This is the second installment of a two-part series, the first part can be found here: “The Law of the Harvest”.
I tend to agree with Karl on this one. I think that morality is not as simple as we make it out to be. When we simplify it down to clear-cut black and whites it’s easy to focus on judgment and ultimately fail at the greatest commandment: love God and love others.
Do you think that morality can be situational?
Updating…
Karl Wheeler is a co-pastor at The Refuge in Denver, CO.
Great video. Of course, you’re probably in for another round of flame wars from people who can’t even understand the concept of 3000 abortions saving 3000 women’s lives. Those same people will then go on at length about how many lives we’re saving in Iraq and how it’s worth the thousands of lives lost.
I appreciate Karl’s take on this subject. He hasn’t changed his fundamental belief about right and wrong, he’s just decided that, much like Jesus did, he is going to look at right and wrong from a big picture perspective. Those who would say that right and wrong are black and white, the law is the law, etc. would be hard pressed to explain why they’ll gladly send a missionary into a communist country to smuggle bibles and set up an illegal church, all the while preaching for a giant wall around our country where we shoot anyone who’s here illegally.
Thanks for continuing this dialog. Unfortunately, there will probably be people who say all kinds of negative things about it. I wanted to be sure and get a positive comment in on the front end! Keep up the good work!
Adam,
I want to accuse you of homogenizing the outgroup and setting up straw men.
But the thing is, I actually know people who seem to fit into the mold you’re describing =).
My guess is that people who fit into this mold were treated immorally and haven’t yet been able to fully process that. Really they’re saying the same thing Karl’s friend said–they’re asking “Do you like me?”
Sometimes the picture is *so* very dark and disgusting that I find it nearly impossible to say “Yeah, sure I like your picture. It’s great!”.
Haha! Yeah, unfortunately, I’ve met too many of those “straw men”. I’ve been one of them myself from time to time. I sometimes hear the things that people say and struggle to believe they actually buy into it. That’s why I love this site. It challenges me and everyone else to actually think about things, rather than regurgitating poorly formed arguments. Of course, the straw man will beg to differ.
To say that morality is situational is really just saying that morality only matters within contexts. And since people only exist within contexts, then this makes a lot of sense to me, because morality without people is meaningless.
I’m reminded of the whole Professor Gates Sergeant Crowley story which has taken place recently. My sense is that Mr. Crowley felt acted against in an immoral manner by Mr. Gates, and vice versa. Both of their moral senses are useful and meaningful within their own contexts.
I’m thinking that neither of them acted in a super loving gracious manner toward the other. I love it that they are in the process of correcting that. To me, this makes both of them very moral men.
Benjamin, if you don’t claim Jesus as your Lord and Savior then your eyes are not opened to Truth. Just because you used to “claim” Him doesn’t mean that you actually knew Him. I pray that you cry out to Him and that you will truly come to know Him.(1Corinthians3:18) (John14:6). I feel abortion is always wrong. I can see what a challenging situation this must have been but instead of taking matters into thier own hands and putting all trust in the Lord and giving the situation over to Him would have proved to have much better (in ways we couldnt have imagined) results. We as people don’t know how things could have turned out throughout history if we had only Trusted God and allowed Him to move. We bring much suffering upon ourselves. Rahab lied but reguardless those men would have been safe. God was with them. It doesnt make lying a grey area for me. It’s plain as day in the 10 commandments. I personally think most bumper stickers are just ones opinion and need not be sweated, as wrong and as off putting as they may be. It’s on them.
Very compelling. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for following the letter of the law, when they should have understood and followed the spirit of the law. He healed on the sabbath and let it be known that doing good/restoring life trumped the law. He also said he did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Each time a technicality of the law came up, he raised the bar even higher (i.e. lusting in your heart).
So if I follow Jesus, and choose to allow the spiritual formation that degree by degree makes me more conformed to his likeness, then how DO I go about living it out? But generally speaking I’m not good at Christlikeness and selfishness and pride often win the day. So again I ask myself, “how do I go about living this life which is VERY situational?” It seems to me that whether or not the moral law is absolute, I live in the situation and have to make choices based on that situation. It sure doesn’t mean I’ll be right, but I think how I go about making the choices is a HUGE part of the mix. Are my motives selfish? loving? arrogant? Do I even think before I act? Am I intentional about asking WWJD and prayerfully seeking guidance?
