Quotes about Moralism

Moralism apart from grace solves little.

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.

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.

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

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.

In fact, the best of modern theology is revealing a strong "turn toward participation," as opposed to religion as mere observation, affirmation, moralism, or group belonging. There is nothing to join, only something to recognize, suffer, and enjoy as a participant.

Like any true spiritual master, Jesus exposed the root causes of evil (almost always some form of idolatry), and did not waste time punishing the mere symptoms, as moralistic people usually do.