I received a book called Traveling a Pilgrim’s Path written by Craig and Janet Parshall. Here they lament the trend in our society toward moral relativism.  By moral relativism they mean that belief by most people that there are no universal or fixed absolutes regarding right or wrong.  Moral relativism is the belief that we can never know for sure what is the moral thing to do because what is “moral” varies from person to person, culture to culture.

They posit that the beginning of the trend toward moral relativism can be traced in part to a book written in 1966 by Joseph Fletcher called Situation Ethics. According to the Parshalls, Fletcher’s book proposes that moral rules such as those found in the Bible should no longer be followed as a strict and rigid moral code.  He proposes that actions should be directed instead, by love.  According to the Parshalls, the problem with this is that love may lead us to lie, cheat or steal; love may lead us to extinguish another person’s life if that person is suffering.

I must admit that while I have read the Parshall’s book, I have not yet read Joseph Fletcher’s book.  However, as far back as when I was in 2nd year high school in the early 1980s, moral relativism was already prevalent.  I realized this when in our literature class, we were assigned to listen to a radio show on the AM band and write a critique of it.  I vividly remember listening to a popular radio show that dramatized problem/situations of listeners and at the end of the show, the anchor gives advice to the listener.  I  had to submit a critique of it.

In one show, the female host was advising a listener who had written asking whether or not she (the listener) should have a relationship with her office mate whom she knew to be married. Because their jobs require them to spend so much time with each other, she was falling in love with him, and he with her.  I vividly remember the lady host’s calm and mellow voice saying that she cannot tell the listener what to do because she does not know the listener personally.  She instead gave the listener parameters and criteria by which to weigh her options:

1. Religion (Does your religious affiliation forbid sexual relations with a man who is married?)
2. Culture (Will your family and friends approve of the relationship?)
3. Practicality (Will you not be exposing yourself to a criminal case that may be field by the spouse of your co-worker? Do you have a morality clause in your employment contract?)
4. Emotional /psychological health (Can you live with yourself knowing that you will break-up a family and maybe place your co-worker’s children at a disadvantage if their father separates from their mother to be with you?)
5. Love and romance (Do you really love him and can you live and be happy without him?)

The host went on to say that one’s moral choices may not only be a question of one’s values but also a question of what is necessary or convenient.  It all depends on how the listener perceives her own situation.  No one can dictate to the listener what she should do, only the listener can define for herself what is right under her circumstances. She went on to say that her relationship with a married man may be “wrong” under the law because it is adultery (concubinage is the more precise legal term); her relationship with the married guy may be “wrong” as far as the legal wife is concerned because their marriage will suffer; her relationship with a married man may be “wrong” because it is a violation of the Ten Commandments; but if she truly loved the man, she can either grab the chance at her own happiness or, she can give up the man knowing that he had another commitment.  In either case, she would still be doing what is “right” for herself.

I remember that our assignment for that literature class was to evaluate the production values of the show:  how the stories were presented, what literary devices were used, if any, how it may influence people’s views, etc..  Lastly, we were supposed to comment on what we found striking about the show.

I remember writing that I was bothered by the view expressed that people can choose what is “right” given a certain set of factual circumstances.  I remember writing that I was confused by that because I had been raised to believe that there were rules of right and wrong and it is by those rules that we measure our conduct.  I remember thinking that only God can say what is right and what is wrong and he already has done that in the Bible. I went to a christian school so I got a good grade on that assignment.  That was also my first brush with situational ethics and moral relativism only, at that time, I did not know that that was what that view was called.

J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God wrote: “Willingness to tolerate and indulge evil up to the limit is seen as a virtue while living by fixed principles of right and wrong is censured by some as doubtfully moral.”  This has been my personal experience. Most of the scrapes I have ever been in and most of the spats I have had with friends and family can be pretty much summed up this way:  I have often gotten into trouble when I declared something “wrong.”  I have often been told that what is “wrong” for me may be “right” for others, that I cannot judge other people’s conducts by my own standards, not even if those standards are Biblical because not everyone believes the Bible anymore. I have often been told that I cannot impose my rigid Biblical moral code on others because the Biblical moral code is cruel and unreachable, such that it is ultimately better if each of us has his or her own moral code to live by. I have often been censured when I voiced the opinion that something is “wrong” because what is morally “wrong” is now defined by what the greater majority of our society chooses to label “right” and “wrong.”

I think that the road forks on the issue of whether or not the world was created by God.  If one believes that God exists and that he created the world, one has to go on to believe further that God owns and rules this world he created and so, he has the sole and absolute prerogative to determine for all the inhabitants of this planet what is right and what is wrong.  God has given man a limited free will to choose to do what is right in God’s sight or what is wrong in God’s sight.  We as creations of God cannot arrogate to ourselves the prerogative to put up our own code of right and wrong, we either live in subjection to God’s standards or we rebel when we set up and live by a personal moral code.  Because in doing so, we take the place of God as law-giver and judge.

The road also forks on the issue of whether or not one believes that God has spoken and that God has spoken through the Living Word who is Jesus Christ.  For if one believes God has spoken through the Word of God, then one will either choose to live in submission of the authority of the Word of God and take it as the sole authority over all faith and practice or else, live in belligerence and rebellion against God.

Those who believe that they are entitled to live under their own personal moral code and not submit to God’s moral code have chosen to live unto themselves.  This is what the Bible calls “unbelief.”  According to J.I. Packer:  “The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defying God, having God against him, and he shall have his preference.”

2 Thessalonians 1:8 & 9 says: “In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;”

God’s wrath is always judicial – that is, it is the wrath of the Judge, administering justice…God’s wrath in the Bible is something which people choose for themselves.  Before hell is an experience inflicted by God, it is a state for which a person himself opts by retreating from the light which God shines in his heart to lead him to himself…The decisive judgment upon the lost is the judgment which they pass upon themselves by rejecting the light that comes to them in and through Jesus Christ.

Apostle John has declared: This is the condemnation: that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19).  Today many people say that they are christians and that they love God and believe Jesus Christ, but they are unwilling to live in subjection to the authority of the Scriptures.  They have gone about establishing their own righteousness, their own personal moral code.  Apostle John declares as well: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1: 6-7)

Ethics and morality are never situational, ethics and morality are never a question of personal choice, ultimately, ethics and morality are  a matter of choosing to believe that God exists and He created us, he rules over us and has declared what is right and what is wrong.  The only choice we have in the matter is to do what is right not in our own eyes but to do what is right in the sight of God. To choose our own standards and judge ourselves by our standards is to choose against God, it is to choose autonomy from God. When we do that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, we choose to deny God his place as lawgiver and put up ourselves in his place.  We become our own lawgiver.  God looks upon this as rebellion for in God’s created universe, only he has the right to rule, only he has the right to be law-giver.