Morality is not up for Interpretation
After the overruling of Roe vs. Wade I witnessed an avalanche of despair and frustration. One of the major points of contention was this rage over losing fundamental rights for women. The right to an abortion. Knowing what real Rights are I reached out to a number of people to try to engage in a conversation about morality. I reached out to friends, family, and I even engaged with random people on the internet. In all my discussions I put forth several scenarios and asked them what they would do if they found themselves in these situations. What I learned horrified me, but at the same time revealed a fundamental problem with our society. Below are two of those scenarios:
Scenario 1
Imagine that you find yourself sitting in a room and on the table before you lie a large red button. You are trapped in this room, and you are told that you have two choices. You can either choose to press the button, or you can choose not to press the button. If you press the button, then you are free to leave the room, but a stranger in the adjacent room is killed. You have never met this stranger, you know absolutely nothing about them, and you never will. If you choose not to press the button, then you die. You have nine months to make your decision.
Take a moment to really think through these two choices. Think about the consequences of each action. Think about the morality of your decision. Is one choice the Right choice? Is the other the Wrong choice? Is the morality of this decision up for interpretation? Try to separate yourself from the frame of man’s law, also known as government. Try to separate yourself from the frame of religious doctrine. Try to separate yourself from any external biases that might influence your choice. Now make your decision. Do you escape with your life by pressing the button and killing the innocent stranger, or do you choose to not press the button and self-sacrifice your life to spare the life of a stranger?
Now remember your answer and let us move onto the next scenario.
Scenario 2
Imagine that you find yourself being held hostage at gun point along with your entire family. On the table in front of you lie a large red button. You are told that you have two choices. You can either choose to press the button, or you can choose not to press the button. If you choose to press the button, then a random stranger that is being held captive in an adjacent room is killed. If you choose not to press the button, then your entire family is killed. Regardless of your choice you get to walk out of the room with your life.
Take a moment to really think through these two choices. Think about the consequences of each action. Think about the morality of your decision. Is one choice the Right choice? Is the other the Wrong choice? Is the morality of this decision up for interpretation? Try to separate yourself from the frame of man’s law, government. Try to separate yourself from the frame of religious doctrine. Now make your decision. Do you choose to press the button and kill the stranger, or do you choose not to press the button sacrificing your entire family to save the life of an unknown stranger?
What I Learned
Every time I presented the above scenarios to someone and asked the question of which choice they would choose if they found themselves in one of these two scenarios, without exception, everyone said they would press the button. They said they would press the button to save either themselves or the lives of their loved one(s), at the expense of an innocent’s life. When I asked them how many innocent strangers it would take for them to change their mind, they began to understand the point I was trying to make. As high a number as I suggested, I could not get them to change their decision. The point I was getting at was that if you concede to take the life of one then you would commit genocide to save those you know and love.
The reason I was left horrified after having these discussions was not because people chose to press the button. I anticipated most people would press the button, in fact, I even confided that I too would probably push the button if I ever found myself in a similar situation. Given the choice why would I sacrifice the lives of those I know and love or even my own life to spare the life of a stranger? Taken at face value the choice seems simple. No, the reason I was horrified was because I explained in excruciating detail how morality, knowing right from wrong, was objective and not up for our interpretation. I did this before I presented them with the scenarios. I used first principles to build my argument, I even proved how truth was objective because it was necessary for defining morality. After all of this I still consistently got the same answer, everyone chose to press the button, and had a justification for why they were right in their decision. My argument made no difference, to them this was a personal choice. To them the morality of their action was up to their interpretation, put another way, they believed morality to be subjective.
If you want to learn more about how I presented my case for Objective Morality you can read a previous article I wrote on the topic, here. Below is the definition of a Right action I gave before asking the above scenarios:
I went on to define a wrong as any action that does harm to others. I further distilled it to a single word, theft. For example, murder is wrong because it is the theft of another person’s life against their will.