I struggle with this video. I shake my head in agreement to all that said, yet I do believe that God is God and we live within the constructs of a creation that has moral absolutes. It’s just that everywhere I am seems to be more grey than black and white. Wow, this whole mental churning I’m doing here reminds me how much I need a savior, I’m not going to make it on my own.
JJ,
You make some good points but be careful to remember that intention is not all that matters. The best laid intentions of man go awry. Scripture says that men lay their plans but the Lord directs their steps. Intentions are the spark not the flame.
So here’s my initial reaction. I have a really hard time swallowing the phrase “situational morality” or as I have also heard it, “relative morality.” It nearly sounds like an oxymoron. At the same time, I find myself agreeing, in large part, with what others have already said, about how it isn’t so black and white, that morality requires a real reliance on God rather than a simple checkoff list of do’s and don’ts. I can’t say what I would do, only guess and hope what I might in certain contexts. I could see someone making the argument that the doctor from the story in the video should have stood up for what he knew was right and stood against the Nazi regime altogether. Of course, that would have meant immediate death for the doc and then there would be 3000+ lives that would not have been saved. Those scenarios are tough to judge because we can react quite differently under pressure. Ultimately, I believe the law is not enough. I believe without a day by day reliance on God, we will miss the mark. Even with it, we are human. If the law were enough, then what was the purpose of Christ, of the Holy Spirit. I believe a relationship with God breaths life into the “law.” So my only concrete thought is that this type of evaluation of circumstances is ok, really necessary, provided it is not a means to justify an action that is preconceived.
In a sense, he’s not really saying there isn’t an absolute. More than once it is mentioned that there IS an overriding rule: love God, love others. That will definitely look different in each situation, because now we are talking about relationships, not set in stone statements, i.e. laws. That means we ask, “what’s the loving thing to do, right here, right now.” Even then, of course, the answer isn’t always black and white, and some tough decisions will have to be made.
Karl, I really want to address your video thoughts, but am having a tough time getting past the “situational morality” and a “loving abortionist” folly you are proposing. As I try to type out a dialog with you and your friends on this, a loud warning keeps holding me back; “Don’t answer a fool according to his folly”!!!! If I can just get past that warning, then I’ll attempt to dialog with you and your video buds on the unsound ideas you are suggesting.
Howie,
I love you man, but please understand that if God told you not to answer, you haven’t done a great job of obeying. You have, in a very passive-aggressive way, called Karl (and his “video buds”) “fools” with “unsound ideas” and “unsound doctrine”. Frankly, if God is telling you not to answer, maybe you should listen to him, rather than “struggling” to “just get past that warning”. If, however, you decide that God is OK with you engaging in the dialog, I’m sure the people here will treat you with respect and love, even if they/we disagree with you. Thank you for carefully considering the ideas presented by Karl. Peace.
Howie,
But what about 26:5? =)
Ben, I know, I know, I know. I’m struggling here. God seems to give me an option and I keep hearing the first option, “Don’t answer”. You see, someone who thinks that Rahab was saluted because she lied, has missed the sound doctrine and rightly dividing of the word.
Howie,
I’m glad to hear you say you’re struggling. That rocks. Don’t give that up.
The thing I always wondered about Rahab was (well, apart from a prostitute being boldy listed in the lineage of Jesus, the penu, which serioquiolio rocks in my opinion) that she was totally a prostitute, and these two hero Jewish spies (who were, by the by, from a place called “Shittum”. I imagine it had to suck being from there, when they got to college.) go *straight* to a brothel. I’m sure they were like “Yeah, it was just totally for cover, man, cause noone would think to look for Jewish heroes in a brothel”. Sure. You betcha.
Those are some pretty blasphemous insinuations Benjamin. Plus get your facts straight. It was Rahab’s home, not a brothel.
I’m pretty sure you can’t blaspheme against a person. All Benjamin was saying is that these two men went to see a prostitute. I don’t think he said God went to see a prostitute, so I can’t really find the blasphemous nature of his remarks. Maybe you’re reference is to something else, or another comment entirely?
Perhaps blasphemous is not the best term, but to imply that biblical men of God had less than pure intentions than Scripture states is what i’m talking about.
