once held in high regard were shed as excess baggage. Bible guidelines once respected were rejected as outmoded. They were much too restrictive for the freewheeling, liberated society of ultramodern individuals of the 20th century.

The year that saw this turning point in human history was 1914. The writings of historians concerning that year and World War I are replete with their observations declaring 1914 to be a year of momentous change, a real marker dividing epochs in human history. The Roaring Twenties charged in on the heels of the war and people tried to catch up on the fun missed during those war years. Old values and inconvenient moral restraints were brushed aside to clear the way for the fun splurge. A new morality, indulging fleshly pursuits, was informally installed​—basically an anything-​goes approach. The new moral code inevitably carried with it a change in manners.

Historian Frederick Lewis Allen comments on this: “Another result of the revolution was that manners became not merely different, but​—for a few years—​unmannerly. . . . During this decade hostesses . . . found that their guests couldn’t be bothered to speak to them on arrival or departure; that ‘gate-​crashing’ at dances became an accepted practice, people were ‘fashionably late’ for dinners, left burning cigarettes about, scattered ashes on rugs, without apology. The old bars were down, no new ones had been built, and meanwhile the pigs were in the pasture. Some day, perhaps, the ten years which followed the war may aptly be known as the decade of Bad Manners. . . . If the decade was ill-​mannered, it was also unhappy. With the old order of things had gone a set of values which had given richness and meaning to life, and substitute values were not easily found.”

Substitute values that restored richness and meaning to life were never found. They were not sought after. The exciting anything-​goes life-​style of the Roaring Twenties freed people of moral constraints, which suited them just fine. They were not casting morality aside; they were just revising it, loosening it up a bit. In time they called it the New Morality. In it each one does what’s right in his own eyes. He’s number one. He does his own thing. He blazes his own trail.

Or so he thinks. Actually, three thousand years ago, wise King Solomon said: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Even earlier, during the period of the Judges, Israelites had considerable latitude as to whether they would obey God’s Law or not: “In those days there was no king in Israel. What was right in his own eyes was what each one was accustomed to do.” (Judges 21:25) But the majority proved unwilling to heed the Law. By sowing this way, Israel reaped hundreds of years of national disasters. Similarly, nations today have reaped centuries of pain and suffering​—and the worst is yet to come.

There is another term that identifies the New Morality more specifically, namely, “relativism.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines it thus: “A view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.” In a nutshell the disciples of relativism contend that whatever is good for them is ethical for them. One writer enlarged upon relativism when he said: “Relativism, long lurking below the surface, emerged as the prevailing philosophy of the ‘me decade’ of the seventies; it reigns still in the yuppieism of the eighties. We may still give lip service to traditional values, but in practice, the right is whatever is good for me.”

And that includes manners​—‘If it suits me, I’ll do it; if it doesn’t, I won’t. It wouldn’t be right for me, even if it were more mannerly for you. It would ruin my radical individualism, make me look weak, turn me into a wimp.’ Apparently, for such people this applies not just to acts of rudeness but also to such easy, everyday niceties as ‘Please, I’m sorry, Excuse me, Thank you, Let me get the door for you, Take my seat, Let me carry that package for you.’ These and other phrases are like gentle lubricants that smooth out and make pleasant our human relationships. ‘But showing manners for others,’ the me-​firster would object, ‘would negatively affect my living up to and projecting my image of being number one.’

Sociologist James Q. Wilson attributes the increased friction and criminal conduct to the collapse of what today “is sneeringly referred to as ‘middle-​class values,’” and the report continues: “The demise of these values​—and the increase in moral relativism—​appears to correlate with a higher crime rate.” It certainly correlates with the modern trend to reject any restraint on self-​expression, regardless of how ill-​mannered or offensive it may be. This is as another sociologist, Jared Taylor, said: “Our society has moved steadily from self-​control to self-expression, and many people dismiss old-​fashioned values as repressive.”

Practicing relativism makes you the judge of your personal conduct, brushing aside anyone else’s judgment, including God’s. You are deciding for yourself what is right and what is wrong for you, just as the first human pair did in Eden when they rejected God’s edict and decided for themselves what was right and what was wrong. The Serpent deceived Eve into thinking that if she disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit, then it would turn out as he said to her: “Your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.” So Eve took some of the fruit and ate it and then gave some of it to Adam, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:5, 6) Adam and Eve’s decision to eat was a disastrous one for them and calamitous for their offspring.

After a lengthy summary of corruption found among politicians, businessmen, athletes, scientists, a Nobel prize winner, and a clergyman, one observer said in a speech before the Harvard Business School: “I believe we are experiencing in our country today what I choose to call a crisis of character, a loss of what traditionally through Western civilization had been considered those inner restraints and inner virtues that prevent us from pandering to our own darker instincts.” He spoke of “words that will almost sound quaint when uttered in these surroundings, words like valor, honor, duty, responsibility, compassion, civility​—words which have almost fallen into disuse.”

In the ’60’s on university campuses, certain issues exploded. Many claimed that ‘there is no God, God is dead, there is nothing, there is no transcendent value, life is utterly meaningless, you can overcome the nothingness of life only by heroic individualism.’ The flower children took their cue from this and went out to overcome the nothingness of life by ‘sniffing coke, smoking pot, making love, and seeking personal peace.’ Which they never found.

