Moral Absolutes vs Moral Relativism

Are right and wrong the same for everyone, or do they depend on personal or cultural views? Pastors Louis, Zack, and Alex discuss the history and implications of moral relativism and how we see it playing out in our lives today. 

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Transcript

Zack 0:14

Welcome to the very first episode of Between Sundays. It's a podcast of City Awakening Church. My name is Zach Casey and I'm the executive pastor at City Awakening. And today I'm joined by our lead pastor, Louis Tamboro, and our community pastor, Alex Robinson. Each week, each episode of the podcast, we'll be bringing in different members of our team to discuss topics that we believe can be helpful to our church members or really anyone who might be listening. And the idea is for us just to have some honest, behind-the-scenes conversations We'll be right back. around those topics. So you know our vision at City Awakening is to see both skeptics and believers seek truth, find joy in community, and live with purpose in our city. So we thought it'd be perfect to launch this podcast in conjunction with our August teaching series, Kingdom Thinking, where each week we're going to be hitting a culturally relevant and maybe even controversial question that we are all facing in our day-to-day lives. And really there's so much more to cover than a 30 or 40 minute message allows for, and so this platform Thank you. What's happening outside? We don't have a professional studio, so you're going to pick up some of those sounds today, probably. But we're going to jump in with our very first topic today, and that is, are right and wrong the same for everyone, or do they depend on personal and cultural views? This is really a question of moral relativity versus moral truth or moral absolutes. And normally, I don't plan to do this much talking in each episode at the beginning of the podcast, so I apologize for the longer intro. But I do think it's important today with this topic, especially to give some context for the discussion and some background information that can be helpful. And so I want to start just by us defining some terms that we're going to be talking about, the first being moral truth. And we can break that down into the two terms, morals and truth. If morals refer to what is right and wrong, what separates good behavior from evil behavior? Morals are not an explanation of how things necessarily are, but a description of how things ought to be, which implies a level of obligation because it's what's right and good. Truth is how we define reality. It's what separates what's real and what's not real. So if morals are how things are ought to be, truth is how things really are. So when we combine those two terms, take moral and truth, it combines those ideas into what's right and good and actual and real. So an example of this would be something like human life is valuable. That's a truth, and therefore it should be protected. That's a moral. And so it's a moral truth. We take that further into the idea of moral absolutes. So we would define that by, it's the idea that moral truths apply to everyone. It's true for everyone no matter what. So again, human life is valuable and should be protected. That, we believe, applies to all people, not just a certain group of people. It's a moral absolute. We compare that with moral relativism, which is something you'll hear us refer to in the podcast. That is the view that morality is subjective or culturally dependent And so therefore, there's not moral absolutes. Those ideas of what is right and true and good are relative to the individual and their context and space and time, and so therefore don't apply to everyone. All right, so as we talk about this idea of moral absolutes and moral relativism, do you think that this is a new issue, or if not, how has it changed in more recent times?

Louis 4:24

Yeah, I don't believe this is a new issue. I believe this is something that's been around for quite some time. You go back to like Greco-Roman societies and you will see that people were, the elites of their cultures were creating laws that would basically fit their own relativistic views of what would bring them the greatest pleasure in life. And so the difference I think between then and now is that now we live, at least in Western American culture, a society where it's a bit more democratic. So we have the opportunity to vote for certain things, certain laws and stuff like that. And we have a bit more freedom than what maybe others had in Greco-Roman societies. And so I would also say, though, that some of the technology has changed. So even though the root is still there, as far as it's all about whatever makes me feel good, whatever's going to bring me the greatest pleasure, maybe some of those things have shifted in the varieties that we have or the extent of what we have, like the advancement of technology. So we have more opportunities now to try and seek other pleasures that maybe they didn't have back then when they didn't have the technology that we have today. day and I think this even really goes all the way back to the fall we saw this issue going on since they are all throughout biblical history we can see over and over again where people are really seeking their own pleasure for themselves instead of really trying to find their greatest pleasures in God and trusting God to determine what's going to bring them the greatest joy their creator who created them knowing them better than they know themselves and what's going to bring them the greater pleasure in life better than they do because he created them he wired their DNA but we rebelled against that since the beginning of creation, thinking we know better than God.

