What Moral Values Are Associated With Christianity?
Moral values serve as standards of right and wrong for people, guiding their decisions and actions. Moral values also determine what people value and how they express this in their lives. People learn moral values from religions, governments, other people or even from themselves. Christianity is the source of moral values for many people, and it built many of the foundational moral values for Western Civilization. Christians strive to behave in the right ways because they love God and want to honor Him.
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Forgiveness
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Christians are expected to forgive other people when they are hurt by them. The value of Christian forgiveness is special in that it is extended to even the worst offenders, the ones who are the most difficult to forgive. The reason Christians are expected to forgive others is because God has first forgiven them, for offenses that have greater eternal consequences than anything a fellow human being could do to them.
Humility
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The virtue of humility can take many different forms, from simple modesty to the extreme of being totally without ego. Christian humility begins with the realization that humans are insignificant corollaries to God, who created them. Therefore, humans can make mistakes and sometimes need correction. The value of humility prepares Christians to accept criticism and learn from it. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines "humility" as a quality by which a person recognizes his own defects and willingly submits to God and his commands. Humility shifts people from the natural human focus on ego to a focus on service to God and love for people.
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Individualism
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Individualism is a value cherished by many groups in the modern world, some of which are not religious. Christianity promotes the idea of the absolute value of every individual, based on each person's special creation by God. This is very different from a relative value of individuals, which compares individuals to animals or to other people to establish value. Jesus' parable of the lost sheep provides an example of Christ's concern for the individual. In this parable, the good shepherd is willing to risk the other 99 sheep to find the one that is lost. Christian writer Philip Yancey suggests that the Christian moral value of the worth of the individual has been essential to the establishment of individual rights.
Inclusivity
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Christianity is based in part on Old Testament laws from ancient Judaism. These laws emphasized God's holiness and showed how humans should act to be respectful to God and His holiness. According to Yancey, Jesus changed the emphasis from the exclusivity of God's holiness to the inclusivity of God's mercy. Yancey noted that Jesus' actions threatened the Jews' religious caste system by doing such things as touching lepers and eating with unclean people. Jesus' message was that all people are loved by God regardless of their personal or cultural backgrounds.
Generosity
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Generosity is a virtue in many different traditions, each for different reasons. The Christian value of generosity is manifested in a desire to bless others because of a deep satisfaction in God. Theologian John Piper, a self-described "Christian hedonist," says that Christians desire to be "conduits of God's grace to others." Christians want to be generous by giving money to the poor, but also generous in sharing with others their satisfaction in Jesus. Proclaiming the value of Jesus, or evangelism, is viewed by Christians as the most consequential generosity because of its eternal consequences.
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