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The Destructive Path of Moral Relativism
You've heard it said before, things like "your truth doesn't have to be my truth" and "my truth doesn't have to be your truth." It's called moral relativism, and we're going to talk about where this actually leads and the real dangers of it. Welcome to No Apology with Emily and Chris. It's a variety talk show designed to have you laugh louder, dig deeper, and live larger in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Moral relativism stems from spiritual immaturity at its core, which comes from biblical lack of understanding. This false teaching has been around since the Old Testament, and the New Testament warns us about it in every book except one.
Hebrews 5:11-14
"About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."
This scripture reminds us that constant practice is necessary to distinguish good from evil. That's why you've got to have an active faith. Some people say, "I just want God to speak to me." God just spoke to you through Hebrews chapter 5. It's right there. This is God speaking to you.
We can tend to fall down on one of two sides. Number one, we fall down on the side of, "I don't really need discernment. Everything's fine. All views are okay." Like I was talking about before, "your truth doesn't have to be my truth, and it's okay if we don't line up." But then we can go to the other extreme as well, where "you need to think what I think, know what I know, act how I act, and if you don't, there's a problem with you."
The reality of authentic Christianity is you decrease, He increases. And it's all about His glory. That's what it's about - dying to self, denying self, decreasing and Him increasing because it really is all about Him.
Less is More with Dr. Les Loftquist
It is time once again to experience a little less is more with Dr. Les Loftquist. He joins us once again today as our regular contributor to discuss the dangers of moral relativism.
1. Undermining Objective Truth
The first danger is that moral relativism undermines the whole issue of objective truth. If the idea of morality is subjective, then no action, no matter how evil it is, can be universally condemned. How do you condemn it if we have no moral basis? This erodes the foundation for justice, human rights, and ethical governance.
It undermines credibility too because now all of a sudden you don't have any credibility because you're not my truth. This leads directly to the second danger.
2. Creating Cultural Chaos
When every individual or group defines what's right and wrong for themselves, we see chaos or even very differing kinds of worldviews and opinions. This cultural chaos emerges when every individual or group defines what's right and wrong for themselves.
If nothing is true absolutely, then no one can be right. It's chaos. We're seeing that in our culture right now where it really makes when it's just my opinion versus your opinion. Well, then who's right? Who's going to distinguish? Who's going to tell us which one is correct? Because they're going to eventually come in conflict with one another.
All we're left with then is kind of the might makes right mob rule. Whoever is the most violent or whoever has the most numbers, they're the ones that are going to dictate on any given day what things are going to be like.
3. Destroying Society's Foundation
America cannot sustain itself with this cultural chaos. Outside of huge revival, this country is going to fall. Just look at the polling data - 91% of Republicans fully agree and think the president's doing a great job, but only 4% of Democrats can agree with that. That's a generalization which shows that we are so polar opposite, and it basically comes down to your truth doesn't have to be my truth.
The Bible's clear and says a nation divided against itself cannot stand. How do we survive this kind of chaos with nobody being able to tell anybody? The whole world has a "you're not the boss of me" mentality.
4. Masked Intolerance
Moral relativism masks itself as tolerance but leads to intolerance. They're trying to promote openness, but what happens? It becomes intolerant to those of us who believe in absolute truth. Ironically, the people who affirm clear moral standards start to get marginalized, silenced, and ultimately even face more brutal treatment around the world.
They rode in on the surfboard of tolerance just to try to enslave the people in the most intolerant fashion imaginable.
Four Key Questions About Moral Relativism
Question 1: The Basis for Moral Judgment
If there are no absolute moral standards, on what basis can we call something like genocide or human trafficking wrong?
You can't. That's the whole point. The universe might seem cruel and unjust, but where do you get this idea of just or unjust? What is cruel?
As CS Lewis said in his famous book, Mere Christianity, "A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some kind of idea of a straight line." We need to know what is the straight line, what are the boundaries, what does God say, and then we can call something crooked on the basis of God's standard.
Question 2: The Tolerance Contradiction
Is it really tolerant to say that every viewpoint is valid except for those viewpoints that claim objective truth?
It is self-contradictory to do that. Yet we know the reason they keep coming to this idea where they'll tolerate every viewpoint except absolute objective truth. They don't want that because in Romans 1:18 it says that men will look at the truth of creation in that context, but they see the truth and they suppress it. They hold it down. They resist it.