Alex 6:07

Yeah, I mean, you see it all throughout. You see it all throughout scripture. And I think throughout history, you just see, like anything, just... the rationale for why we sin or why we rebel against God changes through time, but it ends up in the same place. So you just see different movements throughout the modernist movement or the postmodernists. And you just see, they get to different things and we'll probably talk about some of that more as we go. But yeah, I mean, this is not, this is not a new thing. We just see, we're seeing, our current day's version of it now. And so we'll see how that kind of plays out in life.

Zack 6:43

Yeah, for sure. I did a quick search on this because I wasn't super familiar with how the history of it broke down. I knew that it had always kind of been there, but it's interesting to go back and see. You know how, of course, it goes back to biblical times and Genesis and the garden, as you guys mentioned, but from a recorded history standpoint, it kind of starts with Plato and, you know, around 400, he lived 400 to 300 BC area. And so, yeah. He kind of argued for moral truths that are objective and eternal. And then that was met by some controversy or pushback by the sophist who challenged Plato by saying that man is the measure of all things. And so this was really kind of the beginning of implying that morality is subjective. And from a philosophical standpoint and introduced the idea of moral relativism. So as you move through time, you kind of see that pattern continue into medieval thinking with Augustine and Aquinas, who believe that moral truths are universal because they reflect the will and nature of God. So this is back to kind of a more biblical viewpoint. But then in the Enlightenment movement, you have guys like Immanuel Kant, who sought a secular, rational basis for morality. In other words, moral laws are universal, but it was discoverable through reason alone. It wasn't based on a religion or religious beliefs. And then as you get into more of the postmodernism in the 20th century, people begin to question all claims to universal truth. Morality is seen more as a cultural construct shaped by power, language, and even historical context. So there's definitely more of an individualistic idea there. And then more contemporary debates, which we'll talk a little bit about later, that begin to challenge us. And almost kind of a shift back to a more universal way of thinking, but again, not necessarily based on biblical principles. worldview. And so it's interesting to think about that this has existed throughout time, and there's been both sides of the argument, although not always based on a Christian or biblical worldview in that way. So as we think about that, what are some of the more prominent issues that you see today in our more postmodern, post-Christian time that reflect this moral relativism rather than moral absolutes?

Louis 9:09

I think, I mean, we see the whole debate over gender and identity being one of those issues that's prominent. We see issues over marriage being one of those, including also sexuality, LGBTQ plus or heterosexuality, you know, is one good, is one not, is one right, is one wrong. We see the transgender issue coming up as well. So we're seeing this play out in so many different within our culture right now, even beyond those.

Alex 9:42

Well, yeah, and I think those play on, like I said, you get at this through lots of different ways. Those play on kind of the true relativism, individualism is the definer of what is right. So in a lot of those issues, you'll hear people say, well, if what they're doing isn't hurting anybody and they're choosing to do it, Then why could you say it's wrong? Right. That's just a straight up individualist kind of argument and goes to the pragmatic. Like, sure, it doesn't necessarily harm someone else. So sure, if they want to do that, they can do that. And so that kind of comes from maybe the more modernist thought like humans. We can think we've we've advanced enough that we should be able to decide that. But then you see other things that come from that argument. postmodern thought, which again, whenever you hear, we use those terms a lot, whenever you hear modernism versus postmodernism, postmodernism just turns everything into what we've always thought was truth was because the powerful people said it was truth, essentially. That's kind of what it's arguing. And so now you'll see people arguing that, hey, this is like a truth imposed upon us by the powerful. And so that comes about when you think of things in some of the like racial debates where you can now say, you know, or you're kind of the like anti-colonialism type debates where it's, Hey, if there's an oppressed group of people, they get to, they can, they can act out on that. They can maybe do violent things to different things because they're trying to overcome this oppression. And so it becomes, you know, in order to write the scales, they get a different level of morality than the, the people over them in power. And so we see that in the gender thing, in the abortion argument, that becomes a, well, rich and powerful men have decided that they will control women's bodies. And so therefore, that's why we can't have laws against abortion. That would be kind of the argument people would use, as opposed to saying, there's a human life, human life being valuable, we should protect it. It becomes, oh no, there's a power dynamic here. So I think you, again, you just see it all over the place. And again, we're picking and choosing what our arguments are because we're sinful people. We're going to try to justify our sin any way we can get about it.

