| GOD and US |
| Moral relativism or absolute morality? |
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| IS MORALITY RELATIVE?
DOES MORAL RELATIVISM STAND UP TO HARD QUESTIONS? Is individual choice of how to live in ones personal circumstances the guide for morality? Moral relativism would say yes, but let's ask a question or two or three: Was it okay for Osama bin Laden to mastermind the large scale murder at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon? That act was a positive thing relative to his religious and political thought system. According to the relativist, that means it had to be O.K.. Is it then okay for a rapist to force sex with an unwilling victim? After all it is what he felt was okay for him at the time. Is it okay for a pedophile to sexually abuse innocent children? He felt like doing it. Let's ask some other questions from another perspective: Is it okay for someone to rape you? Is it okay for someone to sexually abuse your children? Is it okay for someone to defame your name? Is it okay for someone to steal your belongings? Is it okay for someone to seduce your mate? Is it okay for someone to deceive you? In each of the cases noted in the above questions it may have seemed just fine for the perpetrator to do what he did. IS SOCIETY THE SOURCE FOR MORALITY OR IS THERE AN ABSOLUTE UNIVERSAL MORALITY? Many believe that society is the source for morality. That argument quickly falls when you consider the egregious mistakes that societies have made. All one has to do is consider Hitler's Nazi Germany to see the gaping hole in the argument that one's society determines acceptable morality. WHY SUCH A REVULSION OF GOD'S ABSOLUTE MORALITY, ANYWAY? GODS WAY YIELDS THE RESULTS MOST ALL WANT. HIS WAY WORKS! JESUS SAID, "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE." We want to have safety and security -- to be free from fear of injury to our person. God tells us to love one another as He loved us. If we all did that we could throw all keys away and replace keyed automobile ignition switches with off/on switches. And how lovely to walk anywhere anytime without fear. We want happy marriages and happy families. Saving sex for marriage, husbands loving their wives as Christ loved and died for the church, wives respecting their husbands and each being subject to one another, are aspects of God's plan for happy families. We want our property to stay in our possession in the best of shape. God's way -- the way of Jesus living in us -- is to work so that we have money to give to those less fortunate. We do not like to be deceived, we want to be able to trust people. The way of God's Spirit is that we speak the truth one to another. This builds trust and deeper relationships. Since "the Way" spoken of in Acts, since the Christian life yields the results we want, and since that "Way" does involve an absolute morality, it makes no sense at all to have a revulsion to the absolute morality God's way is. God is good. God's way -- His absolute morality -- is good and that way results in the greatest good for each of us individually and for society as a whole. |
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| A Reality Check |
| A hard common sense look at morality and its source. |
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