The Hubris to Judge: Moral Relativism and Secularism

 

The more Western culture rejects its Christian roots, the more we will hear disparaging remarks like:

·       The Bible is no basis for morality. Just look at the treatment of gays, women, and the Canaanites. The Bible should not be taken seriously by anyone!

In effect, they are saying:

·       The Bible does not agree with our modern norms and values. Therefore, it is wrong and must be rejected.

Instead of the Bible, the current norms have become the new authority and every other religion or value system must be measured against these current norms. If they fall short, then they must be rejected.

This “tyranny of modernity” is no less dogmatic than the values that they seek to replace and, in many cases, it is more intolerant. Just look at a recent Federal decision to criminalize schools that forbid a boy, if he deems himself “transgendered,” to enter a girl’s bathroom. The entire school is made to conform to the whims of one child. Reasonable? Not in the slightest!

This cultural/moral relativism is unreasonable in many ways. For one thing, this philosophy is a denial of any higher, absolute values. Instead, relativists claim that morality is just something that we create. And yet, they will defend their decisions by invoking an appeal to innate human rights – that Transgenders have an innate human right to choose any bathroom that feels right to them.

Well, what gives them this human right if there is no higher objective law to which we must adhere? If instead morality is subjective – just something that we create – how then is it possible to appeal to the higher principle of an intrinsic human right when, according to their own assessment, none actually exist.

If there is no God to confer human rights, based upon His overriding concern for humanity, then “human rights” is just an idea that we create, and if we create it, we can just as easily retract it. Consequently, “human rights” are just a useful and temporary tool to argue for our own set of non-existent rights.

In fact, such human rights advocates acknowledge that the values of society are evolving. Therefore, this made-up concept of “human rights” is also evolving. But if it is evolving and based on nothing more than societies passing whims, then on the basis of what can the relativists claim that the morality of the Bible is wrong? All they can coherently say is that the Bible violates their own created standards.

It is like grading a math exam and failing certain students despite the absence of and  correct answers. As the teacher needs correct answers in order to fairly and objectively grade an exam, the relativist also needs objectively correct moral laws to judge the Bible. However, they admit that they lack such a thing. Instead, they admit that they judge by a relative and subjective standard of their own liking.

It’s equivalent to the teacher saying, “I don’t have any correct answers, but I will fail you anyway!” This is the predicament of the relativist. He wants to judge, but with only his own arbitrary and subjective answers, he knows that he cannot judge.

It would be one thing to say, “I don’t like the morality of the Bible.” Logically, at least, that statement is acceptable. However, when the relativist charges that the morality of the Bible is wrong because it doesn’t conform to his subjective, relativistic, and evolving standards, he is acting illogically. If his moral standards are merely something that he created, he has no right to insist that others conform to them!

If fact, if  morality is just something that is humanly created, then they cannot coherently criticize anyone, not even Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.

Of course, the moral relativist will not admit that his subjectivism has placed him outside of the realm of responsible moral discussion. Therefore, the Christian should remind him:

·       You cannot make objective critiques of the Bible’ standards once you have rejected objective moral law and are left with only your own created standards.

The “Freedom” of Postmodernism

Emergent guru, Tony Jones, claims that “Postmodern philosophy saved my faith.”

Postmodernism is the belief that all truth claims are subjective and are merely human creations. Here’s how Jones puts it:

• The slipperiness of meaning, the impossibility of objectivity, the incommensurability of truth claims — these themes of postmodernism appealed to me and gave my faith room to grow.

I wonder how Jones regards his own writings in light of his assertion of “the impossibility of objectivity.” I guess he has to admit that his own declarations are all merely subjective, and therefore pertain only to himself – his feelings and thoughts. However, I never have seen him appending his writings with the appropriate disclaimer:

• Everything you are now reading is totally subjective, since objectivity is impossible. Even though it might seem that I am trying to communicate something real to you, I should remind you that I am merely ranting.

How did this philosophy save his faith, giving it “room to grow?” Well, he doesn’t actually explain, leaving us to guess. So allow me to guess. Postmodernism offers “freedom.” Judging from the “born-again” testimonies of atheists and freewill-deniers, they too have achieved a degree of “freedom.”

How? They are now free from God - His moral requirements and judgments! The atheist merely banishes Him from their existence. The freewill-denier rejects any ability to respond freely to His requirements. Meanwhile, the postmodern denies that they can know if He exists, let alone His moral standards.

Each has thereby established himself as the master of his own life. No one can bring any charges against him. He can face his moral failings and say, “You are irrelevant to me. Go away and afflict someone else.” Some folks have even been honest enough to admit this to me.

I am going to ask Jones about his own “liberation” and how his postmodern thinking brought it about. However, I suspect that it is like the freedom of the goldfish who jumped out of his bowl wanting the freedom he perceived through his bowl. Some freedom!

