Essay About Personal Morality: Can You Be Good Without God

When people are asked, “Are you a good person” many people will often say yes without thinking of any other answer. It also depends on what people think as “good.” If you think about it, being good derives from two different aspects of life, both moral and spiritual. While being good is great it only lasts a short time and has some interesting side effects.

Doing good often resides on how the person is raised as there are two sides of parenting, one side being the respected side and the other as the not caring. From a young age I was introduced to God and the respect I gave to my parents and peers in my classroom. I realized that every person was a sinner and there is no way to get rid of it. People who do not believe in God will use morals to make themselves feel better. According to Aaron Earls and Andy McLean, “I think it could be easily argued that the Bible affirms unbelievers can behave in a moral manner.” McLean also acknowledges Christians “see and observe people every day with little to no religious beliefs being good parents, serving their communities, and displaying integrity in their workplace. Those who reject the existence of God have no place to ground objective moral values and duties.” When I first read that statement, I immediately thought of the United States government with how they trust their citizens. If you do good deeds then good deeds will happen to you.

Every person can do good and it usually depends on the type of good they are wanting to do. In the Bible there are two very important commandments, Honor thy Father and thy Mother and No other gods before me. When I notice children everyday being disrespectful I would really like to go up to the adult and have a chat with them on why they are not behaving their kids, however, because of how the world has drastically changed, I am unable to do that without being called every word in the book. Any person can do a good deed and when they are aware that people are watching they are usually mentally scared and in fear of a divine punishment that is not necessary to be virtuous, but some people just don’t care at all. All humans are sinners no matter how you look at it. God gave everyone a conscience and a decision to do right and wrong. When people do right it makes them feel good inside however it only lasts a small time. If people do right with manners that was expected of them from a young age it will last a lifetime and the person that is on the other end may give you a compliment. According to Greg Smith, “To be sure, most white evangelicals still say belief in God is necessary for morality, but the share who say belief in God is necessary underpinning of being moral has declined from 72 percent to 65 percent in just six years.”

Furthermore, every person understands that good and evil both exist. There are variations of kindness stemming from assisting someone cross the street to holding the door open. When I worked in the fast food industry, I could not tell you how many times I saw a kid hold the door open for someone, the number of compliments they got was a breath of fresh air. The best example I can think of for an evil deed is World War II resulting from Adolf Hitler. The evil things he did was countless, from experimenting on living people in the concentration camps to slaughtering countless people in genocide. The events that Hitler ordered in World War II was an unpleasant speak able act that is really looked down upon, and because of this people judge you for what you do, and the acts that you portray. The more actions you do whether good or bad will portray the outcome of what is to come. The amounts of agreements on good and bad behavior are outstanding. People like others who do good deeds and daily, there is a limit that people have. From time to time people will try to take advantage of good deeds and behavior by expecting the individual to do the same thing day after day. Yes, it feels great to help others and have a great behavior whilst doing it but I have seen people take advantage, I was opening my store when someone asked if they could make prints. I said yes, and they proceeded to inform the cashier that I said they could have them for free. When I confronted them about this, they instantly became mad, paid for their prints and stated that they were never ever coming back. While I tried to do the right thing, the consumer tried to exploit it for their own personal gain.

A lot of moral relativists will be upset over the unfair or bad things that will happen. People will judge and this will never change. People are set in their ways. We need to realize that while we want to do good things it first starts from our parents in how we as the current generation was raised so we can implement that into the school society and later into our future job and career.