Copyright 2016,2022 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
It is no overstatement to say that our society has largely embraced, as an advance in human liberty, the wholesale rejection of moral constraints that guided Western civilization for most of its history. This is most obvious in the realm of sexuality but it also holds true when examining things as diverse as rampant materialism, violent entertainment, the legalization of marijuana, and no-fault divorce laws. In fact it is increasingly a “fait accompli” that the tipping point beyond which there is no coming back has already been reached. A Judeo-Christian civilization is dying.
It is to be replaced by one that exalts man as the measure of all things. In such a cultural environment it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain that the actual ramifications of such “liberty” are still, and always will be, the opposite of what so many people believe them to be. When fallen humankind is the arbiter of a freedom wrapped up in endless rights without moral responsibility the end game is slavery to the self. Such slavery has the byproduct of destroying the civilization that has enshrined it. Every decadent society in history that eventually died from moral license masquerading as liberation died because the growth of that license remained unchecked. As our culture continues deeper into the 21st century the signs of mortal illness are not hard to pick out and efforts to treat the symptoms rather than the disease continue unabated.
Biblical Christians living in such an age are called to point out this gradual self-destruction that cloaks itself in new “freedom” and that call remains even if fewer people are willing to listen. This is not easy as those who are given over to the current zeitgeist in the West become increasingly hostile towards anyone who dares question what “progress” is and what it isn’t (Witness the instant application of the term “hater” to the many people who still dare to question transgenderism. The truth is that I know of people of that conviction who might not bake a cake for a “gender-transition party,” but who would unhesitatingly throw themselves in front of a bus to save a pedestrian that they knew was transgender, whether they agreed with their lifestyle or not.)
The reality is that, whatever the resistance, we are still morally obligated to make some effort to speak against the cultural metanarrative in the hopes that some may hear. The following is one way to do this.
When I was a boy my parents, who were not religious by any stretch of the imagination, regularly told me that nothing is ever right just because “everyone is doing it.” They were warning me, of course, about the dangers of peer pressure being allowed to mold my developing moral compass but it seems to me that today this is a salient argument on a societal scale. A majority of Germans initially thought Hitler was going to be a great leader and many of those that voted for him in 1933 seemed to have no problem with the extreme anti-Semitism already evident in the Nazi party. The question then, as now, is this: since when is right and wrong determined by majority vote? By and large I think people sense it is not determined that way because of the conscience that God built into them. Even as an Atheist teenager I knew on some level that I could not effectively argue with my parent’s logic. Right and wrong had to have an ultimately objective basis or there was no such thing as right and wrong, and I was pretty sure there was.
This is, I believe, the beginning of a line of effective dialogue with people who take as “gospel” the idea that human happiness is dependent on being allowed to do most of the things their desires tell them are right (as long as they aren’t “hurting anyone” of course.) It is, admittedly, only a beginning. There are a whole arsenal of other arguments from the Bible, natural law, human history and just plain common sense that can be employed from there. The obvious fallacy of the majority determining what’s truly right also does not have to be the starting point. My only suggestion is that it might make, with the help of the Holy Spirit, one of the more profitable ones.
Whatever approach we take we need to be ready to be rejected for believing what we do in a world where the only absolute truth accepted seems to be that there is no such thing as absolute truth. In such a morally upside down environment, in which most people are marching in lockstep towards an eternal cliff thinking they are building a relativist utopia, we should not be surprised what awaits us. Those who want to walk in the opposite direction, towards the real life and freedom that come from living in congruence with the God of the cross and with virtues tried and tested over thousands of years, are anathema to the standard bearers of Progressivism. Expect to be treated the way they always claim we treat “heretics” because that is just what we are as far as many of them are concerned, cultural heretics.