Louis 11:55

Yeah, which is actually somewhat interesting to me that you mentioned like the, you know, overthrowing the powerful or vice versa, right? So that's like a socialist Marxist mentality, which is always hypocritical to me because the very moment that those who are not in power overthrow those who are in power, well, then they become the powerful. And so what are you going to do in that case then? You're going to allow them to overthrow you? And, you know, ultimately it was really started about the poor over we're throwing the rich, but it bleeds out in so many different ways. And as we're talking about this too, I'm thinking about, Even within Christianity, I think we have to admit that we have brought in somewhat of a subjective view within the church. I think people have a subjective mentality when it comes to, you know, what church am I going to attend? You know, it's about me. What's going to feed me? And if it doesn't feed me, then I'm not going to be here. I think this is very heavy in our nominal Orlando culture. Orlando is a very heavy, nominal city. And so, you know, in the moment that you're not feeding me anymore, then I'm dipping out. Whereas if we go back to early Christianity, christianity before we even had church buildings well what did we have the church was a very big missional movement where people were involved in the church they were serving outside of their local home groups that they had and yet today we've kind of reversed that because we've now made the church really about well you know what we're going to go to a building and so we're going to be a bit less missional now and the moment that the church isn't feeding me anymore then i'm going to dip out i'm going to go to some other place that's going to you know bring me my highest pleasure so the mentality i think even within Christianity has shifted in Western American Christianity, where we have the mentality, a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people have the mentality. I'm going to pick a church that is going to, you know, meet my needs as opposed to, hey, I want to go to a church that is biblical, theological, preaching the gospel, having those as their primaries. And a church where God wants me to serve and use my gifts both for the good of the church and the good of the city that's around us. So I think we've somewhat weakened the American church by bringing in this subjective mentality of, hey, I want to feed me always instead of also being the one who's doing the feeding.

Zack 14:07

And I think that's what's led some churches and church leaders maybe to even allow the– the cultural, subjective, relative approach to seep into the church because we don't want to be the church that offends anybody. We want to be the church that's accepting or affirming of these different views and beliefs because if we don't, then those people are just going to leave and go somewhere else. So even though we might say the church holds to biblical teaching, there's an underlying pressure to give or to conform to this relativistic type viewpoint in order to honestly maintain people and keep people around or even sway them to be a part of your church, which is unfortunate when it comes to that.

Louis 15:02

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And we've seen a shift away from that, I mean, a shift towards that where you know, instead of letting the word of God, I mean, this goes back to our biblical authority code, our core value as a church, that, you know, we're going to read the Bible and let the Bible read us. Instead of allowing our beliefs and our worldviews to shape and change the Bible, we're going to let the Bible shape and change our beliefs and our worldviews. And I believe you're correct where we have shifted a lot of that in, again, not all churches, but in a lot of churches, Western American Christianity, to where it's, well, we're going to let the culture and our beliefs in society shape and change us. the biblical view that we have. And it helps to feed that subjective mentality that we're in.

Alex 15:49

Well, and I think that's the difficulty that kind of the modern church faces in a lot of things because when we were in times where maybe we were a little more united on what is orthodoxy or what is the true Christian life, you might have someone within a church that they start living against that and you come to them, we're thinking like a Matthew 18 church discipline type thing or something like that. The option becomes they either repent of that or they leave the church and you now regard them as a non-believer and you try to basically teach them the gospel again. You say, oh, this person was not a believer. We're going to teach them the gospel. But now the option is they might just go to a church that says, yeah, that's fine. That's all good. And now they can basically just say, well, I'm still going to church. I'm still following Jesus, even though their lifestyle or things that they're affirming we would believe are completely antithetical to what Jesus is, right? There's now not that distinction. So now you're having to call people out of like, actually, that's a false church or a wrong church, which is a harder thing to do than just, well, I don't believe in Jesus. Okay, well, here's why you should believe in Jesus. And that's the challenge, I think.

