We Christians largely dislike the notion of "relativism." We much prefer absolutes. Here's the problem. There are things that are relative. Here's one: "good." "Oh, no," some will say, "There is absolute good and bad." True ... except ... the fact of the matter is "good" and "bad" are relative. To what they are relative is a key question.
Consider ... there is a good pizza, a good dog, and a good man. They are ... not the same. A man is not "good" because of his sauces and toppings. And a dog is not good as long as he treats his wife well. In fact, a man is a bad pizza by pizza standards. You get the idea. The issue of "good" is determined by the standard to which it is compared.
So, if "good" is relative, how do we avoid moral relativism? You have an absolute standard. So "good" is not determined by your standard versus my standard. It is determined by God. Scripture says, "God is love." That doesn't mean that love is God (as some have erroneously supposed). It means that God defines love. In the same sense, God is good (James 1:17; Mark 10:18). He is the standard (Matt 5:48). So "good" is defined by God and not by our meager ideas or preferences. We don't get to evaluate God on what is or isn't good. If we do, we make ourselves the standards ... and "good" becomes random.
3 comments:
I've been having this conversation for a while, and it seems incredibly simple to me. There is nothing wrong with identifying or labeling something or some one as good in the relative sense of the word. To evaluate based on a subjective, relative standard of good is fine for many things. The problem comes when trying to equate relative good with objectively good.
Another thing to point out is that God's goodness doesn't change. He won't say something is good and a thousand years later change that, unlike Allah, who simply deems something good, but that can't change later.
This was a good post, relatively speaking, and you make a good point. :) When God is the standard, virtually everything else pales in comparison. Indeed, God’s perfection is what has deemed human beings as “depraved”--our degree of “goodness” is so far from God’s true goodness that we are actually wicked in comparison to Him. For people who know God and what true goodness looks like, it is impossible to deem any human being as good. (Perfect illustration: for a lot of people, “Mother Teresa” is the standard for a “good person.” When one learns more about her life, though, she turns out to be just a regular person after all.) We need to keep that higher standard in mind. Only God is good.
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