It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere

This is another of the very common sayings associated with moral relativity that I hear floating around. But it really does not bear up under scrutiny. Suppose I believe that cyanide is harmless, does it matter? Well if I believe that, I might try to see if it tastes good or give it to someone else to try. Does that matter? It could be objected that we are talking here about religious beliefs and morality, about opinions not about facts. So the question morphs into “does it matter what we believe in terms of religious beliefs or morality?”

Perhaps the biggest problem with all of this, is our uncanny ability to rationalize what we want to do. I was not sure if I was being hit on, but some time ago now, I had this young woman tell me “I don't think adultery is wrong.” I looked her in the eye and told her gently “That is because you want to do it.” Her hand came up not quite quick enough to hide her “guilty as charged” smile. I believe she was sincere, that she sincerely wanted to commit adultery (if she was not already doing it). Did it matter? I am sure of this, it would matter very much to the wife of her (actual or perspective) lover.

Or what about the organization that exists to promote what is euphemistically called the North American man love boy association which is dedicated to “end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.” One of their slogans by the way is “eight is too late.” There is a reason statuary rape is called rape, it is because it is well understood that underage children are far too vulnerable to persistent smiling and gentle persuasion to commit acts that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Children are too young to make such life changing decisions. But if you believe theses advocates of “man boy love” (and I believe at least some of them) they are sincere. So yes with our (my) ability to fool ourselves (myself) I do believe that some of them are sincere, sincerely wrong, but wrong nevertheless! Does it matter? Would you leave such a man alone with your eight year old?

I argued earlier that all World views are in the end opinions, and that all such opinions can only be held by faith. So does it matter if you believe that there is no such thing as truth, or right and wrong, or that good and evil are illusions, and that atheists are right in their faith position that God does not exist? Well what if as Christians say it is, it is true that our main task here on earth is to choose our eternal destiny, and that that is determined by whether or not we accept God's forgiveness by turning to Him in repentance? Would it matter then? If what Christians says is wrong, and you can consistently live out your life in atheistic faith positions, and if such views reflects reality, and if there are no consequences to throwing out traditional morality, then perhaps it does not matter. In fact if orthodox Christian teachings are wrong, it probably doesn't matter even if you are not sincere.

If this life is all there is, and if you can get away with it, why not rape and murder pillage and get and stay drunk, and take and steal and kill off all your enemies? What does it matter if you can get away with it? If you die and that's it, what does it matter indeed? But if you are wrong, and you have fallen for lies, and you do have to stand before God and give an account of every idle word, then it does matter. As I say I believe that we can be sincerely wrong, but sincerely wrong is still wrong. In the world that I live in, there is such a thing as reality, and the reality is that choices have consequences, and wrong choices have unwanted consequences! Even if I did not believe what I believe about God, I do not think I would have enough faith to believe that it does not matter! To me it sounds far too much like a rationalization to do what I want to do and to heck with the consequences. But these things are surely too important not to thoroughly check them out!

Some will ask “Are you trying to scare me into heaven.” And if this is you, I understand that this can feel like a huge guilt trip is being laid on you. Unfortunately I don't doubt that some of it is, as not everything that calls itself Christian is Christian. But for those of us who have found a tangible reality and peace and joy and hope in our relationship with God through Christ, is it a passion to share what is too good to keep to ourselves even in the here and now, let alone what is promised in eternity (pleasures for evermore!).

I though we weren’t supposed to judge!

The saying in the title to this post is a reference to the Scripture “Judge not, that you be not judged” spoken by Christ in the gospels. I have heard this often thrown back on us Christians, and sometimes the application is valid, and sometimes it is not. Properly understood and applied, this a good and appropriate principle for both those inside and those outside the faith. It is not, however, always properly applied. It is applicable in the context of our discussion last day of our interaction with other cultures in this sense: It is wrong to come down harshly and judgmentally on isolated indigenous cultures. Christians are also wrong when they come across as self righteous and judgmental. This is not Christ like. In fact it is the very opposite, for in John 3:17 we read “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Self righteous and judgmental attitudes are wrong, and Christ's teaching warns that those who exhibit such attitudes will be judged in the same way they judge others. If we want mercy, we need to show mercy. We can't expect to have mercy for ourselves and judgement for the other buddy. It doesn't work that way!

