ThinkBlog

Yesterday in my “contemporary moral issues” class, we had a discussion about cultural and ethical relativism. The first describes the fact that different cultures have, to whatever degree, different moral codes. The second is the idea that each culture’s perspective on morality is equally correct. Our class was to find through casual dialectic (if there be such as that) the reasons and flaws behind making the leap across Hume’s is/ought chasm: is ethical relativism logically sound?

Obviously, I am a Christian. As a Christian, I am a tolerant moral absolutist. What’s that, you say? How can one be tolerant absolutist? Simple: definitionally. I’ll pass on the diatribe on the ignorant usage of the word “tolerant” to mean “accepting others’ moral and ethical viewpoints as equally viable options,” except to say that tolerance can necessarily only exist where one believes another to be thoroughly wrong—and he tolerates the error.

But the part that I cannot pass up is the fact that I am an absolutist. People are afraid of absolutes, because of a spirit of cowardice and feelings-based, hedonistic morality that says if it makes me feel uneasy, it must be evil.

Consequently, there were two people in my class today that said things—as Christians, according to their own affirmation—that really got to me. The first, a soldier who believed that he was going to hell for violating the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” and so who was he to tell someone that worshiped Allah that he was going to hell? This is a case of the self-inflicted tu quoque fallacy, but aside from that, it was also a case of Biblical ignorance. What is translated in the King James Version as “kill” in the Exodus passage so often quoted in anti-capital-punishment rhetoric is better translated “murder” to our postmodern ears, and so the soldier was, in doing his rightful duty qua soldier, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. But the second person to speak up said those fateful words that are certainly going to one day ring out to unite the world under one religious banner: “We really all just believe the same thing anyway.”

How a Christian could let this escape her lips is really beyond me. Let’s just glance briefly at the three so-called “Western” religions for a moment, shall we? Christians believe that what saves us from the hell we choose is the irresistible grace and love of the Father as evidenced through His Son and the Spirit manifesting themselves to us via faith. In other words, the ones who consciously reject Christ are making a choice against the love of God, toward the wrath of God. They choose hell. (Let it be stressed that God does not “send” someone to hell, as it were.) If the Christian believes this fundamental tenet of doctrine—that sola fides, sola gratia we are saved through the atoning blood of Christ from hell, then he or she is surely bound by love, insofar as he or she understands, to provide witness for and to pray for the unbeliever. Because otherwise he will perish. That’s not hellfire-and-brimstone, perfect-teeth, slicked-back hair, silk-tie-and-three-piece-suit preaching, that’s simply what the Bible says. Therefore, in sum: choose Christ or hell for yourself. The choice is open and free. Judaism states that Christ was a heretic and a black mage, a blasphemer and reprobate and that all His followers are idolatrous for what they see as defying the Deuteronomical axiom, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the LORD, is one.” Therefore, Christians deserve hell. To a Muslim, anyone who does not believe that “Allah is God, and Muhammad is his prophet,” is a damned infidel. That’s not a rhetorical “damned,” either.

So here we have these religions—among many others—that stake an exclusive claim on truth. Do we, then, all believe the same thing? Clearly not. To say so is to be ignorant. To reduce all moral claims to the same level is practical atheism, or a drunken deism at best. To actually believe that a man who disbelieves is damned and to let him destroy himself is either malice, hatred, or insanity.

Whence then comes this heinous claim? I believe it’s sprung from a diluted, lukewarm and ultimately syncretic Christianity that so many people espouse without understanding or honoring. If I am a Christian because my parents told me to be, I am not a Christian in heart but only in culture and custom. If I make the claim that we all believe the same thing, then all the exclusive claims of Christ and, indeed, the very triune Godhead, are null. But are they null by my word? “May it never be!” But so it would seem to hear some tell it.

Especially in the southeastern United States, there is what Flannery O’Connor called a “Christ-haunted” culture. Steeped in tradition and blind superstition, some people will go their whole lives having never read the Bible—God’s very love letter to you and me, and to all Creation—thinking that because Ma & Pa went to church, somehow that “good” will osmose down to them as they sleep under the same roof for the first eighteen-or-so years of life. I don’t know if it’s a problem with so many mixed messages or just ignorance; but I believe the root cause of this pattern of thinking—and not only in the South—is a product of a “Christ-haunted,” nominally Christian nation whose churches have grown soft in the face of rising hatred from the world about exclusive morality. The end of all this? A “God” who is all-loving and ultimately all-forgiving, like some bored parent scared that his kids don’t really like him all that much, who will forgive any and all offenses in the really, really long run.

This festering lie hides beneath the ignorance and naïveté of Christians who really don’t know what they believe, and consequently from having heard that “God is love” and nothing more than that we live in an “age of grace,” do grossly err on the side of a false love that tastes like hedonism. Relativism is the spiritual cocaine of these times, and here Christians sit snorting the lines and passing the mirror, buzzed out of their minds and giddy on a shadow of love that knows nothing of justice. Ultimately this renders every doctrine to naught but a fleeting dopamine rush all forms of perceived love from this God who is either senile or impotent to mete out anyone’s just deserts which we are so loath to consider.