Hey Jeremy,
Could you parse “less than pure intentions than Scripture states” for me? I’m wanting to know what you’re talking about. Thank you.
Jeremy,
David often had “less than pure intentions.” But he’s still considered a “man after God’s heart” by Jesus himself!
Are we to conform to the world in order to better be able to love it. Or can we depend fully on Christs spirit to help us love the world in a different way? Isn’t that what Christ has shown us? In my opinion to love someone is to bring the gospel incarnate into their immediate setting.
I don’t see how performing an abortion can be construed as a loving act. …would Jesus instruct a disciple to perform that abortion or do it himself? Would He choose to kill the baby every time or would He kill the mother at other times? How was the Gospel advanced?
If we truly believe the Gospel, why would someone be willing to go against what they know is right and do something eternally wrong, to alleviate what is in the bigger picture, a temporary wrong.
Kevin,
could you talk more about how you differentiate between “eternal wrongs” and “temporary wrongs”?
thank you =).
This video is flawed on so many levels that it is disturbing. The relativism that has creeped into the Church is poisoning even its leaders now. Ever heard of “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” Situational ethics is an oxymoron. There is always right and wrong. What is right or wrong based on the situation may not be obvious or black and white but there is ALWAYS a right and wrong.
To say that to take a life in order to save a life is justifiable is abominable (Unless of course you reject the truth that a baby in the womb is exactly that). That is a selfish perspective. When you start deciding what “situations” it’s ok to take a life and it’s not to other than what’s been made clear in Scripture (self-defense for example) than you are placing yourself in God’s position.
To say that doctors did a good thing by performing those abortions to save those women is presumptive. Certainly it was most likely that those women would have been gassed but you can’t know that for sure. How many countless lives were saved in the Holocaust unexpectedly? People that SHOULD have die based on the circumstances. When that doctor stepped in he decided “I will be responsible for their fate, not God”. Sometimes God will use us to step in and affect or save someone, but it will NEVER be at the cost of another human life unless out of self-defense. God has made abundantly clear that ALL life is sacred. It’s riddled throughout Scripture.
Let’s take a cue from Ravi Zacharias. “When you say there is evil, aren’t you admitting there is good? When you accept the existence of goodness, you must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But when you admit to a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver. That, however, is who you are trying to disprove and not prove. For if there is no moral lawgiver, there is no moral law. If there is no moral law, there is no good. If there is no good, there is no evil. What then is your question?”
We can apply this reasoning to this situation also. If “Love Your Neighbor, Love Others” is sometimes “higher” than the “moral law” how can it then be so if the same God that the moral law comes from says “Love Your Neighbor, Love Others”? That would be God contradicting Himself and we know that He never changes according to Scripture. Without a moral law how do you know what love even is?? If you don’t have a guiding principle of good and evil than love cannot be defined. The whole concept self destructs. This is relativism. No solid foundation.
“Sometimes God will use us to step in and affect or save someone, but it will NEVER be at the cost of another human life unless out of self-defense.”
Just curious, Jeremy, how do you feel about the war in Iraq? Or the war against Nazi Germany for that matter? If U.S. involvement in those conflicts (and many others over the years) is acceptable to you – and maybe it’s not – but if it’s acceptable to you, then I wonder how you reconcile that with your above statement.
To say that God will NEVER do something is a pretty dangerous statement and belief. I respect your position on the morality of the story in this video even though I happen to disagree with you. What I have a harder time with is your seemingly rigid idea of right and wrong. Time and time again, Jesus pointed out the flaw in the rigidity of the Pharisees. They loved the law and loved their religious traditions, but had no room for Jesus and his disciples when they made common sense decisions (like deciding that it was more important for them to eat than to keep the rigid laws of the Sabbath.)
To me, this is not a story about moral relativism. It is a story about compassion. You either give a death sentence to 3000 women and (using your logic) hope that some survive. Or you save 3000 women. Would you say that, as a general rule, it’s good to save 3000 women? Or would you say that it’s not good in this particular situation? Trouble is, if it’s normally good, but not good in this situation, then we’re getting into situational ethics, which you believe is an oxymoron. If you’re open to the idea that what is good in one situation may not be good in another, then you have the option of saying that saving 3000 women in this case was a bad thing. If not, then in order to justify your positions, you would have to say that saving 3000 women is always a bad thing.