But we need to ask if Christ meant (as some people interpret this as saying) that we should never say that anything is wrong, that we should simply remain quiet “butting out” of everything? In saying “judge not that you be not judged” was Christ agreeing with the “who are we to say this or that is wrong” philosophy? Was He was saying we should turn a blind eye to ongoing injustice and oppression, to man's inhumanity to man? And as last day's post shows some do advocate this with their “no intervention” stand with regards to other cultures. I can hear them asking “Well, we're not supposed to judge, right?” as a justification for their stand.

In order to see that this is not what Christ was advocating, all we need to do is to look at what he did in the Temple to those who were cheating the common people. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and drove them from the Temple. They were cheating the people as Christ makes clear when He says “You have made it (the Temple) it into a den of thieves.” No, Christ was not unmoved in the presence of injustice. So then if this is not what He meant then what exactly did He mean?

In Biblical interpretation it is important not to single out only part of a teaching. We are in danger of doing this when we pick out just a single verse on a subject. We will not fully appreciate the wisdom of what the Scriptures teach if we do this. Often there are other verses that throw light on what a particular verse means. In this case it is important to consider another of Christ's sayings that has to do with judgement. I am thinking of another teaching of Christ in the passaage “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24). We need to look at both sayings. The context of this second verse is that the religious people in the Temple were criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. We are all fond of imposing rules on others, and Jesus was saying that we need to look past some of our rules at times and make a reflective evaluation of what is really going on.

In last day's post I was asking “whatever happened to wisdom, to sound judgement, to thoughtful consideration of the issues?” It would not be reflective wisdom to claim that murder is not wrong, even if a culture does not consider certain instances of it to be murder! “Ethnic cleansing” is not considered murder by those perpetrating it, but I still want to call that murder even if they don't! In his rationalization of the murder of six million Jews, Hitler referred to the Jews as “Untermenchen” (under people). He was saying Jews were not really human, so it is alright to kill them. We do need to say that these things are wrong. I am not saying we should be self righteous here, but sound and thoughtful consideration would surely lead us to say that certain things are simply wrong. If a murderer in a court of law told the judge “You're not supposed to judge, so but out” we would laugh at him. “Nice try buddy, but you can forget that!”

Part of the problem here is that words are so inadequate. In the English language the same word can have different meanings. We can usually determine the meaning from the context. For example right can be the opposite of wrong, or the opposite of left. I am fond of telling my English relatives that in Canada we drive on the right, and you English drive on the wrong side of the road :-). The word judge similarly has two meanings. In the sense that Jesus means it in the first of the two quotations He is talking about a judgmental, self righteous attitude and warning that if that is you, watch out because you will be judged the same way. In the second quotation He is talking about making sound, thoughtful and just evaluations as the situation warrants.

So the meaning of judge in the 'judge not' quotation is about not having a judgmental attitude that carries with it self righteous condemnation, and the command to judge justly has to do with having a humble gentle, thoughtful and insightful discernment that something may be right or wrong. An example of this latter attitude would be when we tell little Johnny that is it wrong to take a toy that does not belong to him. This attitude is needed both inside and outside the Church. Too often Christians (those who are, and those who only say they are) major only on rules and regulations and finish up condemning those who do not follow them. But this is to live under the law, not under grace. As always Jesus is the model here. In particular He does not condemn the woman caught in adultery, but He does tell her that she should go and sin no more (John 8:2-11). In other words He speaks the truth in love, and He judges (as in discerning right and wrong) righteously and deals with others with grace, mercy and truth. His example and teaching very much reflects that God prefers mercy to judgment, and that when we follow Him, mercy triumphs over judgment!