Zack 17:01

Yeah. So with some of those things, I think sometimes people argue, well, the Bible doesn't speak specifically to this or it's unclear on this. So how can a Christian be confident that there are– moral truths, moral absolutes, if the Bible doesn't clearly speak to a particular issue?

Louis 17:20

Yeah, I think some of the confusion ends up coming in a lot of times when, at least has been my experience in conversations with people outside the church and some inside the church, we have to differentiate between the three types of laws that are in the Bible. We have the civil laws, we have the ceremonial laws, and then we have the moral laws. The civil laws are laws that were, you know, God put in place for Israel during a certain time in history for Israel to be able to be governed at a as a nation, as they were getting established as a nation. Ceremonial were things that God was establishing for them as a people who would worship God set apart from other faiths and religions that existed during that time period of history. The moral laws of God, those were more universal laws that what God was giving to all of humanity, but through the people of Israel during that time in history. And a lot of times people get confused and they think, well, you Christians are picking and choosing what you want to believe and what you don't want to believe about the Bible. No, we're not. We don't have to follow the civil laws of God because the civil laws of God would be, we're living here in America. Jesus knew that we would be scattered to the nations, told us we would be scattered to the nations as part of him saying to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, right? And so we don't have to follow the laws of Israel because Jesus knew we'd be scattered. And so it doesn't make sense for us living here in America to follow the civil laws of Old Testament history or Israel there because we're not We're not a part of that nation. Civil law would be a speeding limit sign. It doesn't make sense for us to go 25 miles an hour everywhere all over the place. That is a localized law. And then the ceremonial laws, well, Jesus came to be the full sacrifice for the atonement of our sins, fulfilling all ceremonial laws that were required for us to have a restored and redeemed and joyful relationship with the Lord. But the moral laws of God is what never changes. Why? Because God's moral character never changes. This is the immutability of God, a theological term, immutability of God. God is the same yesterday, today, forever. So if God's character could change, then his moral laws could change, which means we don't have a very stable God. It means one day God could Could hate us, and the next day he could love us. One day he could tell us this is okay, and then the next day he'd say it's not okay. But God, his moral character never changes, therefore his moral law never changes. You never see Jesus one time changing any moral law that exists in the Old Testament. Never speaks against it whatsoever. If anything, he affirms the moral laws of God in the Old Testament.

Alex 20:06

Or expands on them to a degree. You think you're following this, but you're actually not. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Louis 20:13

And then so then like when people come in and they start saying things like so one of the things that I'll get a lot of times and I actually got that this week is, well, Jesus never, never. mentioned homosexuality. Well, no, actually, he mentioned the word porneia, which in Greek would have been understood as multiple different aspects that God would have deemed as sinful in the Old Testament and declared them as sinful in the Old Testament. So, for example, just because God didn't mention bestiality, right? Jesus didn't talk about bestiality. Does that mean that, you know, people can just go off and start having relations with animals? Well, no, it's because when Jesus mentioned porneia, they would have understood that bestiality would have been included. So Jesus even upheld the one-man, one-woman marital monogamous relationship when he refers back to Adam and Eve and their marital union that they had back in Genesis. So it's not that Jesus didn't speak about some things. I mean, when it comes to this stuff that we're talking about right now. No, he did. He upheld the moral laws of God. Now, there's going to be gray areas, and I think Paul addresses a lot of that when it's like, okay, well, should we eat meat that's been worshipped and sacrificed to idols or not? and we handle that in a different way.

Zack 21:31

Yeah, for sure. So what are some things when we talk about the personal application of this? Like part of the goal of our podcast is to be a little more real and how this applies to our lives, the things that we teach on Sundays. So what are some ways that you've seen moral relativism affect your own life or do you feel like that you've been influenced by it in any way

