If it feels so right, how could it be so wrong?
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Is it possible to have a morality that is relative?
Morals have to due with how someone determines what is right or wrong. A more pressing question is What is the foundation of right and wrong? While some Christians today still believe that the Bible determines what is right or wrong, there is a general concensus in our society that right and wrong, that is morals, are relative to each individual and how the individual feels; hence, the question, “If it feels so right, how could it be so wrong?”
How did we get to this point?
Illustration: When we were growing up, we did a science project that was also considered a cooking project. We made sugar crystals. The ingredients required sugar and water. The instruments were a string, saucepan, pencil, and a mason jar. When put together in the right way, you could leave the string hanging from the pencil in the mason jar full of sugar water. Over time, crystals would form.
In like manner, confusion about what is right and wrong did not happen over night. Determining to follow one’s feelings even if it was wrong did not happen within the culture at large by the flip of a switch. There were ingredients and instruments for this development.
Where did it all start and now did this develop? Our starting point needs to be the scriptures.
Scriptural Question.
Scriptural Question.
The moral law existed before the giving of the Ten Commandments.
In Genesis 4:8-11 we see that God is the moral Lawgiver who curses Cain for killing his brother Abel.
In Genesis 19:1 we see that God set out to destroy Sodom and the cities of the plain because of their great wickedness. Even terms like “wickedly” in Genesis 19:7, show us that there was a moral law in place before the giving of the Ten Commandments.
The giving of the Ten Commandments, in many ways, crystalized the moral law that was already in place previously.
But we must examine the question about right and wrong in order to understand how the scripture addresses it.
Cultural Question
Cultural Question
If it feels so right, how could it be so wrong?
First, the question is assuming a kind of morality. It says, “If it feels so right...” Here we can stop and discern that even people who may be considered immoral have some kind of moral intuition.
Second, the question is assuming that feelings should be considered in the determination of what is right and wrong.
Third, the question is assuming an ultimate goal of personal happiness. This question leads us to a conclusion that the individual is assuming that the resulting feeling should have moral weight. In other words, the good feeling must mean it is right, right? This is personal pragmatism.
While many people may not think this is a problem they have, a simple question I heard recently sounds innocent but actually assumes that same thing as our source question.
Two friends were recently catching up on matters related to their children or grandchildren, and a question came up, “Well, are they doing what makes them happy because that what matters most?”
While this question may seem innocent it assumes that personal happiness is the goal of life and that this is what matters most. But what if their personal happiness comes at the expense of life? What if their personal happiness comes at the expense of children? What if their personal happiness extends to a more serious issue such as abortion?
Historical Question
Historical Question
What Historical Philosophies Laid the Groundwork for these Ideas
A Third World “Social Order” Problem
Rieff - In his trilogy Sacred Order / Social Order, 20th Century Sociologist Philip Rieff introduces the terms first, second, and third worlds. By this, Rieff is not speaking about developing countries.
“Rather, he uses this language to refer to the type of culture that societies embody…” For Rieff, social order is that which embodies societies moral values....
“According to Rieff, first and second worlds justify their morality by appeal to something transcendent, beyond the material world. First worlds are pagan, but that does not mean they lack moral codes rooted in something greater than themselves. Their moral codes are based on myths…Second worlds are those worlds that are characterized not so much by fate as by faith. The obvious example here is Christianity. The Christian faith shaped the cultures of the West in an incalculably deep way...”(Trueman, 75-76)
“Third worlds, by way of stark contrast to the first and second worlds, do not root their cultures, their social orders, their moral imperatives in anything sacred. They do have to justify themselves, but they cannot do so on the basis of something sacred or transcendent. Instead, they have to do so on the basis of themselves.” (Trueman, 76)
Trueman summarizes Rieff’s conclusions by saying that, “Morality will thus tend toward a matter of simple pragmatism, with the notion of what are and are not desirable outcomes being shaped by the distinct cultural pathologies of the day.” (Trueman, 77). [Trueman, Carl R. Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 74]
Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has a similar idea, but with an added twist. Taylor called this third world concept the immanent frame, where this world is all there is. Trueman says, “Taylor thus sees the move from Rieff’s second to third world as a somewhat gradual one, whereby the idea of God slowly becomes an unnecessary hypothesis.”
“…these third-world cultures are really just therapeutic cultures, the cultures of the psychological man: the only moral criterion that can be applied to behavior is whether it conduces to the feeling of well-being in the individuals concerned. Ethics, therefore, becomes a function of feeling.”
From here there is really no leap needed to get to the question,
“Will this make me happy?”
This question then becomes a guide for how something can be deemed right or wrong. This kind of pragmatic approach then leads to moral relativity, which is precisely the kind of indictment against God’s people in Judges 17:6, 21:25.
6 In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
Fundamental Question
Fundamental Question
So, what is one fundamental flaw with relative morality? It is the fact that there is an objective moral code implanted within every human being and the attempt at any kind of morality exposes this. Even those individuals who never received the Law of God have moral intuition that is called a conscience. Romans 2:14
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
Behaviors among each other manifest moral intuition (2:14)
Behaviors manifest a sense of common moral intuition (2:14) (i.e. common to all people: life, children, abuse, rape....etc)
Moral intuition leads to communal laws for people (2:14)
People with laws manifest God’s law written in their hearts (2:15)
Consciences bear witness to the laws written in the hearts of people (2:15)
Accusations and defenses manifest the working consciences of people (2:15)
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
Thus, what God created man with — a moral law and moral consciousness, are still active today; and if these prove that there is a Moral LawGiver, then we have to decide:
Will my feelings be the LawGiver or will God be recognized as the LawGiver?
Ethics and morals left to the feelings and interests of multiple individuals and or groups leads to chaos and self-implosion. One cannot use himself to justify his own morality or existence unless that one is perfect in every way. This is clearly not the case with mankind.
On the other hand, if the unchanging standard of morality is God and his Truth, then we have a sure foundation for saying that just because something feels right to me, it is very possible that it is completely wrong.
Jesus Christ & Christian Morality
I would be wrong to not point out how Jesus Christ entered into the moral chaos of this world. The passage in Romans 2 is part of the indictment against the religious moralist Jew. As Paul is bringing the case of God’s just wrath against the world, he specifies the sinfulness of the Jew as well.
How can it be that a Jew who lived morally pure was still considered morally corrupt? Well, the answer is found in the later development of Romans 2:28-29.
28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
The moral corruption is not merely one of the outward life, but it is a corruption of the heart. It is the corruption of faith in self rather than faith in God, and only Jesus can circumcise the heart. This is the doctrine of Romans, that Jesus came to morally corrupt people: religious and non-religious. Jesus came as the pure Substitute to suffer the wrath of God as the Sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus then rose from the dead, so that we moral failures would have faith in him and become empowered to live the moral life by His Spirit.
Now, the Christian lives under the law of Christ, which is the rule of love. It is not a morality that is determined by the fleeting feelings of his own flesh but by the faith of the Son of God.
If it feels so right, how could it be so wrong?
Because our feelings are fallen and cannot be the basis for right/wrong.