You can’t escape it. The more you resist it, the stronger you cling to it. You look to heaven – it’s there. You run to hell – you bring it along with you. Those who condemn it most viciously are those who cherish it most dearly. Moral judgement is such an inescapable reality that it has even penetrated the Stadiums of America. It is a bit ironic that those who skip church for sports now have morality in spoon-fed doses as part of their Sunday liturgy. You think you can hide in a crowd of 100,000? Don’t worry. It’ll find you.
Look no further than politics. Moral standards are on full display with all their flare and pizazz every time a politician is given airtime. Who am I kidding? Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, they don’t have to wait for airtime. They can heave moralism on a whim. I guess if I’m on this railroad, one doesn’t even have to be a politician. Just look at your News Feed. Every other post is somebody condemning someone else about something. “It’s wrong to ban semi-automatic rifles.” “It’s evil to own assault rifles.” “It’s absurd to be talking about this.” You can find your conservative, liberal, and libertarian friends all having a moralistic opinion about a matter. Taxes? LGBTQ(XYZ)? Abortion? Throw a dog a bone. Throw three so they don’t kill each other.
Morality is inescapable. Judgement is a given. Does somebody think that’s high-minded to declare? Thank you. I appreciate the extra anecdotal evidence. Some liberals have to change their undergarments when they sense morality intermixed with politics, awkwardly not seeing their own moralism seep through. It’s unfortunate they don’t smell their own stank. Otherwise they could save a pair.
Apart from last week’s WWE performance, otherwise known as the 2020 First Presidential Debate, any political discussion revolves around either “The Issues” or ad hominem character attacks on the guy who disagrees with me. Here’s the secret sauce: both talking points are nothing but moral judgments behind a microphone. At least churches have more to talk about than just morality. It’s truly inescapable in politics. Is it right or wrong to rev your Dodge Truck engine releasing that extra dose of carbon gas unhindered into the air? I hear the Governor of the Golden State signed a plan to ban all sales of gasoline cars by 2035, because emitting greenhouse gases is, well, wrong. Interesting. I guess it’s also wrong that some people make more money than others. But it’s good to call a man a woman if that’s what he wants, or is it wrong for a man to say he knows what it’s like to be a woman? I’m confused. So many rules.
Whatever call-to-action we embark on, we can’t get to the period in our sentence before we have to appeal to a moral judgment. The knowledge of good and evil is with us until we die, and then some. It probably was a bad idea to eat from that tree.
Unless we can admit that morality is somewhere near the root of our modern-day disagreements, we probably shouldn’t voice our opinion too loud. At least if those loving, no-judgment individuals wouldn’t publish their posts judging Christians for being judgmental, there mental inconsistency wouldn’t be plastered in public. If you are inconsistent, you’ll look better if you don’t flaunt it. If somebody still thinks they can be morally neutral, they might as well put the straight jacket on and get into the white room on their own. They’ll be judging people there as well, but at least they’ll be in company with all the other self-deceivers. But if we can swallow the “no neutrality” pill, we might be able to get to a place that’s a bit more productive.
Once we know that it’s not whether but which when it comes to moral standards, we can try to dig a little deeper to strike gold. “Taxing carbon is good.” “Aborting babies is evil.” “Trump is bad.” “Biden’s ideas are obnoxious.” One could be taken aback at how obliviously all of these back-and-forth matches have the breath of life because of an assumed, but unspoken, mutual agreement of what should be considered right and wrong. We assume we all share a common conception of what’s good and what’s not, and then we don’t understand how we can come to differing conclusions. Its especially mind boggling when those who are called the Pillar of Truth let the parade have their way with them.
What if we back tracked just a tad and asked a simple question: what is good?
How do we know what’s right and what’s wrong? Why do we think income inequality is bad? Why do we claim that women have a right to an abortion? In another words, what is the standard of our morality? On what authority do we stake our claims of good and evil?
