We can define culture as: “the creative output of society.” It is matrix within which we live, comprising what we think with our minds and produce with our hands – whether morally good or bad.
This means
that as Christians we should be somewhat suspicious of culture. It isn’t
morally neutral. It is inherently religious in the sense that it reflects the
beliefs and values of those within it. So, we should view and assess every
aspect of our culture through the spectacles of scripture. We should thank God
for the good. And we should engage our culture in four particular ways in order
to better it: first, by encouraging the good aspects; second, by restraining any
bad ones; third, by building Christ’s alternative culture – the church that displays
the kingdom of God as a light in the darkness; and fourth, by sharing the
gospel so that more are recruited through faith in Jesus to do these same
things.
This paper
considers what are probably our own culture’s two most dominant traits: rationalism
and relativism – traits that have arisen from a change in “western” beliefs and
values over the last few hundred years. And they need to be considered so that our
faith is not unsettled by them, so that we can spot their influence on us, and
so that we might highlight the many problems with them in order to point our
friends and families to the truth that is in Jesus Christ.
Defining terms
Our definitions
and discussion will have to be somewhat simplistic. However, we might say that rationalism
believes that truth is objective - it stands for all people and for all time.
It also believes that such truth can be found by human reason alone, without
any need of God. Truth in other words is what humanity establishes is right. By
contrast, relativism believes that truth is subjective - it is true only
to me. In this relativism believes that truth is found by human intuition alone,
without the need for God. Truth is what “seems” or “feels” right.
In matters of
religion, the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, is a rationalist. He argues that
there is no scientific evidence for a God and so asserts that whether people
believe in God or not, they are wrong. God does not exist.
An example of
a relativist, might be the average non-Christian friend. Many are just not
thinking in this sort of way. As far as they are concerned, Christianity is
true “for you.” They assume that we just cannot know whether Jesus really is or
isn’t the Son of God. If believing he is helps us, then that’s right for us.
But if someone feels he is not, then that’s right for them.
Changing rooms
Now in making
things simple, we can liken changes in culture to changing the interior
decoration of someone’s lounge. In the recent history of Western culture we
hear the terms “modernism” and “postmodernism” thrown around a lot. Rationalism
is said to be a mark of modernism, and relativism the mark of postmodernism. People
talk about them as if our society was once decorated – if you like – with
modernist wallpaper. That was then stripped off, and society was re-decorated with
postmodernist wallpaper.
This idea can
be illustrated by considering two series of Star Trek. The initial series,
filmed in the sixties, could be said to reflect modernism – with Doctor Spock’s
reason and logic being relied upon, and humanity’s emotion to some extent being
frowned upon. Star Trek: The Next Generation, filmed some thirty years later,
could then be said to reflect postmodernism. In it Doctor Spock is replaced by
Counsellor Troy and Data. Counsellor Troy’s gift is that she has a subjective
sense as to people’s moods. And Data’s ambition is to experience human emotion.
The thing is, culture
doesn’t change quite so neatly. Changes in culture are less akin to stripping
and re-wallpapering a room, than they are to painting another colour on top of
the previous colour. The traits of the previous culture are still there, but
intermix with new traits to form the culture of the day. So it is that we must
consider where culture has come from as well as where it is now. If you like, we
must consider the various colours with which our society has previously been
decorated if we are to properly understand the colour it now displays. So it is
that we must consider rationalism before we consider relativism.
God and knowledge
Before all
else, however, we must recognize that all truth is dependent on the Lord
himself: First, he unifies knowledge. It is only in knowing
we have a creator, that we can be confident that our world is ordered and so
coherent, because it reflects his power and nature (Romans 1:20). It is this that
means we can understand reality and establish what is true – that A does not
equal B, that 2 plus 2 is not 5, that believing the earth is round and believing
the earth is flat are not equally valid views. Second, God governs knowledge.
As Deuteronomy 29:29 puts it: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God,
but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” So we are
not at liberty to decide what is and what isn’t. The nature of things is defined
by God’s creation. The morality of things is defined by God’s character
expressed in that creation. And God’s revelation about these things in the
Bible must therefore correct and deepen whatever understanding we might have of
them.
Hearts and
minds
In pursuing
truth, however, we must not only engage our brains, but be aware of our hearts.
Our sinful nature makes our minds unreliable in establishing truth. As Romans
1v18-32 makes clear, we suppress what can be known of God in the creation and so
are prone to error in our attempts to understand all sorts of things. The most
obvious example in our day, is how our culture suppresses the biologically
evident truth about human sexuality and gender in order to follow what people
want to do or be, or to fuel pride in being seen as “approving” of them. Nevertheless,
the Christian is being renewed in his mind and so should be more able to think
or reason more clearly.
The important
truth to understand here, is what’s called total depravity. It means
that sin has made the totality of our being untrustworthy. Our reason, emotion
and will are all affected by it. Because our wills want to sin, we suppress
God’s truth with our reason and delight in what is evil with our emotions. So,
whenever we are faced with God’s truth, there is a danger that we will reject or
twist it, in order to suit our own ends.
It’s important then,
to understand that a society’s beliefs do not arrive in a vacuum. Nor are they
formed by pure reason. They are the logical working out of certain presuppositions
which are formed by fallible minds so often driven by pride, self-confidence
and a desire to live independently from God - as was the case in Eden. Of
course, if those presuppositions are wrong, so will the resulting beliefs be. And
in the history of ideas, that leads us first to rationalism.
1/ Rationalism
In his book
“Escape from reason” Francis Schaeffer describes how humanity’s “epistemology,”
that is our theory of how we know what we know, changed from the thirteenth
century on with a Christian Theologian named Thomas Aquinas. Although Aquinas
believed that God unifies and governs knowledge, he also believed that human beings
did not need God’s revelation to discern it. He believed that by human reason
alone – alone being the important word – we could discern what is and what
isn’t (although he accepted the Bible helps us grasp more).
Well there are
no prizes for guessing that this led to God being side-lined. Thinkers effectively
made their own reason God, assuming that it could establish what God is like,
what is right and wrong, and in what sense humanity needs salvation.
The evils done
in the name of Christianity during the time of the reformation and English civil
war only encouraged this view. They switched people off the idea of holding
firmly to revealed truth. The achievements of science in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries then increased people’s confidence in reason as an alternative.
The discovery of medicine such as penicillin gave confidence that by reason
alone we could eradicate sickness. The theory of evolution gave confidence that
we would progress by our reason to an increasingly perfect state. And a related
focus on education gave confidence that by mere instruction we could fully
counter our tendency towards evil.
Where then did this increasing
confidence in reason lead? Initially it led to an intellectual movement known as Deism. Deists still believed in a
Creator, but held that he was rather like a watchmaker. He designed the world
but then left it to tick on by itself without his intervention. This view
essentially holds that God unifies knowledge but doesn’t speak and so govern
knowledge. It’s a view that many of our friends hold. God exists, but he is
unknowable and uninvolved. We must therefore decide our own way to live and
solve our own problems.
It is here
that we must mention a hugely influential 18th century thinker called
Emmanuel Kant. He taught that any knowledge we can glean is limited to the
realm we can perceive through our senses. Failing to do justice to the fact
that God has revealed himself in space-time-history, he then placed God in a
different realm, and so beyond all scientific enquiry. By this, he was saying
that you can believe in a God by faith, but you can’t really know whether
a God exists or what they are like. This is why many today assume that the
existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, and that faith is about blind
belief without evidence.
In this
cultural context, Deism inevitably led to Atheism,
the conviction that there is actually no God at all. You see, though God’s reality
is evident in the creation, because in our sin we don’t want to face up to
that, we need the clearer evidence of his existence revealed in Jesus and
recorded in the Bible. Yet the deists rejected any notion that God had revealed
himself in this way, and Kant had added that what we perceive in the natural
realm can tell us nothing about what is in the divine realm anyway. And so, it has
become common to assume that there is no good reason to believe that there is a
God at all.
There is
however a problem for the atheists in all this, that is rarely acknowledged. You
see they not only get rid of the one who governs knowledge, but the one who
unifies knowledge as well. The likes of Richard Dawkins therefore attack belief
in God by inconsistently relying on what only belief in God can guarantee – that
our world is rational and ordered, and that we are not just a random collection
of atoms and so we do actually have reason and can use it to understand our
world. Without God we can have no confidence that we are not simply deceiving
ourselves about reality, like the insane person who thinks he is Frodo Baggins
living in Middle Earth. CS Lewis writes that scientific atheism, “gave us a
theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it
impossible to believe that our thinking was valid.”
The impact of rationalism today
The signs that
rationalism remains are all around us. But as we consider them we must remember
two things: First, that because
culture has developed somewhat from the days of rationalism, these things are not
assumed quite as strongly as they were a few decades ago. Second, that as is so often the case, rationalism does contain some
truth. The examples I give of how it shows itself are not therefore to be
totally rejected.