The instructions for us Christians to deal with moral issues within Christian community are very different from the way we are told to deal with the very same issues outside of our communities. The NIV of 1 Corinthians 5:12 reads “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” The Scripture is specific about the type of “outside” issue that is being talked about here. In particular in verse 11 Paul lists sexually immorality, covetousness, extortion and idolatry. So here is an explicit instruction to Christians not to judge the World (judge - as in self righteous condemnation) on these issues. Unfortunately not all Christians are obedient on this one! On the other hand, I think that it is important to say that Paul is not taking here about (as in including) issues such as murder or rape or infanticide.

To answer the question “are we to judge those inside,” from the last Scripture, the answer is yes, and Galatians 6:1 tells us which of the two “judgements” we are talking about here. It reads “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.” So yes we are to judge within the community, but it is to be done gently and with humility. Please note "humility" here is not the false humility of thinking that we must not even say that something is wrong. If that were the case, we could not even discern that someone was caught in a sin.

To sum it up in just a few words then. Neither the Christian not the one who has no such profession should judge in the sense of being self righteous and judgmental. On the other hand this does not mean we should not discern right from wrong, nor that we should ignore human rights violations and the like (I am thinking of Christ in the Temple). Christians are called to a higher morality than we should expect the World to follow. The motivation for the Christian for not doing these things is that they damage our relationship with God, and cut us off from the life of the Spirit. On the other hand Christians are specifically told not to judge the World on these issues, that is not our job! Notwithstanding this, the Scriptures are very clear on how God feels about injustice, oppression and man's inhumanity to man. Christ did not turn a blind eye to these things and neither should we!

I believe that if we properly understand the Scriptures, we would run to them because not only are the things that Scriptures teach good and right and proper, they are smart! So let me invite you to judge (discern) the Scriptures discussed here with sound and just judgement (discernment).

Why won't Christians leave those happy people alone? Issues of cultural relativism

In September of 2008 ABC's Nightline reported a furor over the issue of infanticide that still exists among some of the remote, and not so remote, indigenous tribes in Brazil (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=5861778&page=1#.UC-KIUR35TV). This particular furor erupted in the aftermath of the rescue of a young girl Hakani by an older brother who carried her out of the jungle on his back. Hakani is a member of the Suruwaha Indian tribe, who looked normal when she was born, but when she was 2 she could not walk or talk. The tribe apparently thought she therefore had a monkey's soul, not a child's soul.

Hakani was subsequently adopted by the Suzukis, Christian linguists, who say that when they first saw Hakani she was 5 years old, but weighed only 15 pounds and had scars all over her body. They tell that her parents had committed suicide because they could not bring themselves to kill her. This meant that Hakani was not only alone, but also that she suffered all kinds of physical and emotional abuse for more than three years. It was at that time, the Suzukis recall, that they finally received permission to bring her out of the tribe. She got medical treatment, and learned not only how to walk and talk, but also how to read and write. They report that she is now a beautiful and happy girl, and a fine little artist.

Hakani’s name means smile, and smile shes does as can be seen in her picture http://voiceforlifewhoweare.blogspot.ca/ on the Suzukis' website. The following quotations from the Suzukis are taken directly from that site. “Hakani has inspired her own people to take a stand against their ancient tribal tradition of infanticide. In turn, the courage of these Indians has inspired my husband and me to launch a national movement in Brazil called ATINI which means 'voice for life,' dedicated to saving precious Indigenous children who are at risk of being killed for cultural reasons.”

“More than 20 years of working with the Suruwahara Indians in the Amazon Basin of Brazil have made an impact on our lives. We have not only learned their language and culture, but have come to a point where we are as much a part of their lives and history as they are of ours. We have eaten monkey brains with them, and they have painted our bodies with their beautiful paintings.”

“Over these years we have cried a lot. We have cried with the mothers that were forced by cultural tradition to abandon their children in the jungle. We have cried with the young single girls who got pregnant and had to watch their fathers kill the babies with bow an arrow. We mourned the death of a mother and father who preferred to commit suicide instead of killing their two sick children. We then learned that one of this couple’s children, a five year old boy, was buried alive by an older brother. He was killed because he was not able to walk or talk.”