Science and Scripture: Methods Determine Findings

Our lens determines what we see. If we approach life with a grey lens, everything will have a grey tint. An up-side-downs lens will make the world appear up-side-down. So too our investigative lenses. To a great extent, our methods will determine our findings.

The physical world is objective, but the ways we interpret it reflect a lot of subjective seeing. Our interpretations of the fossil record vary, largely depending upon the lens through which we regard it. While some believe that this record supports evolution, others strongly contend that the huge gaps disqualify macro-evolution.

Biblical interpretation is also vulnerable to our differing lenses. We tend to interpret the text differently. This doesn’t mean that the text lacks an objective message but simply that there often exists a great gap between our subjective impressions and the objective meaning of the text.

In light of the interpretative problems in both areas – scientific inquiry and the Bible – what then should be our starting point? Should we strive to bring the findings of science into conformity with our interpretation of the Bible or to bring our interpretation of the Bible into conformity with our interpretation of the scientific findings?

Does science claim that everything, namely the Bible, must be brought into conformity with its findings? No! In fact, many scientists confess that science is merely an attempt to understand reality and that it must continually re-examine its theories.

Does the Bible claim to be the starting point unto which more uncertain forms of knowledge must conform? Yes:

• When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. (Isaiah 8:19-20)

• The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:4-5)

The Christian is therefore mandated to bring other forms of revelation into conformity with Scripture. We are not free, in this regard, to bring Scripture into conformity with the present scientific consensus.

This doesn’t mean that we are science deniers. Rather, it was Christians who brought about this latest and greatest budding of science. However, we recognize, along with the scientific community, that our theories are not absolute, especially in the softer sciences, and are therefore expected to change. Why then bring what is the unchanging Revelation of Scripture into conformity with what admittedly is subject to change? If we truly receive Scripture as God’s unchanging Word, then we must resist compromise.

This also doesn’t mean that we cannot use our experience – and this includes science – to help us better interpret Scripture. However, it does mean that we cannot allow experience to override Scripture.

Six Reasons why Objective, Transcendent Moral Law is Necessary to Preserve Equality

When we think about equality, we think of many different issues:

1. Equality among all Life Forms
2. Equality of Role among the Various Age and Sex Groupings
3. Equality of Income

The list can be extensive, and so I want to limit my discussion of equality to those things that the vast majority of Westerners value – The Bill of Rights reflecting our unalienable human rights, equal protection under the law, and the value of all human life.

What is necessary to provide an adequate rationale and foundation for these kinds of equality? Many offer the rationale of “majority rules” based upon pragmatic considerations – what works in terms of providing the maximum benefit to the greatest number of people.

While I don’t reject such pragmatic considerations, I want to argue that more – objective transcendent moral law - is necessary for any legal or ethical system. Let me try to explain. If moral law is not objective, it doesn’t exist outside of our own thinking. It’s merely a human creation without any reality of its own.

In contrast to this, the sun has an objective and independent existence apart from what I might think about it, while those who claim that morality is just a matter of our own decision-making deny that morality has any independent existence of its own.

(Moral law must also be transcendent. It must transcend all of our conflicting thinking and feeling and hold us all accountable. As such, it must be higher and more authoritative than our philosophies and cultural biases. It must also be immutable and not subject to changes in culture, human thought, and the opinions of humanity. It must partake of the same immutability and universality as do the laws of physics. Finally, it can only be authoritative if it comes from and is enforced by an all-just and wise Being.)

Let me just focus on one aspect of moral law – equality. The principle of quality is incoherent and therefore unsustainable without objective moral law for several reasons:

1. Without objective transcendent moral law, there is no rational basis for equality. We certainly do not find equality in nature but rather the survival-of-the-fittest. When the Transcendent is rejected, we are left with philosophical materialism. From a material point of view, there isn’t any equality even among humans. So are taller, stronger, smarter, better educated, and more popular than others. More importantly, some contribute to the common welfare, while others detract. Therefore, from a materialistic point of view, some would therefore be more deserving of rights and privileges than others.

On an interpersonal level, we believe that everyone is entitled to respect. As a probation officer, I would try to treat everyone in a way that respected his/her dignity as a human being. However, the material world does not provide any basis for such respect. Some of my probationers had arrest records yards long. Yet, as a Christian, I knew that they still bore the image of God and consequently were endowed with certain unalienable rights. If I had been a materialist, I would have been constrained to treat them in accord with their past performance alone.

2. Pragmatism is inherently selfish. The secularist denies Transcendence. He must therefore base his morality on pragmatic considerations – on what brings benefits. However, we all want benefits. We are all pragmatists. Pragmatism has been the default morality of humanity, and it has borne bad fruit. Whenever a nation has denied the Transcendent – the communist nations are a prime example – we observe unmitigated horrors. This is because pragmatism, the quest for benefits, is inherently selfish. As such, it can bear good fruit but also the worst imaginable evils.
   
