Morality: An Irate Cab Driver, Heaven & Voyeuristic Priests

“Your drivers are liars. None of them will go to heaven.”

This is what my West African cab driver screamed down the funnel of his radio this morning.

A few days ago my older sister sent me an email.

“I’m working on a paper on morality. What do you think are the moral rules we grew up with? So far,

For Papa:

1. Family comes first.


2. Religious commitment is of the utmost importance.


3. Always give to the needy.


4. It’s ok to plunder the earth for man’s comfort.


5. Don’t trust anyone not of the same ethnic group or governments.


6. If you don’t get caught then it’s ok.

For Mom:

1. Always follow the rules.


2. Do as I say not as I do.


3. Men are to be respected, but are inferior.


4. Never lie.

I ended up adding to her list:

For Papa

1. Anything that achieves the greater good is irreproachable.

For Mom

1. Excess resources should be given to those less fortunate.


2. People should be judged by the content of their character.


3. People should be judged for any negative action—even if they undeniably serve the purpose of a greater good.

And so morality, heaven, incongruous ideals of parents and an angry cab driver fill up the space between my ears.

I grew up in a religious house. Church was attended on Sundays and after my mother’s conversion we found out just how orthodox Orthodoxy can be. We had up to that point had a more lenient version at our disposal. I remember sneaking food before the dinner prayer. I remember how I felt like it was poisoned and was going to kill me. I remember thinking that God was watching and by default that meant the priests with the darkest beards were probably watching me too, like some movie they would put into their minds of all the bad things I would do, playing for them to watch at any time. I remember all of this fondly. When I decided that religion, specifically church, wasn’t for me, I packed up my proverbial red wagon and piled these memories on top. I knew I wanted them, but I wasn’t sure for what.

Another memory: one night at dinner my mother said “If we have a little bit less so someone else can survive then we must do it.” She sounded so right, so confident. I still believe this. And if you want to make your kid a liberal then try this exact line on them, preferable before age 8, Jesuit-style. It will help if they have huge reserves of empathy, because it will place a yoke on them. You have to help people. You don’t have any choice in the matter so figure out how to be useful in the world. We are all in this together. “This” not being explained beyond the fact that “this” just is. If that’s not a morality lesson devoid of religion—and, of course, also a place where religion could easily be inserted—then I don’t know what is.


No one talks about morality anymore. It’s not how we operate. We consider very few things as “moral dilemmas” even if they are. Why is this? Is it because moral is baptized in religion for many of us? It shouldn’t be that way. I think maybe we do need to think about morality—and not in that Fox News way, but to take back that word from the judge-y hands that have been massaging it into their submission. The only other alternative I can think of comes from some snippets I remember from my maternal grandmother. Grams, a good friend and a user of comedy and wit to excise herself from complicated or messy situations, often invoked with regards to organized religion, “Just try to be a good person—that’s hard enough.”