Plato’s The Sophist
The reason objective morality matters is because if it is not true then every action is up for interpretation. This is dangerous because it means that you are capable of being swayed by whomever makes the strongest argument. This leaves you vulnerable to extreme manipulation. This is an age-old problem that is addressed in Plato’s the Sophist. Just as the ancient Athenian philosophers had the frustration of dealing with devious individuals that would set truth aside to sell their argumentative skills out to the highest bidder, so we find ourselves today being bombarded with propaganda to sway our decisions this way or that. If we know right from wrong, then we can be confident in our decision making. On the other hand, if we do not have a standard by which to base our morality then we are like a ship without a rudder and without an anchor driven by the winds of chance and circumstances of others.
When I would point to this vulnerability, they would consistently fall back to the argument that I was pushing my religious viewpoint on them. I found this very frustrating. I was doing my best to explain objective morality from a secular world view. The crux of my argument that consistently turned people off to my message was my use of the word God/Nature when explaining Natural Law, or the Golden Rule. I tried in vain to explain that they should interpret God in the most abstract way possible. I would tell them that you do not have to have a religious world view to understand what I mean, if you want you can just interpret it as a physicist would, if you are a mortal being then your actions in this world have consequences. I would tell them how the same concept had manifested in different cultures thorughout history. I would explain to them that it was like Karma, you reap what you sow. I talked and I typed until I was blue in the face. It did not matter, the moment I used the word God most of the people I talked to were completely turned off to the idea of objective morality.
Now this was a touchy subject to begin with and emotions were already high with many of the people I spoke to so it should not come as a surprise that most were turned off by what I had to say. After all I was trying to convince them at the height of their frustration that not only were they wrong about abortion, that it is not a right, but that their understanding of morality was so out of whack that they were capable of committing genocide.
I learned A LOT from talking with people about this topic, but I found that it was such an incendiary topic that I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was not going to share my findings publicly. However, today I had a brush with death while taking Elena to our nanny's place. I was waiting at a stoplight to turn left onto the busy street in front of our neighborhood. The light turned green, and I took my foot off the break. As the car began to creep forward, I looked right, and then left. As I turned my head to look left a giant utility truck pulling a cement mixer bulled through the intersection completely ignoring the red light. This was just in front of my car. Had I not looked both ways and simply gassed it on green that truck would have crashed directly into the drivers’ side of my car. The side of the car that both I and my eight-month-old daughter, Elena were sitting on. We both would have been history, it would not have made a difference had I been driving a hummer.
Now this turned out to be a non-incident but because my daughter was in the car it shook me up good, and because I cannot shake this topic from my mind, I figured I would sit down and write this article out properly. While I would normally stop at the secular world view and present my conclusions. That being that objective morality is real, it is a problem that society thinks that right and wrong is up for interpretation, and that we as a society need to learn that there are situations where selfishly we might think we are right when in reality, objectively we are wrong. I would simply leave it at that and end by saying something wholesome like, Hakuna matata, everybody lets all just continue to go along to get along.
No, not today. Instead, I am going to lean into that which everybody seems to find so uncomfortable, GOD’s standard of morality. I tried to make the argument that morality was built into us by natural design, and everybody rightly pointed out that I was pushing religion on them. I concede. I was wrong, morality is a Godly issue.
“Man will believe anything as long as it is not in the bible.”
– Napoleon
Everyone I talked to got very emotional when I brought into question the morality of their decision. This is because everyone thinks they are a good person. This is a human response, and I think that if you could go back in time and interview some of histories most notorious wrongdoers that they would make a compelling case for why they were justified in their actions. They would likely conclude that despite their many wrong doings that they were still a good person. This applies to Nazis who followed orders during the 1930s and 1940s or any order followers during times of great atrocities. To any of the worst world leaders throughout history. Such as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Vladamir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot to name only a handful. People are capable of horrific actions and the moral culpability lies with those who acted wrongly.
The truth is that humanity is a fallen creation. As Jesus so rightly put it, there is none good but God (Mark 10:18). If someone claims to be good, they are deceiving themselves through their own self-righteousness. You can prove this by holding their actions accountable to God’s standard, the Moral Law. Also known as the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament of the Bible. This moral law is the same moral law that our civil law is based off of.
I tried to take the secular path by explaining truth and how there is such a thing as objective morality. The problem with this approach is that it does not account for Justice. It plays the game of the scales. You end up comparing the aggregate total of your right actions to your wrong actions. If the scale leans in the direction of your right actions, then you come to the conclusion that you are a good person. This is not a valid excuse for wrong actions.
