No Compass?

On January 13th, Phoebe Prince was a fifteen year old high school freshman who had come to town last fall from her native Ireland. On January 14th, she was dead. According to Sandra E. Constantine, writing in The Republican in Springfield, MA, Phoebe "is believed to have hanged herself after intensive bullying at school and over Facebook and through text messaging."

School officials wouldn't release identities for legal reasons but it became known that a number of students, both boys and girls, were involved. An uproar ensued and the outraged community demanded resignations from the principal and school superintendent. An anti-bullying task force was formed to "review disciplinary policies at the high school and look at how to get students who don't bully but observe it to report it to school officials."

Punishment may deter this to some degree, but it misses the point. The questions are, "Why did this happen in the first place?" and "What was missing in the characters of the guilty parties?"

A moral compass, that's what was missing. There was a time when most children attended religious services and churches were central to society. Early on, kids learned about the Ten Commandments, bible stories with moral lessons, and the fact that you were to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And you prayed to the God who gave you these lessons and would eventually see you in heaven, where you would give an account of yourself.

Until prayer was banned, the presence of God was even acknowledged in public schools with the recitation of the Lord's Prayer each morning.

Back then most kids had a sense of right and wrong that discouraged the hostility Phoebe's aggressors engaged in. There were bullies, to be sure, but they were garden variety playground toughs. They weren't middle-class kids who casually ganged up to torment a fellow student to death.

My wife and I had dinner recently with good friends who aren't religious. They're decent people with nice children who operate on the same - or an even higher - moral plane than many nominal Christians. They asked if we believed a person could be moral if they weren't religious.

The answer is yes, they can. But two generations from now, one of their descendants may ask his parent why he shouldn't steal if he needs the money. If the answer is "because your great-grandfather said so," the chain of morality may well be broken. Religious faith has effectively maintained sensible rules for thousands of years because each generation has a first hand knowldedge of, and in many cases a relationship with, God. His imperatives are immediate, lasting and not subject to being dismissed like the ramblings of a great-grandfather you never even met.

When people dismiss Christianity and try to diminish its role in society, where do they get a moral compass? The schools?

If Phoebe Prince were here, what would she say?

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