Among other things, the remoteness of some of these tribes makes it hard to accurately determine the number of infanticides in Brazil. Official records do not exist, and the statistics are disputed, but ATINI reports that in one tribe alone (the Xingu tribe) close to 30 children are buried alive every year. Reporting on a case similar to that of Hakani, the São Paulo Newspaper Folha (April 06, 2008) informs us that infanticide is practiced in about 20 from more than 200 ethnic groups in Brazil, and that this means the death of twins, children of single mothers and children with mental or physical deficiencies. The same article (http://vozpelavida-midia.blogspot.ca/2008/04/so-paulo-folha-newspaper-tackles.html) chronicles the clash between the view of many Anthropologists who argue that infanticide is a part of the indigenous culture and should therefore not be interfered with, and others who maintain (in accordance with international law to which Brazil subscribes) that the rights of the child should be paramount.

The issue is highly controversial. Anthropologist Mércio Pereira Gomes, who was president of FUNAI (National Foundation of the Indian) during the first four years of Lula’s government, admits that he suffered "a very big dilemma” in the department, on the subject of infanticide. As a citizen, he is against the practice, but as an anthropologist and president of the department, he is against intervention. Another Anthropologist Ricardo Verdum, of INESC (Institute of Socioeconomic Studies), in responding to a draft law to deal with the issue, said that he finds the draft law to be interfering in the free will of the Indians, and that "To want to impose a law is aggressive, it is violence." The irony of his words clearly escapes him!

According to the Folha article Brazil, in 1990, had already constituted the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes "that every child is entitled to life," and that the signatory countries must adopt “all the effective and appropriate measures” to abolish practices that are harmful to a child's health and well-being. In the same article we read “In 2004, the Brazilian government declared, through presidential ordinance, Convention 169 of ILO (International Labor Association), that determines that indigenous and tribal people should be entitled to conserve their customs and own institutions, as long as they are not incompatible with the defined fundamental rights under the national judicial system nor with the internationally recognized human rights."

It seems to me that the intentions of this law and ordinance are balanced and honourable. However the Government has been slow to implement these things. No one should deny that Anthropologists have a point when they condemn the insensitivity of one culture in arbitrarily imposing it's norms, values and customs on another. What is clear to me is that in the past we Christians failed in terms of cultural sensitivity. We were wrong to do that. Dressing up natives in Africa in shirt and tie was not only insensitive to the culture, it was ridiculous. It was however part of the ignorance of the times, and missionaries were not, by a long shot, the only ones who were culturally insensitive during those earlier days (witness British colonialism in India). And I have to say that I hope I won't be judged by more refined future sensibilities of which I, in my ignorance, am currently unaware. C.S. Lewis put the label “chronological snobbery” on the attitude that acts as though we are so much better than our ancestors. I like the way that the English poet Alexander Pope put it, “We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.” And labelling our fathers foolish is exactly what is happening as we re-interpret history in view of our modern sensibilities when, in the Words of Dinesh D’Souza, we “make passed pale patriarchs ('dead white males') into whipping boys as we condemn colonialism or favour multicultural curricula over a Western 'cultural canon' at our universities” (Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: Free Press, 1991).

So yes, Anthropologists are certainly right when they condemn the wholesale overriding of cultural norms and values. But Cultural Anthropology is surely wrong, when it allows it's doctrine of cultural sensitivity to dismiss out of hand human rights violations with their tremendous accompanying sufferings. As I have presented it, it should be clear that there is truth on both sides, unfortunately the two sides are not getting equal air time in the atmosphere that seems to be so heavily loaded in favour of political correctness.

According to the Nightline report the Brazilian government has tried to discourage infanticide, but the Department of Indian Affairs does not have a policy that requires action to stop it from happening. In an interview in the Brazilian capital, Antenor Vaz of the Department of Indian Affairs is quoted as saying "We are not defending death. Very much to the contrary, we are defending the cultural survival of a people." The report indicates that it is a view shared by some activists. In particular is it shared by Fiona Watson of Survival International, a group that defends the rights of native tribes all over the world. Watson is quoted as saying "I'm not going to defend infanticide. But I think you have to understand, that in the context of Indian culture, it's not considered murder.” She says "I have seen that, where a once proud people end up subdued, dependent upon people, because they have lost their beliefs."

