Isaiah  5_20      Why I Believe in Moral Absolutes

Rev. David Holwick

First Baptist Church

West Lafayette, Ohio

July 10, 1983


Why I Believe in Moral Absolutes


Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)



"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,

who put darkness for light and light for darkness."


Isaiah's words seem only too appropriate for the way things are happening today.  The 20th century has seen an enormous decay and disintegration in the moral standards of the Western world.  Even West Lafayette has been affected.  A few years ago there was one policeman for the village.  Today we have four officers who patrol twenty-four hours a day.  The evidence of decay in morals is everywhere.  Many intelligent observers believe there is no hope for our civilization unless something is done about it.


I believe one reason behind all the problems is that our society has increasingly given up any sense of absolutes.  Everything has become relative, which means you do what you think is right in any given situation.  Ours schools are being influenced by this philosophy.  So is government, as we discovered during the Watergate hearings.


Things that used to be considered wrong by almost everyone are now open for discussion.  Adultery is an everyday subject for magazines, movies and television soap operas.  Phil Donahue has enlightening discussions with lesbians who want to marry and adopt children.  Homosexuals have their own church and are trying to join the National Council of Churches.  Dr. Carl Henry, an American Baptist theologian, says that our culture is disintegrating because it cannot decide which moral system to follow.


Every day we are exposed to different ethical and moral systems.  Unfortunately, few people clearly see these systems for what they are.  We are confused by them and so we don't know how to respond to them.  Even Christians are confused in this area.  At the American Baptist Biennial Convention I attended a luncheon.  Our table began to talk about campus ministries, the kind where Christians witness to students and have bible studies.  The woman next to me said she didn't like them because they stuck to absolutes: sin is sin, the Bible is true, etc.  When I defended moral absolutes, she tried to convince me I was wrong - absolutely wrong, of course.  When she was done, another man at the table talked for fifteen minutes on all the current ethical systems.  He never did say which one he thought was right.


It's more common for a Christian to say, "Who cares?"  This Friday I was talking to a believer who said theology and ethics are unnecessary.  All we really need to do is witness to people.  Perhaps you feel the same way.  But keep this in mind - every television program, every newscast, every magazine, every novel, every motion picture is based on some ethical viewpoint.  If you are fuzzy about what the viewpoints are, you'll end up being influenced by them.


Basically, there are two main kinds of ethical systems.  One ethical system is based upon God.  It says that through the Bible God has revealed to us how he wants us to live.  The other main division is called speculative ethics.  It says that people are on their own and have to figure out how to live without help from God.


Speculative ethics covers a vast area and, of course, I can only give a brief look at some of them.


Pragmatism is an ethical system which operates on the principle that if something works it must be good.  There are some problems with this system.  Hitler did a pretty good job of destroying all the Jews in Europe.  Since his "final solution" was mostly successful, a pragmatist would have to say it was morally good.  But if someone is successful in robbing banks, does that make bank-robbing good?


Egoism is a system that teaches, "I will seek that which is good for me."  The 1970's were called the Me-Decade.  Everybody looked out for Number 1.


Hedonism is similar.  If something is pleasurable it is good.  Hugh Hefner's "Playboy philosophy" made hedonism popular.


Fatalism is an ancient ethical system.  It teaches that impersonal forces control our lives.  People who read astrology charts are dabbling in fatalism because astrology says some force in the heavens controls our lives.  I have never been a big fan of fatalism.  While I was a student at Wheaton College I dropped into an astrology bookstore to see what they had.  I browsed through their books and overheard the owners having a discussion.  One of them said Jupiter was in the fourth quadrant of Scorpius and it has really affected his day.  He went on and on how the specific prophecies in the chart were fulfilled in his life.  The other owner then dropped the bombshell - Jupiter wouldn't be in the fourth quadrant of Scorpius for another month.  The first guy was flabbergasted.  Hurriedly they flipped through the charts to see what his day had really been like.


These are a few of the ethical systems around today.  One principle that has crept into many of these systems is that right and wrong are relative, not absolute.  This principle even became a system itself, called Situation Ethics, or the New Morality.  Situation Ethics says that nothing is always right or always wrong; everything depends on the situation.  Joseph Fletcher is a key leader in Situation Ethics.  He writes:


"Is adultery wrong?  One can only respond, "I don't know - maybe.  Give me a case.  Describe a real situation.  Or perhaps somebody will ask if a man should ever lie to his wife, or desert his family, or spy on a business rival, or fail to report some income in his tax return.  Again the answer cannot be an answer, it can only be another question."


He is saying there are times when adultery is O.K.  When?  That's up to you to decide.  I disagree with Dr. Fletcher.  I think God disagrees, too.  But Dr. Fletcher and others do make one good point - Christians tend to be very simplistic when it comes to ethics.


Let's say a couple is getting a divorce.  Who is at fault?  Christians like to choose one spouse and heap the blame in that direction.  If the wife is a believer, we usually assume the divorce is all the husband's fault.  However, life is usually more complicated than this.  Both people in a marriage tend to have faults.  If there is a divorce, one person may be guiltier but both have probably contributed to the problems in some way.  Divorce is wrong.  But there is an area of gray around it.  What non-Christians tend to do is push the gray to both ends, so that black and white no longer exist.  This way they can never be tied down.


Relative ethics is interesting.  A liberal scholar noticed that books on the topic tend to justify adultery, cheating and lying but put down faithfulness in marriage and leading a clean life.  But consider this for a moment - what if right and wrong really are relative?


I have very vivid memories of a photograph I saw years ago.  It appeared in a newspaper during the racial turmoil that swept the United States in the 1960's.  The picture is of a black man with his hands tied behind his back.  A chain was looped around his neck and fastened to a tree limb.  As he hung there, members of the Klan took a butane torch and burned the initials KKK into his chest.  They kept burning him, slowly, until he died.  As a Christian, I feel that what they did was wrong.  If situation ethics is true, then what they did might be wrong.  It might be O.K.  It all depends....


For those who like to stress the gray area in situations, I would like to say this: Gray is the combination of white and black.  If black and white cease to exist, then you cannot have gray.  Any ethical system which says there are no absolutes, that there is nothing about morality you can be sure about, ceases to be an ethical system.


If you dig deep enough, you'll find that everyone in this room believes in some absolutes.  That absolute truth may be that they think they are the most beautiful, intelligent person on earth but they still believe some things are absolute.


The Bible does not hedge in giving absolute moral truth.  The Ten Commandments would be one example.  God has some definite ideas about how we should be living.  God's law does several things.  First, it gives us a perfect standard to live by.  We don't have to grope in the darkness to know whether something is right or wrong.  Second, and most people miss this, the law is given to convince us that we fail to keep it.  The law shows us what sin really is.  The law convicts us and makes us feel guilty.  Martin Luther called the law a mirror.  As we look into the mirror of God's law we see all of our wrinkles and moles and pimples - all of our guilt, sin and uncleanness.  When a person makes up his own ethical system, he always makes up an ethical system which he thinks he has kept.  In the law of God, we find a law which smashes our self-righteousness, eliminates all trust in our own goodness and convinces us we are sinners.  Luther concluded - "The law is a whip that drives us to the Cross."


Only Jesus' blood can wash away our sins.  He is the only one in history who has lived a perfect life, who could have earned his way to heaven if he had to.  Unless we are perfectly moral, we cannot get into heaven.  We cannot do it but God can.  When we trust in his Son, God brings us back into fellowship with him.  He forgives our sins and gives up power to lead lives that are pleasing to him.


Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?  A nifty speculative ethical system is no substitute.



________


Typed on May 22, 2005, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey




Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick

Created with the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc: Full featured multi-format Help generator