In 1991 Hollywood produced a comedy entitled, City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal. In a quirky way it was a wonderfully moral film, focusing on three, middle-aged men from New York City who were dealing with midlife crisis.

As a present from their wives, the three are given the gift of participating in a cattle drive through New Mexico and Colorado. And so these three urbanites set off to ride horses through the wilderness. The comedy part of the film focuses on their inept horsemanship and their naiveté about cattle and the wilderness. The more serious part of the movie tracks their conversations as they try to sort through both their own struggles with aging and the larger mysteries of life.

One day one of the three, Ed, the character with the least amount of moral scruples, asks the other two whether they would be unfaithful to their wives and have an affair if they were sure that they would never be caught. Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, initially engages the question jokingly, protesting it’s impossibility: You always get caught! All affairs get exposed in the end. But Ed persists with his question: “But suppose you wouldn’t get caught. Suppose you could get away with it. Would you cheat on your wife and have an affair, if no one would ever know?” Mitch’s answer: “No, I still wouldn’t do it!” “Why not?” asks Ed, “nobody would know.” “But I’d know,” Mitch replied, “and I’d hate myself for it!”

This is a deep, inalienable moral principle written into the very fabric of the universe itself. Universal human experience attests to this.

We see this articulated, for example, in the very heart of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and virtually all Easter religions in a concept that is popularly called the Law of Karma. Karma carries with it the implication that every action or deed we do generates a force of energy that returns to us in kind, namely, what we sow is what we will reap.  

Jesus was no stranger to the idea. It is everywhere present in his teachings and at times explicitly stated: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6, 38)

In essence, Jesus is telling us that the air we breathe out is the air that we will re-inhale and that this is true at every level of our existence: If I breathe out bitterness, I will eventually find myself breathing in bitterness. If I breathe out dishonesty. I will eventually find myself gasping for generosity in a world suffocating on dishonesty, greed, and stinginess. Conversely, if I breathe out generosity, love, honesty, and forgiveness, I will eventually, no matter how mean and dishonest the world around me, find life inside a world of generosity, love, honesty, and forgiveness.

This is a nonnegotiable truth the very structure of the universe, life itself, every religion worthy of the name, written into the teachings of Jesus, and written into every conscience that is still in good faith; because God has created a universe that is moral in its very structure.

God created a universe that has deep, inalienable moral grooves which need to be honored and respected, irrespective of whether we get caught or not when we cheat.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher, and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He can be contacted through his website  www.ronrolheiser.com.  Now on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser