About Moral Relativism

Dear Editor, I am 18 years old. Most of my professors at college say there is no such thing as good and evil in the world. My Father says: “If you see it in The Mercury, it’s so.” So please tell me the truth: Is there good and evil in the world, or is it all just shades of gray?” Virginia O’Hanlon, Dartmouth College

Dear Virginia,

Your professors are wrong.

They have been affected by a view that no longer sees the world around them, but instead resides in an Ivory Tower—a tower without windows, and walls lined with mirrors. It is a place of intense inward focus, where Narcissus himself would blush from the selfishness.

Your professors should be prayed for, not punished. Theirs is a worldview that has never seen the sun rise over marsh grass, or watched as it sets across the deserts of Utah. They’ve never seen a White Tail fawn grazing with its mother, or pulled on a Honeysuckle stem to touch their tongue to a single drop of heaven. They’ve never felt the presence of God during a baptism, or vicarious pride when hearing that a working and single mother earns her degree as an adult. They have never seen pure good, so they cannot see evil… anymore than a man blind from birth can tell you the colors that move in front of his unseeing eyes.

Yes, Virginia, the world is very much a place of good and evil, sometimes known as black and white. The problem some of your professors have is that they prefer the shades of gray that muddle the space between black and white. You see, adults must face complex issues on which they must take a stance. No, not a religious stance, but a spiritual stance—a stance where they say, “This issue is complex, but it has a right and a wrong. I choose to stand for what’s right.” It may sound easy, but in reality it’s not.

What’s easy to say is, “This issue is too complex to have a true right and a wrong—It’s all shades of gray.” The reason your professors so love this stance is that it enables them to place all of their opinions and all of their actions in an undefined area of gray, and then claim that their shade of gray is the righteous one. Do you see, Virginia? Without universal right and wrong, each person becomes perfectly right.

Perhaps, Virginia, the hardest part of admitting there is true good and evil in the world is the conversations it requires you have with the person you see in the mirror. Because once you establish that there are universal rights and wrongs, you must admit to yourself that you sometimes stand in the camp of wrongdoers. You see the good and the bad, yet sometimes you choose the bad. This approach means admitting you are wrong, or a sinner—and to your professors, this sort of attitude is heresy. At their alter of intellectualism, admitting they are wrong forsakes the thing they hold most precious: Themselves.

To wrap your arms fully around the concept of good and evil, one must admit a frightening thing: It’s not all about me. My comforts, and my desires, and my wants do not govern the world and its rights and wrongs… quite the opposite, in fact. The rights and wrongs of the world govern me.

This, Virginia, is where your professors step in, and lay claim to their shades of gray. From their Ivory Towers, they claim they agree with the above, but demand to know where I get my concepts of right and wrong. What is, after all, right and wrong? My answer is unsatisfying to their intellectual minds, as I admit I get my definitions of right and wrong from a book called The Bible—the New Testament of which is written about the life of a man named Jesus, who we Christians believe was and is the Son of God. To your professors, my belief in such a book eliminates the possibility of my being an intellectual peer.

But to your professors, I say, “Read the things Jesus said, and how He told us to behave. Don’t His words sound like the kind of words you’d expect God to say?” Jesus preached of love, honor, humility, hard work, sharing, self-control, and helping those less fortunate. Even if you don’t believe in Him as the Son of God, can you not accept His words as perfect advice?

No, Virginia, your professors cannot—and they are not the only ones. Sadly, much of the world today agrees with them, and many view Christians as the enemy. Christianity, and the belief that all men and women are created equal, and endowed with inalienable rights by their Creator, is now outside the global norm. People who believe as I do have been cast as bullies and warmongers, and the world no longer offers us a seat at the table of intellectual discussions.

I have chosen to answer your letter at this place and time, Virginia, because the world is at a crossroads of good and evil. In recent years, the world has been aflame with the hatred and violence of Muslim extremists, followers of the religion Islam. This group’s most recent cry for mayhem comes on the heels of a Danish newspaper publishing cartoons of their prophet Mohammad in an unflattering way, and their reaction has included riots, arson, and governmentally-sanctioned calls for murder.

You might, perhaps, contrast this to a Christian experience several years ago, when an “artist” produced a piece displayed in New York entitled “Piss Christ,” which displayed Jesus Christ on the Cross immersed in urine. Christian reaction was one of verbal denouncement and prayer, a reaction that inspired more ridicule by professors and intellectuals than the Muslims’ recent riots.

Your professors, Virginia, will tell you these Muslim extremists are not wrong—They believe if anyone is wrong, it is the leaders of the West, who have failed to understand the importance of grays, and have thus tried to force our views of black and white on a culture that has different beliefs. But the reality is that the violent oppression of women is always wrong. The violent oppression of free speech is always wrong. The deliberate murder of civilians who disagree with you is always wrong. Anti-Semitism is always wrong. Terrorism is always wrong. Suicide bombing is always wrong. And the rule of a nation by acts of murder, rape, and torture is always wrong.

No such thing as good and evil? Ridiculous.

As Americans, you and I enjoy daily our God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have lived as a nation for over 225 years in a fortress of freedom, protected by the sacrifices of men and women willing to die to protect those rights. Today, times have changed, and the wolf is finally at our door. He and his fellow wolves are slaughtering innocent bystanders around the globe, and they are circling our camp, waiting for an opening to come in. He is here to do evil, because evil is what he is.

Will we step outside our fortress to fight him? Will we help those he is currently oppressing? It is a question for each person to decide. But for my money, Virginia, we must step out to confront him, and the evil he brings.

To do less would be more than bad… it would be evil itself.