Yesterday in my “contemporary moral issues” class, we had a discussion about cultural and ethical relativism. The first describes the fact that different cultures have, to whatever degree, different moral codes. The second is the idea that each culture’s perspective on morality is equally correct. Our class was to find through casual dialectic (if there be such as that) the reasons and flaws behind making the leap across Hume’s is/ought chasm: is ethical relativism logically sound?

Obviously, I am a Christian. As a Christian, I am a tolerant moral absolutist. What’s that, you say? How can one be tolerant absolutist? Simple: definitionally. I’ll pass on the diatribe on the ignorant usage of the word “tolerant” to mean “accepting others’ moral and ethical viewpoints as equally viable options,” except to say that tolerance can necessarily only exist where one believes another to be thoroughly wrong—and he tolerates the error.

But the part that I cannot pass up is the fact that I am an absolutist. People are afraid of absolutes, because of a spirit of cowardice and feelings-based, hedonistic morality that says if it makes me feel uneasy, it must be evil.

Consequently, there were two people in my class today that said things—as Christians, according to their own affirmation—that really got to me. The first, a soldier who believed that he was going to hell for violating the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” and so who was he to tell someone that worshiped Allah that he was going to hell? This is a case of the self-inflicted tu quoque fallacy, but aside from that, it was also a case of Biblical ignorance. What is translated in the King James Version as “kill” in the Exodus passage so often quoted in anti-capital-punishment rhetoric is better translated “murder” to our postmodern ears, and so the soldier was, in doing his rightful duty qua soldier, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. But the second person to speak up said those fateful words that are certainly going to one day ring out to unite the world under one religious banner: “We really all just believe the same thing anyway.”

How a Christian could let this escape her lips is really beyond me. Let’s just glance briefly at the three so-called “Western” religions for a moment, shall we? Christians believe that what saves us from the hell we choose is the irresistible grace and love of the Father as evidenced through His Son and the Spirit manifesting themselves to us via faith. In other words, the ones who consciously reject Christ are making a choice against the love of God, toward the wrath of God. They choose hell. (Let it be stressed that God does not “send” someone to hell, as it were.) If the Christian believes this fundamental tenet of doctrine—that sola fides, sola gratia we are saved through the atoning blood of Christ from hell, then he or she is surely bound by love, insofar as he or she understands, to provide witness for and to pray for the unbeliever. Because otherwise he will perish. That’s not hellfire-and-brimstone, perfect-teeth, slicked-back hair, silk-tie-and-three-piece-suit preaching, that’s simply what the Bible says. Therefore, in sum: choose Christ or hell for yourself. The choice is open and free. Judaism states that Christ was a heretic and a black mage, a blasphemer and reprobate and that all His followers are idolatrous for what they see as defying the Deuteronomical axiom, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the LORD, is one.” Therefore, Christians deserve hell. To a Muslim, anyone who does not believe that “Allah is God, and Muhammad is his prophet,” is a damned infidel. That’s not a rhetorical “damned,” either.

So here we have these religions—among many others—that stake an exclusive claim on truth. Do we, then, all believe the same thing? Clearly not. To say so is to be ignorant. To reduce all moral claims to the same level is practical atheism, or a drunken deism at best. To actually believe that a man who disbelieves is damned and to let him destroy himself is either malice, hatred, or insanity.

Whence then comes this heinous claim? I believe it’s sprung from a diluted, lukewarm and ultimately syncretic Christianity that so many people espouse without understanding or honoring. If I am a Christian because my parents told me to be, I am not a Christian in heart but only in culture and custom. If I make the claim that we all believe the same thing, then all the exclusive claims of Christ and, indeed, the very triune Godhead, are null. But are they null by my word? “May it never be!” But so it would seem to hear some tell it.

Especially in the southeastern United States, there is what Flannery O’Connor called a “Christ-haunted” culture. Steeped in tradition and blind superstition, some people will go their whole lives having never read the Bible—God’s very love letter to you and me, and to all Creation—thinking that because Ma & Pa went to church, somehow that “good” will osmose down to them as they sleep under the same roof for the first eighteen-or-so years of life. I don’t know if it’s a problem with so many mixed messages or just ignorance; but I believe the root cause of this pattern of thinking—and not only in the South—is a product of a “Christ-haunted,” nominally Christian nation whose churches have grown soft in the face of rising hatred from the world about exclusive morality. The end of all this? A “God” who is all-loving and ultimately all-forgiving, like some bored parent scared that his kids don’t really like him all that much, who will forgive any and all offenses in the really, really long run.

This festering lie hides beneath the ignorance and naïveté of Christians who really don’t know what they believe, and consequently from having heard that “God is love” and nothing more than that we live in an “age of grace,” do grossly err on the side of a false love that tastes like hedonism. Relativism is the spiritual cocaine of these times, and here Christians sit snorting the lines and passing the mirror, buzzed out of their minds and giddy on a shadow of love that knows nothing of justice. Ultimately this renders every doctrine to naught but a fleeting dopamine rush all forms of perceived love from this God who is either senile or impotent to mete out anyone’s just deserts which we are so loath to consider.