These are not profound questions. Those in presuppositional circles eat this kind of stuff in a bowl with milk. Yet I’m also not sure why these questions aren’t asked more frequently when the cameras are on. The guy on the left fling’s moralistic balls of poop, while the guy on the receiving end tries to dodge them or fling them back. It’s an endless game that only leads to everybody covered in filth, while being ever further apart. Why not hack at the root of the accusations by actually questioning the standard? In two hacks, you might fell the entire tree. Whenever a moral assertion is made, it’d be really nice if we habitually (at least quietly to ourselves, at first) questioned the authority of those assertions. It’d probably help clear a lot of the confusion.
There’s a vast trench in our cultural divisions namely at the point of moral authority. People living under the sun don’t have as much in common in that arena as some would like there to be. Our problem is not tactical. Some of us want to go to Alaska, and other’s to Florida. This isn’t a methodological dilemma. We have unreconcilable objectives. One objective, by definition, thwarts the other, and vice versa. You might even say there’s an antithesis.
For example, there are Darwin worshippers out there (very similar actually to Ancient Greek Pagans). Chaos and chance brought about all there is to know, and the strongest progressed. I’ll tell you, there really are people who believe in myths – I’ve met them. (I’ve even heard that our institutions are full of these people. They call themselves, “Experts.”) Just a question (I’ve been told asking questions is not a good excuse, but here we are): if life appeared by chance and evolved through natural selection (adapt to survive), then where does that leave our ground for morality? Hasn’t it been kicked out from under us? In a Darwinian worldview, morality evolves, and the strongest enforces his dictates. You don’t like income inequality? Well, you can try to fight it, if you think you have a chance. But don’t appeal to some emotionally driven moral goo.
The strongest can be overthrown, sure. But only if you’re stronger – either in might or in number, so you best have a plan. In our current Democracy-worshipping context, morality is defined by the current majority – 3 wolves and a sheep deciding if lamb chops are an appropriate meal to have for dinner. It doesn’t really matter what the sheep thinks. Because the majority is always fluctuating, morality becomes subjective. What was wrong yesterday is right today, and what is right today will be wrong tomorrow. If you try to find a consistent standard for good and evil in a Darwinian worldview, good luck. If there’s no standard for right and wrong apart from what the majority says it is, then the concept of right and wrong simply doesn’t exist. And so, this discussion (and any discussion for that matter) is over. Sad. I was just getting started.
Some Darwinians may argue that morality is pragmatic – meaning we’ll both agree to treat each other nicely because then we can both mow our grass in peace. However, our waking hours actually throw opportunities at us to jump ahead by defrauding our neighbor -what the HR department calls “unethical behavior.” We desperately look to pragmatism to deliver us from this cruel decision, but it simply stands there nodding us on to go ahead. Darwinian Pragmatic Ethics are based on self-serving do-goodery. “Be kind to others as long as it benefits you.” But as soon as that benefit evaporates, so follow the good deeds. If we’d rather not be made into lamb chops and served with rosemary and garlic, we probably should hold onto something far more reliable than pragmatism. Careful, the skillet’s getting hot.
It seems the only viable option for a moral standard is something outside of our own subjective fiats. I’d like to have a conversation about what’s right and what’s wrong, but the only way that’s possible is if we confess that everything was carefully and purposefully crafted by a Benevolent Creator and called good. He defines what’s good and what’s evil. More so, righteousness is not only defined by a Loving, Joyful Creator, but it’s that which reflects His revealed, never-changing Character. What was right yesterday is right today and will be right tomorrow. In that case, and only in that case, the floodgates open wide to drown evil and pour in goodness. The only way any moral judgment can see the light of day is if the One who said, “Let there be light” has judged it so.
If we assume there is no Creator, then any political discussion is just a facade. It might prop itself up for a bit, especially if it’s intermixed with revealed righteousness. But unless our societal moral standard is grounded in our Maker’s Revelation, it will inevitably devour itself. It’s really not that complicated. “No Creator” means no consistent standard. So, because I’d rather avoid the straight jacket and hot skillet, it’s probably better we come at this thing without deceiving ourselves.
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