Alex 21:58

I mean i think i think we'd be lying if we said that we don't have aspects of relativism that happen that we use to justify things right i mean um i think a lot of times we use it in If we're struggling with a particular sin, we'll use it to justify that. Well, I'm not fully indulging this sin, so it's not as bad as if I was just going full bore on this. And we're basically denying the fact that we're allowing sin in our lives, and we're not fully repenting of it. We're like, I'll repent of the worst aspects of this, or I'll avoid that, and that will be good enough to... be moral and follow God. I mean, I think that happens in there. I think when we get in arguments, you know, with your wife or with something that you just say like, well, you made me so angry, so that's why I said this, right? When we justify like, well, you started something, so then I reacted. And so, you know, I can't be held responsible for these kinds of things. I think we see, again, that just like kind of relativistic thing, which, and I think we do that as like a coping mechanism because we don't always trust the gospel as fully as we should. When in reality, we should be able to look at ourselves and say, yeah, I'm sinful. I sinned there. And know that we can go to God in repentance, know that there's forgiveness there, know that there's power to overcome sin, as opposed to finding these little ways to justify or to minimize or do these kind of things instead of just saying like, laying bare when we're in sin and saying, yep, that's me right now. Please help me not be this way, as opposed to, again, justify, justify, justify, find these little points. I

Zack 23:44

I was thinking about this on the flip side of that. So I think some of that comes in, like kind of you were saying, Alex, like giving, we give license to things, right? Because it's hard not to sometimes, you know, whether that's the things we participate in, we watch, you know, whatever it may be, like, It's hard to hold a hard line sometimes when you go to search a show on Netflix and find to watch something. It's like, where do we draw that line? So there's also that issue that we lean towards legalism or being pharisaical. So how do we guard against that? How do we hold to moral absolutes but not be legalistic or legalistic? come across as judgmental or just completely irrelevant even.

Louis 24:34

So I'll give you an example of this. So this past week I had I was attending a funeral. One of my good buddies, his father died. And so when I was there, I happened to run into one of my other good friends from high school, played football with him, and he's from New York. His wife, though, is really seeking and also is really a big believer in more affirming culture, not church, but affirming culture. But she was curious about finding a church. And so they were having a conversation in the car, and they said they wanted to ask me as a pastor does my church and would I actually do a same-sex wedding? And so before I answered that question, I had to step back for a minute because I know immediately as soon as you give some sort of a response to that question, you're either going to get shot up or people are going to shut you off because they're going to think you're a legalistic or a bigot, right? And so I had to kind of step back and I had to to talk with them about, all right, let's back up. Can we table that for just a moment? And let's just talk about morality in general. So I wanted to set that aside. And I try to do that often because we need to lay some groundwork before we get into details of things. And I also explained to them, we have to admit as a church over the years, Christians haven't really handled this very well. We've often really created an us versus them mentality on this, or even culture has created that, this us versus them mentality when it comes to moral issues and especially when it comes to the LGBTQ plus community and you know there's like this war between the two and so I had to tell them that no this isn't an us versus them because here's the reality we all need Jesus I need Jesus just as much as you need Jesus now I know you're a skeptic you don't believe in him yet but but I want to make a little bit of a case for why you need him and why I need him and so the ground is level we both need him and we start there but when it comes to the moral issue I had I I had talked with them, do you believe that morality is up to the person, that it's up to the individual? And she said, well, yeah, no, yeah, sure. You don't get to tell me what's right and wrong. Well, yes, exactly. And that's why you align a lot with an affirming culture. And I said, OK, if that's the case, then would you be OK with what Hitler did? Well, no. Okay, well, would you be okay with somebody harming little children? You have kids now. Would you be okay with that? Well, no, I'm not going to be okay with that either. Okay, well, so then you're declaring a moral absolute against people who might be okay with those things. And then I even gave the illustration, if we're just evolutionary beings, well, then that means that we should be nothing more than like a lion when a lion eats a zebra. When a lion eats a zebra, a lion doesn't care about, you know, does a zebra have a family? You know, hey, excuse me, are you okay if I eat you today? Are you okay? I mean, this goes back to what the Finding Nemo, I think, where, you know, the shark Bruce, I think it was his name, Bruce, right? He said, fish are friends, not food, right? Yeah, and it's like, no, like a lion doesn't care. This is survival of the fittest. So we should have a survival of the fittest mentality. We shouldn't care about... you know, morality at all. And so she agreed that, yeah, okay, so, you know, maybe there are some moral standards, not quite sure if I'm fully aligned with that or not, but here becomes the question. Once you can agree that you're declaring a moral absolute when you believe in subjectivism, once you agree that there are some moral laws that we should have, okay, so the question then becomes, well, who gets to say what those moral absolutes are? I don't want you telling me what the moral absolutes are, and you don't want me telling you that. Why? Because we're sinful, broken people. And to Alex's point earlier, I like me some me. And so I want to bring a lot of pleasure to me, but my idea of pleasure isn't always what's best. And so we need a higher power to be able to declare what morality is. And there was a Yale law professor by the name of Arthur Leff, and he's passed away now, but he had said, Either God exists or he doesn't. But if God doesn't exist, then nobody gets to declare what's right and wrong, because it's all subjective. And so back to your question about, you know, how do we not become legalistic on these things, right? I think we have to determine that God is the one who declares what moral absolutes are. Not me, not you, not anybody outside the church or inside the church. It's God who does. And then we have to go to God's word to be able to determine, okay, well, what does God's word say on this moral issue that we're discussing? Does that make sense?

