Journal of Christian Religious Studies

Christian young adults in Makurdi often meet economic pressure exactly where inherited moral commitments become costly to keep. The problem is not whether scarcity produces wrongdoing, but how a person interprets competing obligations once the cost of acting faithfully rises. This article develops Negotiated Moral Formation (NMF), an interpretive framework built from six biblical passages read alongside recent Nigerian livelihood research and moral-psychology scholarship. NMF traces a moral commitment through five non-sequential movements: inheritance, disruption, tension, adjustment, and restoration. The analysis shows that a pressured decision's outcome depends on how material pressure, prior formation, competing relational obligations, power, and available alternatives interact in a single moment, not on hardship alone. Accordingly, the article recommends that churches build timely, confidential welfare channels; that families moderate coercive financial demands; that institutions holding entrusted funds strengthen safeguards; and that social-protection systems close the gap between when help is needed and when it arrives.

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