   Most secularists will admit this problem and will respond that pragmatism has to be an enlightened and egalitarian pragmatism. However, this is just what communism had boasted to be. Even “enlightened” pragmatism is doomed to failure simply because pragmatism is based upon self-interest and not on immutable, transcendent moral law.

3. Pragmatic idealism will eventually run out of steam and not motivate the sacrifices necessary to make this ideal work. Without the confidence that we are serving the God of all truth and love, we will not be able to continually take risks to save Jews and merely to be a whistle-blower. The stresses of life will eventually lead us to the “why bother” philosophy.

4. Without the biblical revelation that we are special and created in the image of God and therefore possess indelible worth, we will not be able to counter the charges that our morality is chauvinistic – man-centered. Why should our laws favor humanity and not cows or even termites? What makes us any more valuable than the termite? Some would answer, “our intelligence.” However, such an answer undermines the very human equality we wish to protect. If we are valued according to our intelligence or creativity, then we must value the more intelligent and creative above others.

Even the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, was unable to conceive of our rights apart from God: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” (Notes on the State of Virginia)

The anti-Christian philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche acknowledged the connection between the Bible and equality: “Another Christian concept, no less crazy: the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” (Will to Power)

5. Subjective secular morality is arbitrary, culture-based and changeable. How then can anyone take it seriously if we regard our laws as merely the product of the cultural elite or the majority. Such laws and ethics lack the power to motivate in a positive direction. For example, take the testimony of serial-killer, Ted Bundy:

• Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self. (Christian Research Journal, Vol 33, No 2, 2010, 32)

6. Without the biblical sanctity-of-human-life orientation, we inevitably move in a quality-of-life direction, where we are valued, not according to our God-given value, but according to a cultural assessment of value. Under this form of valuation, some humans will inevitably be considered more valuable than others – the less esteemed members of society. These might include criminals, odd-balls, or even republicans or democrats. Such a system of valuation will only regard certain members as “equals.”

In addition to the problem of denying the Transcendent’s impact on moral law and equality, is the problem of finding a purpose in life. Without the Transcendent, there is nothing higher into which we can plug ourselves to derive any sense of purpose and dignity. We are relegated to living according to our feelings for our commitment to family or any other ideal. However, our feelings are highly changeable. Therefore, if our lives depend on our feelings, our lives will be characterized by instability and confusion. In order to escape this confusion, we will have to turn off our minds. And this is just what this generation is doing.

Postmodern Christianity and Uncertainty

This is my response to a dialogue among post-modern Christians who doubt that confidence and assurance in the faith are possibilities:

Thai families that are selling their daughters into the sex trade were offered money by a Christian group to not do so. However, they scorned the offer and continued to do what had become culturally acceptable.

I wanted to understand what was so attractive about the rejection of certainty that they would continue in this destructive behavior. I struggle with the same perplexity as I try to understand the influence of Daniel Taylor’s “The Myth of Certainty.”

While I understand that his thesis enables us to accept our less-than-optimal Christian experience – he tells us that we lack certainty because we are the deep, sensitive and contemplative Christians – I fail to understand why you all continue in this “certainty” that undermines the very joy and confidence you can have in believing. However, it is not merely a matter of the fact that Taylor’s thesis will hurt you in the long run; it is actually problematic on other levels:

1. Most obviously, it is incoherent. Taylor claims “certainty” about his thesis while he denies certainty regarding the Christian faith. How is it that he expects his readers to embrace certainty about Christian uncertainty? Meanwhile, his certainty is destructive of the Christian faith and of Christians who try to embrace both Christ and Taylor at the same time.

2. Taylor’s thesis is entirely unbiblical. Although the Christian life is filled with struggles – doubts, uncertainty, fears, temptations – this doesn’t mean that certainty or assurance aren’t possibilities. The Bible talks much about the reality of certainty, confidence and assurance:

• Moses’ father-in-law confessed assurance: “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly." (Exodus 18:11)

• God made it possible that even the “whole world” would know of Him:  “Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.” (1 Samuel 17:46)

• He gave Israel unassailable proofs of His protection: “You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.” (Deut. 4:35-36)

• Paul expressed a high level of confidence in the things of God (Phil. 1:25; 2:23; 2 Tim. 1:12).

• We too are promised this confidence and assurance (Eph. 3:12): “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22)

• Assurance is also something to pursue: “Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall.”  (2 Peter 1:10)

3. Sadly, Taylor’s embrace of uncertainty undermines this pursuit of certainty. “We have not because we ask not” (James 4:3). Taylor instead wants to make us comfortable with our uncertainty.

I write these unsettling words because I want to build bridges among Christians. Even more importantly, to show you that you have found the wrong “comfort.” I pray that you will understand.