In a court of law, the judge does not judge you on how well you lived your life. If you broke the law, then the just judge will judge you according to the letter of the law. Think about it. If you were a surgeon who made a living saving the lives of others and one day you decided to up and murder someone the judge will not take into account how many lives you might have saved, but instead will judge you on how many you took when making his ruling. You will be guilty of murder and labeled a murderer.
If you disagree with this, then you do not believe in objective morality. You might say that murder could just as easily be right. But this is a futile argument because in your heart you know murder is wrong. For the law is written on your heart and your conscious bears witness (Romans 2:15).
I used to try to explain this sense of consciousness from a secular point of view but we as humans have an inherent knack for justifying our actions. To this point I must concede that I have become cynical to human reason. I recently heard it put the following way and I think it sums up my thoughts on the matter neatly, “Reason is the minds Press Secretary. It is used to justify what you have already made up your mind on to do.”
Left to our own devices we will commit genocide. Yes, you! See your original response to Scenario #1 and Scenario #2 above. As if the standard of the ten commandments was not heigh enough Jesus raised the bar higher yet when he preached his sermon on the mount. If you so much as look at a woman with lust, you are guilty of adultery (Matthew 5:28). If you have anger in your heart towards others, then you are guilty of murder (1 John 3:15).
This seems outrageous when taken at face value, but that is because we are all wretched sinners. We are all guilty of these acts and thoughts, not because we are evil but because we are human. If this is true, and if you are capable of taking a step back from yourself then you will know in your heart that it is. You must first lust after someone before you have sex with them, and of course, you must first hate before you commit murder.
Okay, so what?
If my moral character is to be held to the standard of the ten commandments, then I am guilty like the rest of humanity. I am a lying, thieving, blasphemous, fornicator at heart who is guilty of idolatry, and if Jesus has his way, then you can tack on murderous adulterer. So, to be clear, I am a lying, thieving, blasphemous, fornicating, murderous adulterer who is guilty of idolatry. Just like you and the rest of humanity. Does this really mean I am a bad person who will be condemned to hell if found guilty of these sins on judgement day?
Yes, yes it does.
If God is holly, righteous, and just then that is exactly what it means. That is what it means if there is an after life but before we get to the good news lets think about the implications for life as we know it here on Earth. If you live an immoral life, then you will quickly find yourself living in a state of Hell. If enough of our society abandons their morality, then we will all find ourselves living in Hell here on Earth.
These past two years I have adopted a saying, “What is life but a test of the soul?” I say this in times of hardship to friends and family when I feel that they need a message of courage. In C.S. Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity, which if you have not read consider yourself undereducated, he states the importance of straightening out your life:
Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse —so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be. And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy.
If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation, compared with his, is only a moment.
This eloquently states why we need to straighten ourselves out and align ourselves with Gods standard of morality. If we die and our souls become eternal, well, then we had better straighten ourselves out now because if not, our eternal existence will not just be miserable, it will be hell.
Sin is Deadly Serious
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- (Romans 6:23)
Most people do not realize what death is. According to the Bible, death is wages. God has paid you in death for your sins. It is like a Judge in a court of law has a heinous criminal before him and says you have raped three woman and murdered them. I am paying you with the death sentence. You have earned this punishment. This is your wages. This is what you deserve. To God, sin is so serious that it will earn you the death sentence. The soul of sinners shall die. After death we will be judged by God on judgement day.
The Good News
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
– (John 3:16)
The reason Jesus is our only salvation and the only way to have eternal life is because he is the only good man. Only an innocent man can take on the punishment for the guilty. I cannot take the fall for you because I am just as guilty as you are. This is why the Gospel is referred to as the good news, because God paid the debt for humanity with his only begotten son. Death is wages, and Jesus’s final dying words on the cross were, “It is finished (John 19:30).” He was stating that he had paid the fine in full. You and I violated God's law. Jesus paid the fine. That is what happened on that cross. Jesus lived a perfect life and died a brutal death on Earth so that our guilty souls could have eternal life in heaven. If you are in a court of law and someone pays your fine then the Judge can legally let you go. It is as if you had a stack of speeding fines. Even though you are guilty, you can walk because someone paid your fines. Even though you and I are guilty before God under the death sentence, God can take the death sentence off of us and let us legally live forever becuase Jesus paid the fine in full on that cross. In doing so he rose from the dead and defeated death. God's gift is eternal life through Jesus.
