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Published on Monday, 17 October 2011 16:09

I began thinking while hunting for an idea for a children's sermon last week about how often children's sermon's render the Bible down into simple moralisms - "so remember, be kind to others and they'll be kind to you."  I'm certainly guiltly of doing this more often that I care to admit.  But I found myself wondering, is this all there is to the Bible? Morality.

 If I was discussing the Bible in an adult study, I certainly wouldn't suggest that morality is the only purpose (or even the primary) goal of the Bible.  Yet when it comes to children it seems that's where we're drawn.  I'm told by parents both inside the church and outside that they want their children to learn morals and so they bring them to Sunday School.  And I always wonder to myself, is that all there is to religion or are we short changing our children.

Personally, I think of moral education as more of a side benifit to religion than the principal goal.  Religion's goal is not to teach morality, and if it is, then there must be better ways to do it.  Rather I think that the goal of religion is to open us up to the grace of God, to help us realize that there is something bigger than ourselves, and to move us beyond ourselves (to name just three).

From this perspective, morality is nothing if it doesn't point to grace.  Yet all too often our moral instruction points to condemnation rather than grace.  In good lutheran parlance, what we're talking about is law and gospel.  Well and good, but sometimes it feels like we're reducing it down to just law - just morality.  I don't have a problem teaching morality if it points us beyond itself to the grace of the Gospel.  But I'm not sure I always do that.