Lessons from Littleton: Reaping the whirlwind of relativism
A commentary by Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, April 28, 1999
A month before two high school students murdered 12 classmates and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado, The Cincinnati Enquirer quoted Presbyterian minister Kimberly Buechner Fouse, “head of the local ACLU chapter,” expressing her desire to remove monuments of the Ten Commandments from a local high school:
“I’m personally offended by those monuments, as a Christian clergyperson,” Fouse said.
“That’s Jewish law, that’s not Christian. That’s the decalogue, and the decalogue isn’t about a Christian United States.”
One day after the April shootings, President Clinton looked into a television camera and solemnly declared, “We must teach our children that violence is always wrong.”
Relativism’s Seven Fatal Flaws
1. Relativists can’t accuse others of wrongdoing
2. Relativists can’t complain about the problem of evil.
3. Relativists can’t place blame or accept praise.
4. Relativists can’t make charges of unfairness or injustice.
5. Relativists can’t improve their morality.
6. Relativists can’t hold meaningful moral discussions.
7. Relativists can’t promote the obligation of tolerance.
– Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl
He did not say why.
How could he?
In a society where lying under oath, albeit “just about sex,” is acknowledged with a wink and a nod, a society where Presbyterian ministers argue that the Ten Commandments should not be displayed at public schools (lest they unduly influence students’ behaviors?), a society where so gruesome an act as partial birth abortion is aggressively defended by politicians and Presbyterian leaders alike, by what authority could such church or civic leaders possibly stand before a group of young people and make any moral pronouncements, let alone one as absolute and intolerant as the president’s?
The Colorado rampage did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in a culture that increasingly insists there is no objective measure of right (or wrong) behavior, that while moral judgments may be valid for the individuals who make them, they cannot be applied to another person or another class of people.
Moral relativism has become society’s controlling legal authority. To step up to the microphone on a high school or college campus today and assert that any moral action is always right or always wrong is to risk being shouted down or jeered off stage. Or shot. And we are just beginning to reap the whirlwind.
Moral relativism
In Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998, 188 pp., $14.99), philosopher Francis Beckwith and apologist Gregory Koukl describe the various guises of moral relativism. They trace its history, highlight its consequences, and show how this aggressively secular philosophy is antithetical to Christian faith and practice. Most important, in clear, non-technical language, they offer Christians the intellectual ammunition they need, including suggested answers to common questions and sample dialogues, to stand firm against the onslaught of this pernicious worldview.
The authors make the stakes clear at the outset. If truth is subjective, if morals are relative, “one must admit that Mother Teresa was no more or less moral than Adolf Hitler, that torturing three-year-olds for fun is neither good nor evil, that giving 10 percent of one’s financial surplus to an invalid is neither praiseworthy nor condemnable, that raping a woman is neither right nor wrong, and that providing food and shelter for one’s spouse and children is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.”
Most Christians, indeed most non-Christians, find such conclusions unacceptable. Yet if one accepts the premises of moral relativism, as so many church and civic leaders proudly do, such conclusions are unavoidable.
Fatal flaws
Fortunately, no one need accept such premises.
Beckwith and Koukl trace the philosophical pedigree of moral relativism and illumine its erroneous assumptions. In concise, jargon-free prose, they show that moral relativism is not only inconsistent with Christianity, but that its internal inconsistencies are so obvious and pervasive that relativism can be easily refuted by anyone possessing even modest levels of intellectual acuity and integrity.
Christians reflecting on the tragedy in Littleton will find Chapter 7, “Relativism’s Seven Fatal Flaws,” especially relevant.
Consider Flaw 1, “Relativists can’t accuse others of wrong doing.” That is because “if you believe morality is a matter of personal definition, then you surrender the possibility of making moral judgments about other’s actions.”
A consistent relativist, one who believes there is no ultimate standard of right or wrong, could not, with integrity, favor abortion or oppose racism. Lynching an adult, like puncturing the skull and suctioning out the brain of a nine-month-old fetus, would simply be a culturally conditioned individual preference. So would gunning down students in a library.
“Relativists can’t complain about the problem of evil” is Flaw 2. Evil “marks a departure from some standard of moral perfection.” However, if relativism’s fundamental claim, “There are no absolutes,” is true, then there is no such thing as evil, “only differing opinions about what is pleasant or unpleasant, desired or not desired.” Relativists cannot make charges of unfairness or injustice, since “both concepts depend on an objective standard of what is right.” Neither can they hold meaningful moral discussions, for “if morals are entirely relative and all views are equal, then no way of thinking is better than another.”
Finally, “there is no tolerance in relativism, because the relativists’ moral obligation to be tolerant is self-refuting. … Relativists violate their own principle of tolerance when they do not tolerate the views of those whose morality is nonrelativistic. …they are, therefore, just as intolerant as any objectivist appears to be.”
Indeed, “tolerance makes sense only in a world in which moral absolutes exist, and only if one of those absolutes is ‘All people should respect others’ rights to differ.'”
Relativism, by Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl Reaping the whirlwind
In Relativism, Beckwith and Koukl recount a woeful litany of relativism’s impact in education, the law and public policy. With progeny including values clarification, political correctness and multiculturalism, relativism demonstrates the truth of the gender-neutralized aphorism, “Like parent, like child.”
It is not as if Christians have not been warned about the impact of such philosophies. A half-century ago, in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote, “we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. … We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Or, to update the imagery, we order bombs dropped on other countries while declaring “violence is always wrong.” We forbid our schools to teach “You shall not murder, steal, lie, or have sex outside of marriage” then are shocked when our children have children, lie to us, steal from others and murder other children.
“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Prov 22:6). “Sow the wind” by teaching children there is no such thing as right or wrong “and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).
Cassie Bernall’s faith at gunpoint reverberates nationally, globally