As for your claim that the argument has “no solid foundation”, I would say that 3000 women alive and well is better than 100 fortunate women alive and 2900 dead. That seems pretty solid to me. However, let me be clear that I think your argument has solid foundation as well. I get what you’re saying. I would just like to feel like you are as open to hearing my side as I am to hearing yours.
I am always open to hearing other people’s sides. A problem I see these days though is that people are concerned about their opinions and input being respected and heard than they are at getting to the truth. That allows relativism to flourish. If what is more important to me is what I want than what is true then “I’m ok, you’re ok”. There is no standard anymore in that situation and that is how things are now.
What you should be more concerned about is not whether or not I’m open to hearing what you have to say but rather a) what is the truth? and b) is what i’m saying true or is there truth in what I said.
Jesus said to “obey my commands” and THEN “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. He also said whoever was on the side of truth is on his side.
I’ll listen and talk with you until 4am every night if we have to but if we aren’t together trying to work towards the truth it will all be in vain. Like driving towards a destination with no map.
Jesus’ issue with the Pharisees was not their rigid sense of right and wrong but rather that the a) put that in a position of a salvation/holiness litmus test and b) held people to standards that they lied about living up to themselves. whitewashed tombstones. Right and wrong wasn’t the problem. Legalism was.
p.s. i also wanted to let you know that i hear all your other points. i’m just unable to respond to them all at this time.
Hey Jeremy,
thanks for taking the time to join the conversation. I’m wondering what your emotional reaction to the idea of situational ethics is? I mean do you find it repulsive, or frightening? I find that I have a really strong fear reaction to the idea of a rigid meta-law. I haven’t really analyzed it, but I totally felt it in my body while reading your post. I’m going to have to ponder the why of that.
Do you find you are pretty much able to have a sense of when you think a line of thought represents a tack toward situational ethics, and when it doesn’t? I mean to say do you think situational ethics is *always* wrong? As a for instance, when I lived in Argentina for a while, the normal and gracious thing to do when introduced to people was to kiss each other on the right cheek. Here in Seattle, where I am now, most people would find that at best offputting. So I find I have to act differently toward people in different situations. In Seattle, it’s technically illegal and by and large culturally offputting and offensive for women to be publically topless. In rural Liberia, when I visited, the women working in the fields would all be topless, and nobody thought twice about it. But I dasn’t hold hands with my fiance in public there, or they’d be scandalized. What is right here is wrong/sinful there, and vice versa. Does that work for/make sense for you?
Personally, I think this video makes completely reasonable points, but it’s just unfortunate how politically one-sided it is. I agree, morality is situational. Ultimately, all we have to go on as Christians is that Jesus will judge the world, and that he will do it rightly. Hopefully that sounds comforting rather than frightening, because if it’s Jesus judging, then we know it will not be unfair or horrifying. So in the end, nothing is relative, but in the meantime, we aren’t given perfect knowledge to work with.
But as for my central complaint about the video, those images at the end seem to imply that “absolutism,” the inability to compromise and reach out to others, is a particularly “conservative” problem. Sure, there are bumper stickers that say, “God is a Republican; but there is also a song called “Jesus is a Democrat.” Liberals can be just as “absolutist” as conservatives. I mean, several people have brought this up in an accusing manner toward conservatives, but, what about Iraq? What about war in general? Are liberals willing to admit that war is sometimes necessary and can help more people than otherwise in the long run?
Finally, a quick thought about abortion. I am perfectly capable of doing the math and admitting that saving 3000 women by killing 3000 children is better than saving neither the 3000 women nor the 3000 children. Yes, 3000 dead is better than 6000 dead. I can understand that. But sadly, this is totally a red herring when it comes to the abortion debate in America. No one, I mean absolutely no one performs abortions for that reason. To bring up this rather remarkable example completely obscures the facts of abortion in our country. Over one million abortions happen each year, and less than a fraction of 1% of these have anything to do with saving the life of a mother. Surely we can do better as a nation.
This video is trash. Abortion IS wrong in every situation because it is NEVER justifiable to end an innocent life…not even to “save” another.