When I was a kid, my father used to say to me, “Right is right even if nobody’s right, and wrong is wrong even if everybody’s wrong.” That pearl of wisdom really stuck with me. Now, as an adult, and being the type of black-and-white person that I am, I’m extremely troubled by how moral relativism is destroying the fabric of society. My unwavering conviction and 34 years of Bible-believing Christianity inform my belief that fallible people acting as autonomous gods can only cause much suffering for everyone, regardless of what they believe.
Modern society has devolved to the point where the right to do whatever you want takes precedence over doing what is actually right. Killing unborn babies has morphed into the “right to choose,” sodomy has mutated into gay rights, and bilking the system as a way of life more than seven generations after the fact has become the right to reparations for slavery.
Double-destruction has befallen us, because the Bible says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Moral relativism has delivered “woe” to those who refuse to acknowledge the true difference between right and wrong.
Thirty years ago, I had a conversation with a moral relativist that I’ve never forgotten. The young man was indignant that I dared to suggest that there are moral absolutes. My argument was that the Bible says that human beings intrinsically know the difference between right and wrong, indicating that, like it or not, there are standards. My point was that moral relativism is merely an effort to quell the conscience and make excuses for a sin nature that, without the constraints of God’s truth, is capable of fantasizing, stalking, trapping, and then cannibalizing another human being.
The moral relativist continued to stress that there are no moral absolutes and that the concept of right and wrong is relative to many factors. His premise was that the individual, not God or others, should judge personal truth. That’s when I asked him, “Oh, so if you lived next-door to a child molester and they felt that having sex with a five-year-old was acceptable, you’d be fine with them sexually abusing your child?”
My stammering opponent responded to that absurdity by saying, “That’s taking things a little too far!” I then asked, “Are you saying there is a standard for right and wrong, and the difference is that you get to set the standard?” That question was followed by a couple of seconds of heavy silence. I persisted: “So, in your opinion, raping children is wrong? Therefore, even though you don’t want God or society to impose their morality on you, you’re comfortable imposing your morality on the pervert with a lecherous eye on your preschooler?”
Shocking as it may sound, that particular person was so steeped in the desire not to judge or offend that he actually said, “Well, I guess I really couldn’t say anything, because it wouldn’t be my right to impose my standards on the guy next-door just because he likes to have sex with children.” For the committed moral relativist, chancing sacrificing his child to a molester is certainly a high price to be willing to pay to preserve the right to retain subjective (and in this case, disgusting) preference.
Currently, Americans live in a culture where individuals arrive at conclusions based on limited life experience, a faulty knowledge base, and ambivalent emotions, all of which are influenced by lies, skewed perception, and human weakness. Add to that the growing belief that moral values are not divinely mandated or commonly relevant, and you have a recipe for disaster.
That’s why, when I read stories like the one where an Oklahoma mother and her 11-year-old son were arrested after the little boy purportedly raped his 6-year-old sister and her mother told her not to tell anyone, I’m not shocked.
What’s shocking is the public’s response to a sexualized youngster raised in an atmosphere void of moral restraint acting accordingly. A young child violates his little sister, and the culture that’s guilty of fostering degenerate behavior asks why?
The bigger question here isn’t why things like that happen, but rather who among us has the right to say that what the boy did was wrong. Who has the right to tell a mother that failing to report forced juvenile incest is unacceptable? Isn’t drawing an ethical line in the sand and saying that there is something very wrong with a child raping a sibling and their mother attempting to cover it up imposing a standard of morality on a family whose measure of decency may be different from our own?
By adhering to the tenet of moral relativism alone, moral relativists and their ilk have zero right to oppose any kind of behavior, even if such perverse or evil conduct shocks them or negatively impacts their lives. Remember, the price of subjective preference can be very high.
The older I get, the more I understand what my father was saying. Attempting to run a society based on the belief that morality’s canon is independently decided upon seems like a great idea until some lunatic shoots up an elementary school or a prepubescent brother rapes his little sister. That is when the ramifications of a misguided ideology that preaches the abolishment of moral absolutes end up proving that “right is right even if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong even if everyone is wrong.”
Most of America's problems are cultural. Even our economic problems stem from the cultural rejection of personal responsibility and the acceptance of collective responsibility. And none of our problems would be as bad if the church was still shaping the culture instead of merely responding to it. I was reminded of this during my annual holiday trip home to The Woodlands, Texas.
I've attended Christmas Eve services four out of the last six years at the Woodlands Church (formerly Fellowship of the Woodlands), which is a Southern Baptist mega church that keeps its Baptist affiliation well hidden from the general public. That is symptomatic of what ails the church in 21st Century America. Production and marketing take center stage. Core beliefs are lost somewhere in the process.
