Postmodernity and Moral Relativism
Steve Rogers
Draft May 14, 2003

 The world is changing around us.  The worldview of modernity, which most of us grew up with and feel comfortable with, is giving way to postmodernity.  Christians who were raised in a modern worldview tend to be suspicious when first exposed to postmodern thinking.  It sounds like heresy in many ways, one of the chief being that a postmodern perspective seems to lead toward moral relativism.   

Postmodern thinking goes like this:  All people inevitably see the world from a limited point of view.  Our beliefs and judgments are conditioned by the community and culture we live in.  And the moral views of different communities differ significantly.  For example, whites who lived in the pre-Civil War South had a moral understanding of slavery and race.  Most of us today would strongly disagree with that view.  But if we are honest, we have to admit that if we had grown up in that time and culture we would very likely have shared the views of those around us.

 So, the postmodern reasons, how can we say that one culture’s moral view is better than another’s?  Our judgment is always clouded by the limited, relative perspective of our own community and place in history.  Those who come after us may see us in the same way we see southern slave owners.  It is impossible to make a moral judgment from an objective point of view, removed from our own culture.  To claim to do so is perceived by postmodern folks as arrogant and deluded.

 Most Christians would answer that the Bible provides us with objective absolute moral truth.  If we just read the Bible, all moral questions would be resolved.  But is that true?  Southern slave owners read the Bible, and developed extensive biblical arguments in support of slavery.  The fact is, sincere believers can read the same Bible and come to different conclusions about many things.  Modern people are dismayed that so many others could reach “wrong” conclusions.  But to postmoderns it comes as no surprise.  Our interpretations of the Bible are conditioned by our cultural worldview.

 But surely there must be some things which are categorically wrong, no matter what our cultural point of view.  The idea that everything is relative just does not sit well with us, and indeed it should not.  What about genocide, for example.  Think of atrocities like the Nazis committed against Jews, and other examples of the same thing through history.  Is it not morally wrong in an absolute sense to murder whole communities and races of people? 

 Let’s ask that question of the Bible.  Joshua was actually commanded by God to slaughter an entire race of people.  That’s hard for us.  But if the Bible is to be our moral guideline, we have no choice but to deal with it.  Apparently from God’s perspective there are some situations in some contexts where genocide is the right thing to do.  Is that a moral absolute?  No.  I would hate to see that principle generalized or applied in other contexts, but we cannot escape the fact that it is part of the Bible story in at least one historical instance.

 Similar examples could be multiplied.  When we look very carefully at a proposed moral absolute, it seems we can always discover some situation where what looked at first like black and white begins to resolve into shades of gray.  Is it always wrong to kill?  What about capital punishment, self defense, warfare?  Is polygamy adultery?  What about Jacob?  What about women cutting their hair or speaking in church?  I’m not trying to start a riot here, but are things really as absolute as we would like to think?

 And to make matters worse, insisting on moral absolutes inevitably raises the possibility of exploitation.  Postmodern people have a legitimate uneasiness about why some people insist on moral absolutes.  It appears one major agenda they have is to enforce the moral standard in question on others who do not hold it.  Historically, whenever moral absolutes are combined with the power to coerce other people, Nazis often arise to enforce them.

 For these reasons, postmodern people are very reluctant to say anything is “right” or “wrong” in an absolute categorical sense.  This does not mean they are immoral people.  They may well follow a very admirable set of moral convictions in their own personal life.  But they prefer to say “This is my conviction” and avoid saying “This is the absolute truth”.

 A Biblical Perspective

 Is this postmodern perspective compatible with biblical Christianity?  Some Christians see postmodernism as something evil we must resist at all costs.  I disagree.  We must walk carefully, and there are some extreme versions of postmodernism which really are incompatible with Christianity.  But I believe it is possible to be a postmodern Christian just as fully as one can be a modern Christian or a medieval Christian.  The gospel is big enough to speak across cultures:  to Jews, Greeks, and even Postmoderns.

 In the area of moral absolutes, I think we must begin by defining what we are talking about.  God is absolute.  God’s character is absolute moral good.  When we are looking for moral absolutes, we can look nowhere else but the living Person who gave us being, and Whose Being is the essence of all that is Good.  God created us to live in relationship with Him at such a deep level that we are His image (Genesis 1:27).  We reflect His glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) as Christ comes to live in us (Galatians 2:20) and we become like Him (Matthew 10:25).

 The trouble comes when we try to define what that looks like in tangible terms.  The biblical moral absolutes we are given are “I Am” and “Follow Me.”  We would prefer our moral absolutes in terms of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not”.  But this is not God’s ultimate intent for us.  Absolute law is not God’s best – only absolute relationship with Him as a Person will satisfy our deepest need.

 I am reminded that the forbidden tree in the garden has something to do with knowledge of good and evil.  I believe the root temptation in Genesis 3 is to abandon complete dependence on relationship with God and substitute tangible moral principles for a living relationship with Him.  “Knowledge of good and evil” means drawing up lists to define what is right and what is wrong.  If we could look to our moral absolutes for guidance, we would have no need for God.  We would become like gods ourselves, knowing and defining absolute morality in human terms.

