Today, just how important are morality, integrity, reliability, responsibility, and punctuality in the human family?  Just how important is it to trust your doctor, your lawyer, your news caster, your banker, your baker, and your mechanic.  The actions of someone that you though you could trust can result in the loss of your health, your home, your livelihood, and even your life.  There are an increasing number of corporate scandals and immoral activities.  The scriptural reference of, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is about ethics.  If you want a doctor, lawyer, journalist, banker, baker, mechanic, or anyone that you are dealing with to be honest and ethical with you, then you need to have those qualities too.
          Journalism is loaded with the temptation to exaggerate or otherwise distort the truth. Writers can become numb to the harm that their writing can do to others.  Gossips not only don’t care about the harm that they are doing to someone else, they seem to revel in it.  Yet a gossip will howl loudly, when the gossip is about them.  For some reason, gossips seldom realize the bad report that they are giving about themselves.  Be accountable for your own words and others will be more likely to give a good report about you.
          Corporate immorality corrupts business leaders and executives, as well as leading the public into corruption.  As a result, consumer confidence is declining and affecting retail sales and stock prices.  The consequence of poor business ethics is to damage our economy and endanger our national security.
          Plagiarism is an increasing problem with continued technological development.  It is becoming easier for a person to find and copy someone else’s work, then claim it for their own.  When someone’s works are copied and sold, that is pirating.  When someone else’s works is taken or quoted without acknowledging the source, it is not borrowing, it is stealing! Please be sure to always give credit, where credit is due.
          In the end, we all need to formulate our own code of conduct and take responsibility for our own actions.  As we tell our children, Hollywood’s version of what makes an adult is not real.  An adult is someone who takes responsibility for their own actions.  Let us all work together to improve our lives and our society for our selves, and for the future of our children.


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