That's the very reason for this idea of moral relativism because they're trying to challenge the foundation of the Christian faith. Their precise goal is to do away with Christian truth. Every other person, sure, welcome to the table, let's have a conversation - until we start talking about absolute truth based on the word of God. Then all of a sudden the suppression from Romans 1:18 comes, then the push back, then the aggression, and then even mob violence because it ultimately breeds cultural chaos.
It's almost like the Bible is a light brought into a dark space.
Question 3: The Justice Dilemma
How can a society pursue justice if it can't even agree on what justice means?
This is a great question. It does lead to practical breakdown because they can't agree what justice is. As Christians, we have a different concept because of the standard of the word of God.
What is tolerance? Tolerance is not that I have to accept and affirm what you're saying. I can choose by my standard - the standard of the word of God - to say I don't agree with you. That's different than saying let me put my fist in your face or show you what tolerance is all about with violence.
They redefine tolerance to mean affirmation. If you can't embrace what we think you should, then you are intolerant. And because of your intolerance, we're allowed to be intolerant towards you because we're so tolerant.
All the final pieces of the puzzle are falling into place because they're busy deconstructing everything - deconstructing language, deconstructing laws and morals. Ultimately, they're deconstructing God because our morals as Christians are based on the character of God.
Question 4: The Stability Question
Can we have true stability if our sense of right and wrong changes with every new cultural trend or passing emotion?
This shows the instability and the hidden bondage of moral relativism. For example, it wasn't too long ago that Dwight D. Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, and everyone around him smoked. The king of England, Churchill with his cigar - that was not only acceptable, that was just the way it was. But today in so many circles, that is almost the epitome of evil, to strike up a match and light up a cigarette in a public space.
Go back to the famous Dread Scott case before the Supreme Court. Dread Scott was ruled to be not human, not able to receive basic human rights because he wasn't human, he was a slave. We hear that today and it's so repugnant, we don't even want to face it. But that's what our Supreme Court ruled back in the day in the 19th century.
Do you want to board a plane based on the concept that truth constantly changes? Do you want to build a house based on that concept? Or are there things that we really truly just in order to function and survive need to be able to hang our hat on and just know that this is the way it is?
What kind of a panicked life people must have if they really truly believe there's no objective truth, because your truth today is going to change tomorrow or the next day? Which day is it going to change? And how drastically is it going to change? Is it going to go from it being fine to you being thrown in jail?
Hope in a Relativistic World
We start out trying to free ourselves from the bondage of scriptural principles in the law of God, and we end up in our freedom becoming worse slaves than before. These are different days than I can remember as a child, and my parents and my grandparents would say the same things as things continue to transmogriphy - that's a fancy word, not transform but transmogriphy, meaning transforming downward. It's a societal downward slide.
What shall the righteous do if the foundations be destroyed? The answer is given in Psalm 11. It says the Lord is in his holy temple, reminding us that the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, is still the sovereign king of the universe. And so that gives us hope.
Hope is a virtue. In the midst of all this darkness, hope is where it starts. We say there's hope in Jesus Christ, hope for this life and the next, hope for forgiveness of sin. This gives us great confidence.
Then we demonstrate fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. We demonstrate this fruit, and it becomes like a shining light in darkness. It's so profound when it is so dark; the light shines ever brighter.
We can face this world not with a sense of doom, although we know this world is doomed. We face it with hope that in Jesus Christ and in the sovereign Lord of the universe, there's going to be a great and beautiful, wonderful, glorious future.
I've gone on record recently, and I don't believe that America can sustain itself. I think what we're dealing with now is absolutely unsustainable. But personal evangelism is key - you can't share what you don't have. It's one Christian sharing the gospel persistently that makes the difference. Despite mockery, despite all the ways people push back, Christians must constantly just come back with the truth of the word of God.
Remember, it takes approximately 16 presentations of the gospel of Jesus Christ for someone to seriously consider it. When sharing the gospel, we don't know what number we are. We could be one, we could be nine, we could be 16. But we're just privileged to be one who gives them the opportunity to come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We proclaim and leave the results to Him. But we've got to proclaim with the fruit of the Spirit, with intentionality, and let God do the rest.