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing..."
- (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Now the reason the Gospel makes no sense to someone who is proud of heart is becuase they do not believe in objective morality. They think that the morality of their actions is up to their interpretation. In other words, they will not acknowledge their sins. If I were to stop you on the highway and tell you that someone had paid a fine for the law that you broke. You would probably say that does not make sense. What are you trying to say, that I am a criminal? The good news of the fine being paid for you would sound foolish; it would not make any sense. But if instead, I take the time to explain to you that the area you just sped through was set aside for a blind person's convention and the maximum speed limit was fifteen miles per hour. There were signs everywhere. You are in big trouble and you're going to jail for a long time, or you can pay this massive fine, but fortunately for you someone has paid it. Now because you realize how serious your transgression is the news that the fine has been paid for no longer sounds foolish. It makes sense now. It is exactly the same with the Gospel.
If someone is proud and self-righteous then they do not see sin as being serious and the Gospel will make no sense to them. If you tell them that Jesus paid the fine for their sins, they might say something like I am a good person and that does not apply to me because I am not a sinner. It is only once you realize how serious sin is, that it comes with the death sentence. That Gods wrath abides on you (John 3:36), and that you are an enemy of god through wicked works (Colossians 1:21). Once you acknowledge that from a place of honesty then and only then does the good news of the Gospel make sense. It is the best news you could ever hear. All you must do is trust in the savior and God promises that he will reveal himself to you. Accept Jesus as your lord and savior, confess your sins, and sin no more. Then as a Christian if you fall back into sin, which you will because you are human, you must admit your wrong doings and beg for forgiveness. The idea is that we recover from sin within this life in order to prepare for the role to come.
Sounds simple, right?
Think again.
Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
- (Matthew 7:14)
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
– (Matthew 19:23)
And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God
– (Matthew 19:24)
Most of us will hear the good news and ignore it. Many will claim that they cannot believe in a God that would damn most of humanity to hell. Why would a loving God do such a thing? The answer is the same reason there is evil on Earth, free will. God did not make us into robotic machines of flesh, he gave us free will. He gave us the ability to choose right action from wrong action. Evil arises when people choose wrong action and go against Gods will. If God forced you to go to heaven when you died then that would be the theft of your free will. What if you do not want to go to heaven when you die? Who is God to force you to do something against your free will when he gifted that ability to you in the first place? All he can do is provide you with the invitation. It is up to you to either accept or deny. The choice is yours. As it is with everything in life, you make the choice, and you live with the consequences of those choices.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Regardless of your beliefs I hope that you take some time to reflect on what you just read. If you are a Christian or would like to become one I pray that you take the time to pause, right now, to get right with God. After all you never know when a truck will blow a red light to send you to the afterlife to meet your maker.
Additional Info
By the way, I crafted Scenario #1 to perfectly replicate the situation a mother finds herself in when she must choose between saving the life of her unborn child, or her own life. I wanted to explore the morality of the most tragic reason one might choose to get an abortion. I crafted Scenario #2 to replicate a situation where one might find themselves being blackmailed. I wanted to illustrate how the only right choice in a hostage situation of that sort is to self-sacrifice because the alternative always leads to genocide. There are no limits people will not go to if they think that they can protect their loved ones. In both scenarios by pressing the button you are perpetuating the wrong. In Scenario #1, unless you were raped, you got yourself into the situation by your own free will. You do not have the right to steal away the life of your unborn child. Abortion is objectively wrong. In Scenario #2, by pressing the button you are perpetuating the wrong done to you by your captor. The objectively right decision is to not press the button because you have already been captured, even if it means the death of everyone you know and love. Remember, you must live with your consequences. Both the right ones, and the wrong ones.
If you found this article interesting and would like to share a comment with me, please feel free to reach out to me directly via my personal email at (drew@drewredifer.com).
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