Then there were the protest movements of the ’60’s. More than just fads, they were embraced by the mainstream of American culture and led into the Me decade of the ’70’s. Thus we entered a decade that Tom Wolfe, the social critic, called “the decade of Me.” That graduated into the ’80’s, cynically called by some, “the golden age of greed.”

What does all of this have to do with manners? It is about putting yourself first, and if you put yourself first, you cannot easily give way before others, cannot put others first, cannot exercise good manners toward others. By putting yourself first, you may be, in fact, indulging in a form of self-​worship, a worship of Me. How does the Bible describe someone who does that? As a “greedy person​—which means being an idolater,” as showing “covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5) Whom do such people really serve? “Their god is their belly.” (Philippians 3:19) The sordid alternative life-​styles that many people have chosen as morally right for them and the calamitous, death-​dealing consequences of those life-​styles only prove the truthfulness of Jeremiah 10:23: “I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.”

The Bible foresaw all of this and predicted it as a warning feature of “the last days,” as recorded at 2 Timothy 3:1-5, New English Bible: “You must face the fact: the final age of this world is to be a time of troubles. Men will love nothing but money and self; they will be arrogant, boastful, and abusive; with no respect for parents, no gratitude, no piety, no natural affection; they will be implacable in their hatreds, scandal-​mongers, intemperate and fierce, strangers to all goodness, traitors, adventurers, swollen with self-​importance. They will be men who put pleasure in the place of God, men who preserve the outward form of religion, but are a standing denial of its reality. Keep clear of men like these.”

We have drifted far from what we were created to be​—in the image and likeness of God. The potential attributes of love, wisdom, justice, and power are still within us but have become unbalanced and distorted. The first step on the way of return is revealed in the last sentence of the Bible text quoted above: “Keep clear of men like these.” Seek out a new environment, one that will change even your internal feelings. Instructive toward this end are the wise words written years ago in The Ladies’ Home Journal by Dorothy Thompson. Her quote opens with the declaration that to overcome juvenile delinquency, it is necessary to educate a youth’s emotions rather than his intellect:

“His actions and attitudes as a child largely determine his actions and attitudes as an adult. But these are not inspired by his brain, but by his feelings. He becomes what he is encouraged and trained to love, admire, worship, cherish, and sacrifice for. . . . In all this manners play an important role, for good manners are nothing more or less than the expression of consideration for others. . . . Internal feelings are reflected in external behavior, but external behavior also contributes to the cultivation of internal feelings. It is hard to feel aggressive while acting considerately. Good manners may be only skin deep to start with, but they seldom remain so.”

She also observed that, with rare exceptions, goodness and badness “are not conditioned by the brain but by the emotions” and that “criminals become so not from hardening of the arteries but from hardening of the heart.” She stressed that emotion governs our conduct more often than the mind and that the way we are trained, the way we act, even if forced at first, influences internal feelings and changes the heart.

However, it is the Bible that excels in giving the inspired formula for changing the inner person of the heart.

First, Ephesians 4:22-24: “You should put away the old personality which conforms to your former course of conduct and which is being corrupted according to his deceptive desires . . . You should be made new in the force actuating your mind, and should put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.”

Second, Colossians 3:9, 10, 12-14: “Strip off the old personality with its practices, and clothe yourselves with the new personality, which through accurate knowledge is being made new according to the image of the One who created it. Accordingly, as God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, clothe yourselves with the tender affections of compassion, kindness, lowliness of mind, mildness, and long-​suffering. Continue putting up with one another and forgiving one another freely if anyone has a cause for complaint against another. Even as Jehovah freely forgave you, so do you also. But, besides all these things, clothe yourselves with love, for it is a perfect bond of union.”

Historian Will Durant said: “The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even the East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God.”

To live a successful life, we must heed his counsel. “My son, my law do not forget, and my commandments may your heart observe, because length of days and years of life and peace will be added to you. May loving-​kindness and trueness themselves not leave you. Tie them about your throat. Write them upon the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and good insight in the eyes of God and of earthling man. Trust in Jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. In all your ways take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths straight.”​—Proverbs 3:1-6.

The kind and considerate good manners learned by centuries of living are not excess baggage after all, and the Bible’s guidelines for living are not outmoded at all but will prove to be for mankind’s eternal salvation. Without Jehovah, they cannot continue to live, for ‘with Jehovah is the source of life.’​—Psalm 36:9.

[Blurb on page 11]

The way we act, even if forced at first, influences internal feelings and changes the heart

[Box on page 10]

Impeccable Table Manners That People Might Well Copy

Cedar waxwings, beautiful, well-​mannered, very sociable, banqueting together in a large bush loaded with ripe berries. Lined up in a row along a branch, they feed on the fruit, but not at all hoggishly. From beak to beak, they pass a berry back and forth to one another, until finally one graciously eats it. They never forget their “children,” tirelessly bringing food, berry by berry, until all the empty mouths have had their fill.

[Credit Line]

H. Armstrong Roberts

[Picture on page 8]

Some say: ‘Trash the Bible and moral values’

[Picture on page 9]

“God is dead.”

“No meaning to life!”

“Smoke pot, sniff coke”

[Picture Credit Line on page 7]

Left: Life; Right: Grandville