Make no mistake about it; the production is good at The Woodlands Church. The set is grand and the music is wonderful. Pastor Kerry Shook and his wife Chris are largely responsible for that. Their son, a musician living in Nashville, comes home to perform in the Christmas services every year. I've seldom heard a more talented young singer and guitarist.
Couched in the musical productions of these mega churches, one sees an overwhelming desire to deliver a product that demonstrates the cultural relevance of the church. This is especially true on holidays when the church has more visitors than usual. This Christmas Eve, one of the singers was dressed like Michael Jackson and was moon walking around the stage as others sang. I didn't see a likeness of baby Jesus in a manger. But I saw a likeness of Michael Jackson in a sequin outfit.
Many people dispute whether Jackson was a pedophile. No one disputes that he is still culturally relevant. Nonetheless, it was strange seeing Michael Jackson's likeness on stage just minutes after the church staff assured parents that the church nursery provided a safe environment for their young children. Mega churches are seldom short on cash or irony.
After the music, an enormous train engine (actually, it was a life size model) appeared in the middle of the stage. It was slowly moved in on a set of make shift tracks in the midst of smoke and accompanied by the sound of a real train whistle. The pastor boasted that the whistle could be heard all the way over on highway 242. I agreed that the set was impressive. It probably took the church staff as much time to build it as would have been required to build a medium sized home for an impoverished Houston family.
The crowd at Woodlands Church also got to see a YouTube video of a man watching an old train pull into a station. I still don't understand the point of showing the video, which featured a man so excited to see an old train that he took the Lord's name in vain three times. Let that sink in for a minute: The Woodlands Church played (in church, mind you) a video in which a man was taking the Lord's name in vain three times. And they did it as part of a Christmas Eve service celebrating the birth of our Lord.
It reminded me of the time I took the Lord's name in vain in a lecture at Summit Ministries in 2010. I didn't mean to do it. But it didn't matter. The kids at the ministry let me have it - and rightfully so. I was absolutely in the wrong.
My question for the mega church is simple: how did the commandment-violating video get past the entire staff at the Woodlands Church without someone catching it and correcting it? It's pretty easy to do an overdub on "oh my God" to turn it into "oh my." But the entire staff missed it. Or perhaps they didn't care.
Unlike my teenaged Summit students, senior pastor Kerry Shook couldn't see anything wrong with playing that video in church on Christmas Eve - even though its narrator took the Lord's name in vain three times. He just laughed at it. And that was all that mattered. The service wasn't meant to honor God. It was meant to entertain.
Kerry and Chris delivered a joint sermon, which had a broad general theme connected to the giant locomotive that stood behind them. The thesis was that we need to relinquish our need to control people and circumstances and instead let God direct our lives. But during the short sermon, Kerry's wife said something rather unusual. It had to do with holy moments in our lives. It was as morally confused a statement as I have ever heard inside a place calling itself a church.
Without batting an eye, Chris Shook stated that all of the moments in our lives are equally holy no matter what we are doing because they were all created by God. So she insisted that we must learn to live in the moment, rather than seek a holy moment - because, once again, all moments are holy, and equally so.
To illustrate the error of Chris Shook's statement, consider these "equally holy" moments, which were "all created by God":
A man sees a woman being raped and intervenes to stop the attack.
A man sees a woman being raped and decides to join in.
A man gives his wife a dozen roses.
A man gives his wife herpes.
A man tells his grandmother she is a saint.
A man tells his grandmother she is a whore.
Obviously, not every moment in our lives is equally holy or God honoring "no matter what we are doing." It matters very much what we are doing. Everyone knows that, including Chris' husband Kerry who contradicted his wife about five minutes later. Near the end of their joint sermon, Kerry thanked people for coming to The Woodlands Church on "Christmas Eve, one of the holiest nights of the year."
Put simply, there can be no holier or holiest night if every moment in our lives is equally holy. Either Kerry was right or his wife Chris was right. A cannot be not-A. The law of non-contradiction matters.
Every right thinking person knows that Kerry was right. His wife needed to sit down and let her husband the senior pastor deliver the correct message unencumbered by contradictions steeped in moral relativism. The culture teaches moral relativism. The church needs to correct it.
Of course, having Chris up there was the most important thing because it shows that The Woodlands Church really isn't a Baptist Church after all. They let women preach and that shows they are culturally relevant. A little bad theology never hurt anyone.
In our holiest moments, we recognize that sound theology must defer to the secular doctrine of feminism. Some doctrines are holier than others. And relativism is culturally relevant even when it isn't logically consistent.
Originally posted at American Thinker
Larry Brinkin, 22-year retiree from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and veteran gay rights advocate from San Francisco, has been arrested for felony possession of child pornography. Following his arrest, Mr. Brinkin was released on bail after spending the night among friends in a San Francisco jail.
