Morality

My husband and I host a group of high school juniors at our house most Wednesday nights during the school year. This year, we are covering the topic of Morality. While we are waiting for our materials to show up, my husband has been thinking of these scenarios/topics to discuss in our group. Most of the scenarios have had pretty obvious, clear cut moral solutions, but a couple of them this week had our group divided.

The first topic was what you do when you are "long changed" at a store - meaning what do you do when the employee gives you the wrong change in your favor. Most of the kids agreed that if you notice while you are in the store, you correct the employee. However, there seemed to be a gray area if you notice after you've left the store. A few said you should take it back to the store. One who works in retail said that they get people calling customer service telling of the mistake but didn't know if they ever actually return the money. Most said they'd keep it or donate it to Church (come on, guys, we were juniors once too).
I don't think I know anyone who has had this happened and didn't keep the money. A couple of years ago, I got a hair cut and paid with a $50. The cut cost $19, but the lady gave me $49 back. I caught it and told her that she gave me the wrong change, and then she tried again, but this time gave me $39. I ended up with an $11 hair cut. I realized it once I got in the car, but figured I had tried once already, so for some reason I deserved the extra $8.
So, what makes it seem right to keep the extra money once you've left the store, but not if you notice right away? It kind of reminds me of the Chance card in Monopoly that says "Bank made error in your favor $100." Really? So we just get to keep it?

The second taboo topic we discussed this week was bad words in music. Does one bad word ruin a song? We only had one junior who spoke up and said yes. Others said that they sing (or say in their heads) a different word instead. Still others said that they hear those words all the time just being out in the world and they can't edit that out, so why discount a good song because of one bad word? Jeremy tried out the dog poop in the chocolate cake analogy, but they either didn't make the connection or rejected the logic because it wasn't their own. (Dog poop analogy: You are presented with a beautiful chocolate cake for your birthday and right before you dig in, the baker tells you that they added just a tiny bit of dog poop when they were mixing the batter. Would you still eat it?) We are going to tackle this one again next week and see if we can get through to them, or at least affirm the one who said yes that she is on the right track.
So, after the kids left, Jeremy and I were discussing bad words not only in music, but also in TV shows. I presented the following scenario to Jeremy: You've been watching a TV series for 2 years and it hasn't had a single bad word in it. You are now watching season 3 and they use a bad word (which word? Does it really matter?). Should you stop watching the show? Do you watch the next episode and see if it continues? What would you do?
This led us to discuss not only bad words, but also sexual innuendos in the shows. There are very few shows that are totally clean. Since we are moral authority figures to not only these juniors, but also our own children, we have decided to very critically watch "our shows" over the next few weeks and weed out any that we wouldn't watch with Jesus in the room. What shows do you watch?
It is very easy to fall into mediocrity. We need to constantly re-evaluate ourselves and weed out the evil that has crept in slowly without us noticing. Everyone is an example to someone. We need to step up in that role. One of the most difficult things we have to deal with in our group is when the kids say "Fr. So And So says bad words in class." or "Fr. So and So watches this show and even lets us watch it in class!" It is not easy to tell these kids that that isn't right. But, like Jeremy said to me tonight, that is the kind of stuff that the saints had to do.