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“There is no such thing as absolute truth.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
Very rarely do I think that there is a book that all Christians, no matter what their particular areas of interest are, need to read. This is one such book. Our world is seeped in such an amoral and immoral morass that is difficult for Christians to see the forest for the trees. Very often the church buys into the arguments for “tolerance” and “pluralism,” which when unpacked, are neither. The authors do a great job of simply and clearly dismantling the underpinnings of moral relativism showing it to be self-refuting, and thus impossible in practice without total anarchy. A story is related in this book about a student who inquired about how to combat the relativism being taught by his teacher. He is told (with tongue planted firmly in cheek), “Steal her stereo.”
And this comes to a good point. I believe that “relativists” or “the tolerant” know intuitively, if not purposefully, in their hearts that they are really neither. But it makes it so much easier to call other people backwards and wrong when you can cloak yourself in the appearance of being reasonable and tolerant. It is not a matter of whether or not one can “legislate morality.” It is whose morality will be enforced. All laws are inherently moral. For instance, here is a classic and somewhat entertaining excerpt from this book (which if is taken to memory will provide great ammunition in moral debates):
Bill was a friendly, tolerant sort, willing to talk with me about Christianity until the question of homosexuality came up. My apparent lack of tolerance made him uncomfortable, and he said so.
“That’s what bugs me about Christians,” he said. “You seem nice at first, but then you start getting judgmental.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I said. It was a leading question.
“It’s not right to judge other people.”
“If it’s wrong to judge people, Bill, then why are you judging me?”
This question stopped him in his tracks. He’d been impaled on his own principle, and he knew it.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I was judging you. Kind of hard to avoid it.” He paused for a moment, scratched his head, and regrouped.
“How about this? It’s okay to judge people, as long as you don’t force your morality on them,” he said, thinking he was on safer ground. “That’s when you cross the line.”
“Okay Bill, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Is that your morality?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you pushing your morality on me?” Bill was getting stuck on Plantinga’s tar baby.
He tried a couple of more false starts but couldn’t extract himself. Finally in frustration he said, “This isn’t fair!”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I can’t find a way to say it so it sounds right.” He thought I was playing a word trick on him.
“Bill, it doesn’t sound right because it isn’t right; it’s self-refuting.” I explained.
At this point in the conversation some people throw up their hands and say, “Now you’ve got me confused.”
In these cases I respond, “No, you were confused when you started. You just now realized it.”
I showed this a coworker with whom I have been debating morals and relativism over the past year. He promptly said, “That’s clever, but I don’t agree with it.” I asked him to specify where the flaw in reasoning is. He said that he just can’t buy into the fact that when one person denounces another as being judgmental, that the one doing the denouncing is doing the same thing. He said that he wants to be able to tell somebody that they are wrong without being labeled judgmental. Isn’t that all the Christian in this sample conversation wanted? In other words, my coworker friend wanted to have his cake and eat it too without having to share it with the opposition. He wanted different standards of what is and what is not judgmental depending upon one’s views on the moral spectrum.
He went on to say something else that was very interesting. He went on to say that he respects Christianity (he is Jewish) but says that when he is approached for evangelism on the street or in the airport that is going too far. In short, Christianity is fine, just don’t evangelize him. I told him that without meaning to, he has just made an extremely arrogant statement. He was basically saying that my religion is fine as long as I practice it by his rules. I explained that would be like me saying that I don’t mind at all when Jewish people keep kosher, as long as they eat pork. To his credit, he agreed that I definitely had a point there. As the book points out, you don’t tolerate people you agree with. Tolerance is only an issue when there is a disagreement, yet today we have redefined tolerance as meaning that you don’t disagree or you are labeled as judgmental, an endless circle.
Buy and read this book, your eyes will be opened.
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