Zack 29:17

D Yeah, no, for sure. And I think that just kind of in wrapping up even leads to just something that's more... Recent, I think, in this conversation, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Sam Harris, but he kind of argues against moral relativism, but suggesting that there are objective right and wrong answers to moral questions based on the well-being of conscious beings. So this kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier, Alex, like somebody's oppressed, what's okay for them to then... demonstrate violence in order to free themselves from that oppression. He believes that science can illuminate these answers, right? And so, for example, this is kind of a light example, but if a preference for chocolate ice cream allowed for the most rewarding experience a human being could have, while a preference for vanilla does not, then we would deem it morally important to help people overcome any deficit in their sense of taste that caused them to prefer vanilla. So we would want to shift everything so that they could experience the greatest pleasure in their well-being. So it's interesting to see it's almost like twisting or distorting what we know of moral truths to say, yeah, these are absolutes, but it's all about what's... going to create the greatest well-being for the person, you know?

Louis 30:44

And so to your point on that, so here's how we determine the difference between what's maybe an objective truth or an absolute truth versus a subjective truth. A subjective truth is all based upon your opinion. So if I were to say to you that the best cake in the world, which I know you guys will debate, but the best cake in the world is carrot cake. Microwave carrot cake, man, that's really good, right? That's a subjective claim. Microwave carrot cake? I do. Yeah, you got a microwave. Yeah, you

Alex 31:16

got a microwave. You got a melt microwave.

Louis 31:19

That's right. So that's a subjective claim. Why? Because that's based on my opinion, right? And so, you know, my opinion can change. And then if you look at, if I make this claim, though, and this is what a lot of people don't understand. If I were to make the claim, Jesus Christ... is Lord and Savior, and the only way to get to heaven is through faith in Him. Now, some people will say that, well, that's a subjective claim. No, it's not. It's an objective claim. It's either true or it's not. It's either true or it's not. And so some people want to treat faith as a relativistic truth or a subjective truth. No, it's not. It's either true or it's not true. And so what we have to do is we have to put the facts on the table and then determine, okay, well, Is there evidence for this actually being true? And that's what I would challenge any skeptic to do is to examine Christianity and to see if some of the objective claims that are made, is there evidence to back those claims that would lead you to faith? So that would be kind of a difference between those two.

Zack 32:24

Yeah, that was good. So, I mean, I think this is a good point to stop and even kind of tease out our next topics. Our next sermon, next podcast will be around the idea of Christianity and science and how they can coexist. Are they friends? Are they foes? And so that kind of comes back. We'll bring back some of those ideas of what are the facts, how do we find what those are, and does that contradict what the Bible teaches, which is going to be always interesting to discuss that. So hopefully this is helpful to people. Hopefully it will encourage... you that are listening to reflect on your own moral beliefs where they come from because again it's important for us to understand where those are. Are those subjective? Are they objective? Are they based on scripture? Are we getting those from somewhere else? And hopefully invite some discussion amongst you and your friends or family. And if you have questions or comments, we would love to hear those. You can contact us at info at cityawakening.org. And we would love to just to hear your thoughts on this topic. So that's our wrap on our first episode, the thunder in the background. I don't know if it's audible in the microphone, but it kind of gives a weightiness.