Moral Relativity

The story is told that the Christians in the days of the Caesars were charged at times with being atheists. Sure, they believed in God, but not that Caesar was a god, so that made them atheists. A problem of relativity. They were atheists as it relates to Caesar as god.

It has been the claim of many conservatives that liberals have no values. It has been the claim of many Christians that atheists have no morals. And, of course, everyone knows that homosexuals are morally bankrupt. As it turns out, this is all nonsense, relatively speaking. As it turns out, liberals and atheists and even homosexuals have lots of values and morals. They value "gender equality" and "income equity". They think that it is immoral to damage the environment, eat animals, or infringe on women's reproductive freedom. They are concerned about healthcare for all. They even seem really concerned about poverty. They fight against racism and sexism and gender issues. They talk a lot about diversity and tolerance. That is, when you chase it all down, they have values and morals; it's just that they may not be the same ones.

Then we get down to Christians. Most people are pretty sure that Christians have morals. I mean, it's one of our favorite topics. There's only one problem. While Christians surely should have the same values and moral code that we find in Scripture, we don't often find it to be so. Wives won't submit to (Eph 5:22) or respect (Eph 5:31) their husbands. Husbands fail to love (Eph 5:25-26) or understand (1 Peter 3:7) their wives. Mind you, I'm not saying we don't do it well. No. I'm saying that we read the Scriptures, understand the commands, and refuse. We call ourselves disciples of Christ and fail to love one another (John 13:35) or even learn from the Word of God ("disciple" means "learner"). We are called out from the world and then adopt the world's values of greed and narcissism and vanity and lust. When Christians are reported to be equally likely to engage in sexual immorality as non-Christians, Christians are clearly suffering from a lack of biblical morality.

We complain about the immorality of the world and the liberals and the atheists and the homosexuals and all. Perhaps we ought to check for logs in our own eyes.