It is undeniable that in the past and even now that “once proud people end up subdued, and dependent upon people,” and cultural Anthropology certainly has a role to play in trying to stop that happening. But whatever happened to wisdom, to sound judgement, to thoughtful consideration of the issues? The view of some Anthropologists seems to be “leave them alone,” in a 'one shoe fits all' approach to this issue. To be sure not everything in Western culture is good. But is it not the essence of community that we share what is good and learn from others what is not so good. Does it not make sense to seek to “separate the precious from the vile,” and in order to do that, should we not interact with sensitivity and respect for each other? Must we throw out the baby with the bath water? Are those who are so opposed to Western values opposed to those elements of it to which we surly all agree are good? I am thinking here, for example, of the teachings of Christ that we should love one another in the sacrificial way that He loved us? Are Christian teaching about love, respect and honour all wrong, and unworthy to be shared?

And do we really think in the ever diminishing size of our world, that these tribes will for ever remain untouched by outside influences? Are we so naive to be unaware that any contact at all (even so called “neutral” observation) influences these cultures. And the myth that we can ever be neutral raises its ugly head again here. The Suzukis “cried with the mothers that were forced by cultural tradition to abandon their children in the jungle.” What would Watson and those of like faith in the absolute virtue of non-intervention do? Would they weep but not be willing to help? Would they stoically keep their distance and refuse basic human kindness lest their beliefs influence these “happy” people? And would this really be neutral, or would it be better described as compassionless apathy. Or perhaps we would prefer the “first contact” to be by the exploitative greed of multinational companies, who do things like giving out free baby formula or the equivalent, until the natural milk dries up and then, having created a market where there none existed, turn round and sell their formula to them?

Certainly Western culture is not all good, and certainly we have made mistakes in the past, but can we not learn from our mistakes as part of our own separating the precious from the vile? And is not better for first contact to be made by the humble, respectful persistent loving gentleness displayed by the likes of the Suzukis, who feel strongly about preserving indigenous language, music, art, and traditional ways? Do we not need to consider what are the alternatives, and especially the above mentioned default? If imposing law is “violence,” why cannot Anthropologists and the Government come along side ATINI with its sensitivity to Indian culture, and which also works with the Indians themselves in the advocacy of indigenous children's rights. We need to ask why it is a non governmental organization such as ATINI that has spearheaded support for those, from within the indigenous communities, who want the kind of change ATINI was inspired by them to work for.

This “who are we (or you) to say that another culture is wrong” philosophy is right to be sensitive to innocent traditions and cultural norms. But it is not a virtuous neutrality, nor is it true humility when it refuses on principle to alleviate untold suffering and human rights abuses. Is it wrong to replace the belief that twins are in and of themselves somehow evil, with the belief that this is not the case, and that the rights of the child should be paramount? And what about the Indian perspective on all of this? In one eye opening and particularly disturbing part of the response to the accusations against them contained in the Nighline article, the Suzukis say “Although representatives from different organizations were able to share their perspectives, this story was ultimately about the tribes. Indigenous leaders came to Brasilia to meet with you -- some of them having traveled over 40 hours from their tribes -- but you excluded their statements from your story. The most important perspective -- of the Indians themselves -- was missed entirely” (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=6788207&page=1#.UC-JX0R35TU).

The Suzukis expected better of the media, so do I! We should in fact demand it!

Wrong for you right for me: The problems of moral relativity

Murder may be wrong for you my brother, but it's right for me. In fact I think it is a jolly good thing. I have found it to be a very effective way of dealing with all kinds of annoying people. The main thing is that I don't get caught :-). Yes I am joking, just in case you had doubts that I am.

