Art of Deciding 2: Moral Boogaloo
Getting to the Heart of Every Choice
Remember school dances? I remember only two vividly, and oddly enough, every other memory of a school dance comes from watching them on sitcoms like Saved by the Bell or in movies like Heavyweights. In Saved by the Bell, everyone had a date, while in Heavyweights, the heaviest weight was the awkward, forced social interaction between two sets of adolescents.
The last dance I remember was my junior prom. It was one of the worst experiences in my life. My date was named Lisa, and I only asked her in an awkward display because she had no one to go with. Being the bleeding heart I am, I said, “I’ll go with you.” That was that. I got the tux, she got a dress. We took pictures at her friend’s house, and her friend drove us to the hotel in downtown Nashville, where the prom was held in a ballroom. We walked in together, her on my arm, and the moment we entered the ballroom, she ditched me. My mom was the assistant principal at my school at the time, and it became clear that Lisa used me as an entrance to boost her social status.
Not to be outdone, later in the night, I asked her for a dance. We danced, and I completely misread the situation. I thought I was winning her back. I was not. I went in for a kiss and got cheek. Ouch. The rest of the night, I sat with one of my best friends until she and her friend were done dancing. She and her friend discussed after-party plans in the car and said, “So, Geoff, we’re going to let you off at your house.”
I was heartbroken. I was furious. I was so ticked off that I brought the experience into the stand-up comedy routine at the time. I joked about her, misnaming her as “Tom” with too much facial hair. Admittedly, it was a funny joke, and it got better when my revenge hit when our Senior Night came around. Lisa was one of the hosts, and I did my stand-up act.
I made fun of everyone who had ever made fun of me growing up. I joked about my last name. I joked about the bully who crapped his pants in eighth grade, and yes, I even did the prom joke. My act was clean (albeit terrible) by comedy club standards, but in a high school in the stretching part of the Bible belt, it was Andrew Dice Clay in the 1980s. Parents told the producer of the show, “I will not buy a tape of tonight if Geoffrey Breedwell is in it.” Honestly, one of my better high school moments.
What I missed during this time was the other side of the story. Years later, I discovered that Lisa was in the closet. While that doesn’t excuse her behavior, it does explain the why.
Would I do that again? No. I learned a lot through the years regarding the LGBTQ community, and ironically enough, I am the father of two daughters. My oldest is LGBTQ.
At the heart of every choice is a moral decision
Last time, I discussed how we (as humans) make anywhere from 122 to 35,000 choices a day. To help alleviate the weight of those choices, we broke them down into three categories. Category 1 was the quick binary decision. Category 2 was the decision where things were “just right.” Category 3 consisted of the difficult decisions that could take a lot longer to decide. Today, we continue forward with exploring what is at the heart of every choice – morality.
A moral is a behavior and concept relating to right and wrong, and ethics is how we choose between right and wrong through a personal system. For example, during my studies at Lipscomb University, I took a class called “Christian Ethics,” which dissected the moral system of Christianity in its current paradigm. Taking a class called “Christian Nationalist Ethics” would yield an entirely different curriculum, based not on Christian morals but on those specific to Christian Nationalism. I got an “A” in Christian Ethics, while I’d most likely fail “Christian Nationalist Ethics.”
Every person is their own universe. With being our own universe, we also have our own set of moral standards. We have our own definition of what’s right and what’s wrong, which usually parallels the culture or religion with which we identify ourselves. As a Christian, I associate my sense of right and wrong with the Scriptures of the Holy Bible.1 (See Footnote for clarification). If I were of a different religion, I would adhere to the moral system within that religion.
It’s with this system of morality in mind that I need to give you an absolute truth that might blow your mind. Every decision is a moral decision. Every single one, without exception. Every choice falls into one of three categories, and each one of those categories constructs the choice of morals and vices that the decision measures. If every choice is a pack of Oreos, the category is the opening ceramic lid built into the wrapper.
I hear you. “How are Oreos moral or immoral? They’re a cookie.” This is true. They are a delicious and addictive chocolate cookie with a creamy center that goes best with milk, ice cream, or depression.
The decision to eat Oreos is a moral conundrum. If you’re on a diet, Oreos are a temptation. They’re not a part of a well-balanced diet, usually. Using the Seven Heavenly Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins from Catholicism as an example guide, we can decipher that eating Oreos is a choice between gluttony (vice) and temperance, i.e., moderation (virtue). Having one Oreo is temperance. Having ten is gluttonous. If you’re strict on your diet, then it’s between sloth (vice) and diligence (virtue).
It is worth saying that Oreos aren’t evil. They’re a delicious dessert loved by billions of people all over the world. It’s the choice that reveals something deeper about each of us. And that’s the point. Every choice, no matter how big or small, carries moral weight.
In the story we started with, I might have begun with noble intentions of aiding someone, but after being hurt, I was given a choice. I could have forgiven Lisa and been done with it, or I could have taken revenge in the best way I knew at the time. As you read, in my pain, I lost my ethical fortitude and took revenge. My feelings were valid and completely reasonable. Taking revenge? It was greedy. It was spiteful. It was selfish. It was vice after vice after vice, repeating each time I took the stage to tell that joke from the first time until the last time.
But who decides which morals and which vices count? Whose belief system matters more to this? Which code of ethics do we prescribe to this method of Moral Mechanics? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. The math works out the same either way, regardless. Simply put, math doesn’t have any favorites. Math isn’t moral. Math is math.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to plunge us into a conversation full of graphs, complex equations, and charts full of empirical data. I will go into that in a future deep dive into moral mechanics, laying everything out for the paying subscribers, including a real-life breakdown of my past decisions!
For now, just remember that every decision is a moral decision at its core. Even Oreos.
With All My Heart,
Geoffrey
I’d like to pause here to say the following. I do not adhere to many of the current translations of the Scriptures, specifically those dealing with the term “homosexual,” which was invented in 1947. The inclusion in modern-day translations was a mistranslation that’s been thoroughly documented. There are several discrepancies between what I believe and what people might think when they hear that I am a Christian. Let me explain that I follow the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22:36-40), and I allow those to frame how I see the world. For me, in other words, Love is love and love is over all. For more, please read the blog on my website, “Why I am Still a Christian, Even After Being Kicked Out.”