From Absolutes to Prejudices

A great shift has happened within my lifetime.

The World of Moral Absolutes

In the world I grew up in, it was understand that morality was based on biblical absolutes.

Most of us were raised to know the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, etc.

God, being infinite and perfect, revealed a body of rules and a kind of life that reflected His person.

And we, the creatures, also reflected His person and sought to life His kind of life (or at least made a good effort to do so).

Even when we rebelled against these morals, we still did a kind of backhand homage to them and their power over us.

This moral life was known as personal holiness or godliness.

We had a conscience formed by the teachings of the Bible, and it was understood that nobody should be forced to violate their conscience in matters of morality.

Even in dire national emergencies, we made room for conscientious objectors who were recognized and given an alternative to violence.

It would have been inconceivable for the State to force moral people to condone, participate in, or approve of immorality.

The World of Absolute Self

Now, however, all this superstructure of morality and shared moral values has been swept aside.

All authority is now located in the self.

All beliefs and all morals are an expression of the self and therefore subjective and arbitrary.

“Love” is what it’s all about, and there’s no such thing as holiness, godliness, and righteousness.

And the State and its laws exist to validate and garner approval for whatever the self wants to think, feel, say, or do.

Morality, in a nutshell, is a personal prejudice in the moment towards something and against something else.

When Worlds Collide

Even the very concept of moral absolutes is totally foreign to most people, especially to the majority who reside outside of the three Abrahamic faiths.

To the ears of the irreligious majority, our absolute morality is an annoying personal prejudice that needs to “evolve” to embrace the ethos of the times:  approval of all identities and expressions of sexuality.

To their ears, it sounds like we want a special deal, a special exemption from their program of absolute equality and sexual liberation.

To their ears, this personal prejudice of ours called morality must be broken and changed.

So, in their minds, there is no right of conscience, and no dissent allowed because, again, morality is just a personal prejudice.

So we have these nasty collisions between the agenda of liberation, and the loyalty to God of a minority in dissent who will not ever participate, promote, or endorse acts the Bible says are evil.

There is a hard bedrock of absolute values which are not subject to change, modification, etc. and which honor God and His holy ways.

Puzzled and Infuriated

Secular society does not know what to do with us.

We don’t see the world as they do, don’t think as they do, and don’t live life as they do.

They cannot even fathom what absolute values are, and how life could ever be lived according to them.

They therefore expect us to decide as they do, think as they do, and believe what they believe.

And when we don’t, they get furious and nothing so small as the 1st Amendment or religious liberty stands in their way.

So they resort to raw power, to coercive laws and hefty fines and social shame to browbeat us into compliance.

Which, of course, doesn’t work.

Two Ugly Consequences

Two things follow:

First, advocates of tolerance become furious equality bullies.

In their zeal to create equality and a society based on “love”, they have no mercy towards those who live by and live under absolutes.

Dissent from the majority view becomes an existential threat to their self’s chosen identity and they world of safety for their self they want to create.

We must be eliminated!

Which is actually genocidal instead of tolerant.

Second, we who believe in absolutes, faced with an existential threat, are tempted to fight nastiness with counter-nastiness and viciousness with counter-viciousness.

Since a society without moral dissent or the rights of conscience is, by definition, a society we absolutists cannot live in, we don our armor and go to war–reinforcing the very stereotypes being used against us.

A Different Approach

What if, instead, we did the following:

When a gay couple comes to an “absolute values” Christian baker to obtain a wedding cake, don’t deny them outright.

Instead, give them a free cake (and maybe two) and refer them to another baker who supports their desire.

“I can’t personally participate in this because of my absolute beliefs about marriage, but I can give you this free gift and send you to a friend who will take these cakes and decorate them. Then have him send the bill to me.”

I’m guessing there wouldn’t be a lawsuit in that case.

And I’m guessing such unexpected kindness from someone who morally disagrees would give off an aroma of grace for sinners by a redeemed, recovering fellow sinner.

Instead of power plays and collisions, would not unexpected grace win more hearts and minds and give secularized folks something outside their own prejudiced box to think about?

Instead of capitulating to the anti-moral “love wins” agenda of our times, we adopt a “grace wins” approach.

And we can do it without needing any kind of State permission or fearing any kind of State retribution.

A Joyless Christmas?

Perhaps I’m imagining it, but it seems that an already-nasty society is getting even more vicious.

There is precious little “good will to men” or “peace on earth” happening right now.

As Nasty as We Wanna Be

Hearts are harder, disagreements are more vehement, refusals to accept difference of opinion are more strident, and reactions and counter-reactions are escalating.

Activists on the left and on the right are increasingly angry at each other, increasingly uncharitable and voicing ever more extreme positions, and “going after” anyone on the other side.

Both sides keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and monitoring and monitoring and monitoring, and condemning and condemning and condemning, and posting and posting and posting it for all the world to see.

Then they receive lots of congratulations and validation and applause from hard-core people in their own camp, who are quick to come to their champion’s defense.

But, like the Grinch, our hearts are shriveled.

We are becoming Scrooge-ified.

And it’s terribly, terribly sad.

Little of Christmas Cheer

We’re not having much of a Christmas, are we?

Oh, the shops are full and the lines are bigger.

Our advertisements are cleverer and cuter.

But there’s a sterility to it all.

Something’s missing.

And that something is repentant compassion.

Where Joy and Love Are Found

Paradoxically, nothing evokes care for others more than coming to God as a weakling failure and being loved as a rank sinner.

Self-righteousness loves to judge and label and monitor and call out and blast and rage and even crucify our opponent.

Those who are truly loved as sinners at the bottom of their lives find themselves saying, “That could be me” and “That used to be me!” in the presence of another’s sin.

They are compassionate and see the problem behind the problem and the person behind the issue.

They use gentle and patient words, and give the impression they are on our side against our evils instead of being against us.

They keep the main thing, the main thing, which is Christ.

They see their job not as a moral policeman, but as an unworthy escort who points to the One born in Bethlehem.

Getting Christmas

In other words, they really get Christmas in a way few others do.

They hear the triumph of God’s grace, join the angelic choir in celebration, and exclaim, “Glory to God in the Highest!”

Their dearest wish is for the peace of God to reign over troubled, tormented, conflicted hearts at war with God.

They are full of good will towards others and towards all mankind–part of the building crew not the wrecking crew.

They get no joy from pointing out the sins of others, but don’t mind publishing their own sins and how forgiven they now are.

They love Jesus–plainly, openly, and simply.

Others taste Him in them, and catch a glimpse of Him through their words, their attitudes, and their life.

Joy follows them and marks them out.

They know the source of all joy and return to the fountain of joy within them Christ put there.

My point is nobody needs to have a joyless Christmas.

Nobody needs to be sour and bitter despite the tragedies of a fallen world and the follies of fallen people and the wrongness of fallen society.

Time to Dump Our Control Worship

But we’ll have to lose something most of us find too precious to give up.

And that something is control.

Worshipping control is what makes us nasty, and what gets us into control battles with other groups, people, and events.

Voluntarily surrendering control to Christ, yielding up what we never had in the first place, and coming under His redemptive love, is what releases joy.

The people who need the least personal control, and who are the most under the control of Christ and His love, are the most joyful.

There is a solution!