 One reason God forbids this knowledge may be that when we start making lists we inevitably evolve into Pharisees.  Our knowledge of good and evil leads us to divide ourselves into groups.  Soon we see “good” as equivalent to “my group” and self-righteously assign “evil” to everyone who does not agree.  The fruit of the tree leads us to pride, and power and control.  The more deeply we feel that our moral standards are “absolute,” the greater the risk they pose.

So, are we left with moral relativism as the only alternative?  If God's intent was not for us to draw up lists of good and evil, then what did He intend?  I believe the heart of God's intent was that we should know Him.  God created us to live in relationship with Him, walking in the garden in the cool of the evening.  Since God is the ultimate Good, coming to know Him intimately would give us knowledge of good –  not as a list, but as a relationship.  Absolute good and evil do exist – but they can be known only in relationship with the person of God, who alone is absolute Good.  The forbidden fruit is to reduce good and evil to abstract knowledge instead of walking in constant dynamic relationship with Good Himself.  This is a terrible reduction.

This idea is developed further in Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, where God writes the law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34).  Jesus fulfills and initiates this new covenant, and sends the Holy Spirit to indwell us.  So the good news is that we can once again live in the kind of relationship with God we were created for.  We can live in Him and He in us (John 15:5).  We can know good and evil in relationship, which frees us from the burden of law, lists of right and wrong, and all the troubles eating the fruit brought us.

So how does this work out in practical life?  It means we must steadfastly refuse to live under law.  We must resist all temptation to define good and evil in abstract terms.  Our path is much more difficult than that.  We must learn to live in such profound intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit that His perspective on good and evil permeates who we are.  In Him, we become good people from the inside out.  When we see evil, it hurts us as it hurts Him.  We know good and evil because Good lives inside us and Good is gradually expelling evil from us.  We do not need external lists.

 Absolute morality means absolute obedience to the will and purposes of God moment by moment.  It means constantly denying myself and following Jesus wherever He goes (Revelation 14:4b).  Only by constant self examination and openness to the Spirit can I hope to root out my sin – the process of a lifetime.  Understood in this sense, absolute morality is something I can only apply to myself.  There is no external list of right and wrong which I can point someone else toward and say “this is what you must do”.  All I can say is “this is what I must do”.  And I must trust you to follow Jesus yourself, learning absolute morality from Him and not from me.

 But what if someone says “Jesus is leading me” to do something which is not actually God’s purpose for them?  We are all (even me) prone to delude ourselves and justify our root selfishness by putting a spiritual sounding veneer on it.  Fortunately, God does not leave us on our own.  He has given us two ways to correct our misunderstandings and lead us to His heart.

 First, we have the Scripture.  Postmoderns see the Bible as a grand story of God revealing Himself and His character to us.  If our understanding of truth comes from our relationship with God, then we need a way to know Him better.  In the Bible, we read stories of God relating with His people through history.  We watch God act and hear Him speak.  As we spend time in His story, we come to know Him.  The story of the Bible becomes our story.  We do not read the Bible looking for proof texts or abstract “truths”.  The Bible is not God.  It is the means we use to walk with God in the garden and hear His voice to our hearts.  We do not simply read the Bible – we allow the Bible to read us and reveal God to us.  [I am planning another essay to further develop this topic]

 Second, we have the community of fellow believers.  If morality means genuinely following where God leads me, then it is safe to assume that God will lead other believers to confirm that.  Throughout history, God has led many of His followers through many of the same situations I am facing today.  I can learn from their wisdom.  So, God will not lead me to abandon my spouse and have an affair with someone else.  The witness of the saints to the wisdom of fidelity, along with the Bible’s witness, make clear that this is not God’s intent for His children.  How can I pretend that it is God’s intent for me?

 Being a follower of Jesus means being a part of His Body and living in mutual submission to others in the Body (Ephesians 5:21).  If I try to live a moral life on my own, I am sure to fail.  I need other followers of Jesus to hold me accountable and keep me on the path.  I need to open myself before them and allow them to examine the darkest corners of my soul so that God’s light may penetrate there.  When I go astray, I expect them to bring me back onto the path, just as they expect the community to intervene in their lives (Galatians 6:1-5). 

This postmodern view of morality is more fluid and dynamic than what modern Christians are used to.  We do not have the luxury of “absolute” unchanging rules.  We are not willing to spell out the answers in advance, but prefer to live with the questions and struggle to find our own answers.  We do not have a law to lean on.  And – this is important – we cannot enforce our understandings on other people.  All we can do is point them toward their own living relationship with the Living God.

 Does this view dilute our faith?  Is giving up the modern view of absolute morality a threat to Christianity?  I do not believe it is.  In fact, I believe the view I have outlined here is more faithful to the Bible than the traditional view.  It is grace over law, relationship over religion.  How is that not a good idea?  It may just be that God is leading us in this postmodern reformation precisely so that we can reclaim the biblical vision of morality as relationship instead of law.

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