My title this morning borrows from a favorite sermon sound-byte in which Ravi Zacharias makes an analogy between moral relativism and driving a car. It should be a familiar to most drivers (and passengers) for the unsettling nature of the experience, if not for its frequency:

You are stopped at a road intersection (sign or light, doesn’t matter). Next to you is a tractor-trailer or train car — something large enough to dominate your view to one side. Staring at it, you sense a motion so gradual that, for a moment, you can’t be sure whether it’s the train/truck moving. Perhaps, you think, you have taken your foot of the brake… and so, you stomp down on it.

What should be apparent at that instant is which of two theories is correct: either you or the train car were moving. The third, if less likely possibility (that both are moving) will be verified by your sensation of sudden deceleration as the train/truck continues (you did have your foot off the brake). The fourth, highly unlikely possibility (that your brakes have failed and the train is moving) will be apparent soon enough when you hit the car in front of you and the train continues.

In addition to putting one’s foot on the brake, the other instinctive reaction of most people is to look up — expanding one’s view beyond the car/train system searching for something fixed, e.g., at a building or lamp-post nearby: anything that we can be confident is not moving. In any case, the answer to what is really moving and what is not will be clear very quickly after a few simple tests.

What moral relativism posits is that everything may be moving (buildings, trees, rocks, road signs, etc.) Its just a matter of perspective. The sense of drunk-like disorientation that results in such an imaginary scenario is utterly perverse. E.g., Is one breaking the law when the stop sign passes you rather than you passing it? What does a speed limit mean when the cop is driving towards you with his radar gun?

For those of you with a relativistic mindset borrowed from the world of physics (which should be all of us after Einstein), what I’m talking about is different in two regards: 1) the scale on which Einsteinian relativity operates is far, far removed from ordinary, day-to-day human experience (interesting to be sure, but Newtonian physics will do for most of us most of the time), 2) physical relativity does not offer a perfect analogy to moral relativity. Those who take the analogy too far, interpreting E=MC2 as standing for “EGO = MY CHOICE–SQUARED” do science a grave disservice.

All of which brings me to this (“Can You Become a Better Person”) — a post well worth reading by Tom Gilson over at Thinking Christian (a phrase that ought to be seen as redundant). He writes:

Moral relativism says that just as belching or eating with one’s fingers may either be right or wrong, depending on context, so any other human choice may be right or wrong, depending on context. If a tribal culture believes sacrificing children to the “gods” is right, then in their tribe it is. If we believe it’s wrong here, then it is wrong here. It’s all a matter of context.

The Christian theist position, by contrast, is moral realism: moral principles exist independently of human beliefs or opinions. There are at least some things that are actually right or wrong, and would be right or wrong even if every human had the wrong opinion. If every person and every culture thought that sacrificing children to the “gods” was right, it would still be wrong anyway. For Christians, real morality is grounded in the character of God.

There’s much more to it (e.g., how do we know the character of God?) Well worth the time. In closing, a related anecdote…

I had occasion the other night to watch the classic Charlie Brown Christmas Specials on DVD with family. (The shows were made when I was two.) What I found most remarkable about them were the numerous instances in which characters quoted scripture verbatim and at length. Linus was pictured reading his bible for a scene that lasted well over a minute.

Plopped into a 2007 context, it was shocking not for what it was and what it said but as a marker showing what had really changed. Producing something like that would be virtually impossible today. If Christianity is overplaying its hand today, as some would assert… if it is really that influential in our culture and politics, then why is this the case?

Why does a simple thing like a Charlie Brown special seem so odd as to make some in the politically correct camp cringe and run for their megaphones?

It is as if the tide had gone out and people were objecting to those of us pining for (and confident in) the water’s eventual return. Something has moved. It is surely not the pier… or the lamp-post.