According to a search warrant served by San Francisco police, after seizing two laptops, a desktop computer, videos, a floppy disk, and flash drives from Brinkin's home, his computers were found to have "pornographic images that show children as young as 1 and 2 or 3 years old being sodomized and performing oral sex on adult men."
Allegedly, the human rights/gay rights advocate also had messages linked to his AOL account that included attachments that depict "exploitive sex acts" as well as links to a discussion group that approves of "sexual exploitation of young boys and girls."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Brinkin was best known for "championing equal rights for gays and lesbians. He helped craft San Francisco's groundbreaking Equal Benefits Ordinance, which became a national model for workplace equality."
When Brinkin retired, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was so grateful for the work he had done on behalf of human rights for gays that they approved a "resolution declaring the week of Feb. 1, 2010, 'Larry Brinkin Week' in San Francisco." According to the board, and despite his alleged penchant for pedophilia, after retirement, Larry's "dedication to advance the civil rights of all people ... never stopped."
Former supervisor Bevan Duffy, who authored the board's resolution for "Larry Brinkin Week," said he was shocked to learn of San Francisco gay icon's arrest. Duffy said, "I have admired and respected his work for the LGBT community. I respect and am confident that there will be due process."
Due process will ultimately determine whether or not the human rights advocate considered the sexual mistreatment of tots a right worth pursuing. In the meantime, regardless of the outcome, it's clear that both Larry Brinkin and the tiniest victims of his alleged crime have all been damaged by a liberal lie called moral relativism.
Brinkin thrived for almost a quarter of a century in a setting that promotes the false premise that moral behavior is subject to individual judgment. He was well-respected in a community that makes heroes of people whose primary goal is to undermine traditional values such as marriage, portray as out-of-date the belief that heterosexuality is normal, and endorse all manner of perverse behavior by putting it all under the umbrella of "human rights."
So in Mr. Brinkin's case, after making a name for himself advocating for the right to individual sexual expression, it could be that he had convinced himself that pedophilia also meets the necessary criteria. The North American Man Boy Love Association marched in San Francisco Gay Pride Parades early in Brinkin's career.
Before retiring from the equitable workplace he had helped create and retreating to his e-mail account and his NAMBLA-like discussion group, Larry Brinkin lived and gained fame in a world where the lines that define decency are oftentimes ambiguous. Brinkin attained star status in a city where people pride themselves on being their own moral judge and jury, where individuals are the subjective arbiters of their own behavior and the sole captains of carnal vessels that are encouraged to set sail in any direction they desire.
Then Brinkin, at 66 years old -- old enough to be someone's grandpa -- is caught with child pornography on his computer and participating in an online chat that approves of sexually molesting innocent children. The question arises: who, then, in a secular culture determines the ethical norms? After Brinkin spent 22 years working to eradicate a line of moral demarcation, does someone or some system with different measures now get to draw a new line in the sand?
Moreover, don't the tenets of the "what's right for me might not be right for you"-and-vice-versa school of thought teach that no one has the authority to impose personal standards of morality on anyone else? Should that principle change just because it has been revealed that the person responsible for advancing the civil rights of San Francisco's LGBT community may also turn out to be a degenerate who approves of having oral sex with toddlers?
If moral relativism is a valid argument, then Brinkin is innocent regardless of what he's done. And any man or woman with small children should accept the fact that if, in his mind, Mr. Brinkin believes it's acceptable to sexually abuse a child, and the child being abused should happen to belong to a fellow moral relativist, then that morally relativistic parent is duty-bound to pardon Larry's amoral behavior.
However, if Larry Brinkin is found guilty, then so too are all the moral equivocators who have promoted a debauched philosophy whose lack of boundaries has led to the corruption of society and, more tragically, been part and parcel of the irreparable harm that has befallen the helpless and most innocent among us. As for a dupe like Larry Brinkin, if proven guilty of pedophilia, it's because he's just another deluded predator who believed the lie that all morality is relative. Then he acted upon that conviction and, by doing so, became another one of its victims
When I was a kid, my father used to say to me, “Right is right even if nobody’s right, and wrong is wrong even if everybody’s wrong.” That pearl of wisdom really stuck with me. Now, as an adult, and being the type of black-and-white person that I am, I’m extremely troubled by how moral relativism is destroying the fabric of society. My unwavering conviction and 34 years of Bible-believing Christianity inform my belief that fallible people acting as autonomous gods can only cause much suffering for everyone, regardless of what they believe.
Modern society has devolved to the point where the right to do whatever you want takes precedence over doing what is actually right. Killing unborn babies has morphed into the “right to choose,” sodomy has mutated into gay rights, and bilking the system as a way of life more than seven generations after the fact has become the right to reparations for slavery.