Please do not misunderstand me here, there is absolutely no question in my mind that in matters of right and wrong, not everything is either black or white. For the recovering alcoholic just one drink is wrong. However (in spite of the stand of some Christians) neither I nor the Bible condemn the drinking of alcoholic beverages period. The Biblical admonition is not to be drunk with wine, it is not to abstain absolutely. Some Christians in trying to say that it does mean that, have translated “wine” as “grape juice,” but why we would need to be warned not to get drunk on grape juice escapes me! No, not everything is black and white, but on the other hand back and white do exist, murder, rape, child abuse and widow burning are all not only wrong, they are evil!

The existence of evil seems to me to be self evident, but it goes completely against the grain of our modern thinking where moral relativism rules. This philosophy can, I think, be summed up in the phrase “It's all relative,” or to put this another way there are no absolutes, or there is no such thing as right and wrong. It is the “all” part of 'it's all relative,' that that sticks in my craw. In fact the statement “All truth is relative” is self contradictory, since it is itself an absolute statement. This can be seen by asking “Is absolutely all truth relative?” No doubt some will answer “But we mustn’t judge right? We need to be fair and neutral right?” I will deal with “we must” not judge later. But concerning being fair, how fair is it to victims of rape or child abuse, to say that these things are not wrong?

In a 2002 column Fox News analyst Bill O'Reilly asked "Why is it wrong to be right?" In talking about American college professors who currently teach that there is no such thing as right and wrong he says “they treat the questions of good and evil as relative to 'individual values and cultural diversity'." The problem with this, according to O'Reilly, is that "they see the world not as it is, but as they want it to be. And annoying questions about moral absolutes and unacceptable behaviour are usually left unanswered." I too could wish that there was no such thing as evil in the World, but it seems to me to be wrong to close our eyes to the suffering that flows out of the reality of man's inhumanity to man.

So pervasive and successful is the doctrine of moral relativity that one Canadian professor tells of his inability to get his class to say that female genital mutilation of non-consenting girls is wrong. According to Wikipedia “Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as 'all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.' FGM is typically carried out on girls from a few days old to puberty. It may take place in a hospital, but is usually performed, without anesthesia, by a traditional circumciser using a knife, razor, or scissors. According to the WHO, it is practiced in 28 countries in western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, in parts of the Middle East, and within some immigrant communities in Europe, North America, and Australasia."

Or what about the picture that still haunts me, of the 18 year old Afghan woman Aisha, whose mutilated face appeared on the front cover of a 2010 issue of Time magazine. It is reported that “With her clear skin and dark, flowing hair, 18-year-old Aisha would ordinarily have stood out from a crowd because of her beauty. But now, tragically, the young woman is eye-catching for a horrifically different reason. Aisha is a victim of Taliban brutality, her nose and ears barbarically hacked off by her own husband in a warped punishment for attempting to flee her cruel in-laws.” (Google "Taliban nose cut off").

Are we not willing to condemn such action? If we are not, I want to suggest that it is only because we are so far removed from such situations that it really does not affect us emotionally. This is rather like modern warfare, where we press buttons distantly removed from the front, and in so doing fail to see up close and personal, the carnage caused by our antiseptic button pushing. I want to suggest that those who refuse to condemn such actions as that cited above by the Taliban, because their philosophy teaches that “there is no such thing as right and wrong,” would jolly well change their minds if these things were happening to their daughter, or to their sister!

If what I have just said does not move you, I doubt that anything I say will make any sense to you. But though we will need to ask where it comes from, we humans do seem to have this built in “yuck factor,” which tells us clearly that these things are wrong. And we should not ignore such basic moral intuitions, even if we may need to debate and adjust or refine them. They are, as atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen calls them, “bedrock”: He says “It is more reasonable to believe such elemental things [as wife-beating and child abuse] to be evil than to believe any skeptical theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things to be evil. …” (Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God, rev. ed. (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1990), 10,11).

