It is helpful to have some steps for moral decision making, including: Identifying moral norms: You have to take seriously how people have acted in the past in the various areas of morality. You are not the first to encounter a moral dilemma. Others have encountered similar, if not identical issues before you. In fact, thousands of generations of people have tried to develop codes of behaviour, also called moral norms, that will help you to see what is the right thing to do and prevent avoidable evil. Our contemporary legal system, with its codes of law, is one example how contemporary moral decision-making draws on the past. The same could be said of about biblical texts such as those related to the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. Consulting the tradition, the collected wisdom of thousands of generations before us, can be helpful in helping us see what other people have done in situations similar to ours and why they have acted in that way. Not everything our ancestors did, however, was morally right. Indeed, almost every tradition has some degree of change in it. A classic example is the change in moral attitudes towards slavery. But even where there is change there remain insights into what people have valued as important in the past and striven to achieve.