Certainly we will not be able to right every wrong. For the man and woman of compassion there are, and perhaps always will be, a myriad of causes deserving of our attention, energy and action, and we are all, all too finite. We do need a lot of wisdom to know when, where and how to use our limited resources. We also do not want to be starting wars left, right and centre. But to have followed moral relativity to its logical conclusion during the second World war, would have been to advocate, on principle, a “who are we to intervene” attitude in the face of the murder of six million Jews. To me this would not have been a virtuous neutrality, it would be a compassionless apathy displaying false humility! Unfortunately, as I will show in a later post, I am not just talking here about hypothetical possibilities.

To be sure cultural anthropology (which by and large has swallowed whole the philosophy of moral relativity) has a point about the need to exhibit a certain humility and sensitivity towards the culture and values of others. However I am much more inclined, with the Bible, to condemn as evil, what at times amounts to compassionless apathy. The Bible puts it this way “He who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin!” Is it not true that “all that need to happen for evil to flourish, is for good men (and women) to do nothing”? Do we really want to remain “neutral” in the face of man's inhumanity to man? Let's make no mistake about it, this is not only the logical, in some cases it is the actual, stance of those who hold to moral relativity!

Mercy triumphs over judgement. Provision and Protection

In the last post, I was talking about the consequences of some of the choices we are making in our society. In Psychology we are not allowed to use the concept of right and wrong, of sin or of judgement. But we cannot in the end do without these ideas. So Psychology talks about poor choices and the consequences thereof. A poor choice then is one that has undesirable consequences. This would be more straight forward if we were not so resistant to see the inconvenient truths about the consequences of our choices. Rationalization and denial are widespread in all kinds of areas personal and cooperate, individual and collective. As with the alcoholic, the consequences build up and escalate until, when they have gone on long enough, and have gotten severe enough, we come to the place where it is impossible to ignore them.

The Biblical take on all of this is that when God says "no", He does it for our provision and our protection. It seems to me that many of us have misunderstood this about God. We have seen Him as a kind of Scrooge in the sky who, whenever He sees someone down here having fun, leans over the balcony of heaven and shouts down “Cut that out.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matters is that He has given us in the Bible guidelines which when we follow them, will help us avoid many of the pitfalls I was taking about in the last post, and in addition, will bring us the benefits of righteousness including fullness of life (John 10:10).

You see there is a deeper and more lasting joy than can be found in the pleasures of this world which, in any case are only for a season (Hebrews 11:25). The out of control appetites we develop when we give in to what the Bible calls the lusts of the flesh, keep us from the deeper things. In my coming book “God's math, take away what hinders, add what helps,” I have a chapter called “Random God sums” which illustrates this. So there are subsections with such titles as “take away lust, add intimacy,” or “take away self hate, add self love,” or “take away religion/rules, and add relationship.” The point is that giving into lust is detrimental to developing intimacy, self hate diminishes our sense of self worth, and religion that has as its basis rules rather than relationship with Him, tends to make us into self righteous Pharisees, which in turn prevents us from even seeing our need of an empowering relationship with God. Ignoring the “no”s of God not only takes us out from under His protection, it robs us of His provision which, in the above examples included intimacy, self acceptance and relationship with the most wonderful person in the entire universe!

But He also knows that most of us only learn the hard way (from the school of hard knocks), that His ways are best. And at incredible cost to Himself, He has provided a way for us to come back to a Holy God even when we have thoroughly blown it! There is no pit that we have dug for ourselves that is so deep that He is not deeper still. He came to restore the broken hearted, even when our broken hearts are largely a result of our own actions and attitudes. In the Cross “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed” (Psalm 85:10).

The very last thing that God wants to do it to judge us. He tells us in John 3:17 “God did not send His Son into the World to condemn the World, but that the World might be saved thorough Him.” When we turn from our rebellion and receive His free gift of salvation “mercy triumphs over judgement” (James 2:13), and we are welcomed into the Kingdom. He then makes available in the here and now “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10). Or to put in the words of another section of Random God sums, He takes “away fear, strife and stress, and add(s) peace and rest, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Most of us won't go there until we are desperate. And this is good in some ways, because until we are desperate, we are not likely to fully surrender which is a necessary part of entering into fullness of life. “Are we there yet mummy?” (April 17).