1/ Scientism
This is perhaps
the most obvious consequence. The word moves beyond science to seeing science
as the solution of all things, as all there is to help us solve our problems. Rationalism
has led to what’s called a “closed view” of the universe. This is the
assumption that there is no God “outside” our universe who ever enters in and operates
within it. Much modern science is ironically therefore based on religious faith.
It is based on the “belief” either that there is no God or that God does not
influence our universe. It therefore defines science in such a way that excludes
God as a factor in any theory that seeks to understand our world or our origins.
It believes in the virgin birth of the universe with neither mother or father!
2/ Anti-supernaturalism
This is inherent
in this modern view of science and led to the rise of liberal theology in the
late eighteenth century. If there is a God, he is not involved in our universe,
it reasons, and so miracles just cannot happen. The Bible is not therefore
inspired, but contains only the reflections of religiously minded people. Jesus
is not God incarnate, but just a good moral teacher. And the resurrection
didn’t happen, but was just an idea intending to portray ideas of a new start. What
then of the miracles recorded in the Bible? They are myths, the liberals say, created
by those early believers to portray their ideas about God. One wonders whether
this lack of conviction about the activity of God in our universe lies behind
the lack of prayerfulness and faith even among genuine believers today.
3/ Determinism
By sidelining
God, rationalism leaves humanity purely at the whim of natural processes. It
has therefore led to the assumption that we are determined in all we do by our
biological makeup – nature, and by the environment in which we live – nurture. We
see this particularly in some modern psychology that assumes evil to simply be
the result of our genetic imperfections, a bad birth experience or a dysfunctional
family. Ultimately it removes the idea that we are free and responsible beings.
4/ Humanism
The flip side of this is the assumption that humanity is essentially good
and so destined in time to evolve more and more into a morally and physically
pure and sophisticated state. By reason it is assumed we will one day eradicate
our genetic and social imperfections, and that sufficient science, medicine,
therapy and education will bring about a Utopia – a sort of heaven on earth. Humanism
is therefore a kind of non-religious religion, in which humanity is god,
effecting its own plan of salvation. This explains why law and education increasingly
seeks to control even how we think and feel. It is not merely trying to maintain
order and equip for life, but to attain a world where there is no disharmony at
all. Of course, this becomes increasingly oppressive, because sin is a reality and
won’t be removed, leading to more laws and more invasive education. Humanism
also explains why the main aim of people today is fulfilling their own potential.
Everything is about development. The irony in this, is that it becomes very
self-absorbed and so works against true moral progress. A sense of being “unfulfilled”
moves people to leave their marriages to the harm of their spouse and children,
or turn down jobs that might do much good. Indeed, even when good is done it is
often done primarily to make the one doing it feel better about themselves and
develop as a human being.
5/ Secularism
This is the view that religious conviction should be kept out of public
life – whether politics or education. If there is no God involved in our world,
it is reasoned, then people’s religious convictions have no weight, are without
foundation, and so have no right to shape how our society governs it life. Religion
should therefore be removed from its structures. But by not acknowledging the huge
leaps of faith implicit within deism and atheism, secularism is like a dishonest
security guard manning the metal detector at customs. It seeks to keep all
religion out of public life whilst covertly admitting its own!
6/ Forumalaeism
At a more
general level, the reliance on reason and science, and the assumptions of
determinism, lead the every-day person to believe that if only they adopt the right
rational process or formula, they can achieve pretty much anything. Our book
shelves are therefore full of “self-help” books promising “seven steps to
success.” And even in our churches, we find ourselves relying on formula rather
than God for our numerical growth or in fostering a sense of his presence.
7/ Nihilism
This refers to
the sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness that many feel today. And it surely
the logical consequence of rationalism. Listen to how the atheist Richard
Dawkins writes: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we
should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no
good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”[1] Another
atheist, Bertrand Russell, puts it this way: “Man is the product of causes
which had no prevision of the end they were achieving… his origin, his growth, his
hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms.”[2]
The consistent
rationalist can only end up in drowning in despair. If this random universe is
all there is, then we have no significance. Scientifically we are worth no more
than a blade of grass, because we simply boil down to our DNA. Ethically, we have
no grounds for deciding one way of acting is better than another, because our
preferences are simply the result of how the world has fallen together to this
point. Morally, we have no real grounds for caring when one human being suffers,
because that is just part of the way things are. And judicially, we have no
ground therefore for a justice system in which people are punished, because
they only do what they do because they have been conditioned to be that way. Evil is just what human animals do, just as wolves hunt
down deer.
Few live as
consistent nihilists, but its assumptions are very present – perhaps most
clearly in arguments for abortion or euthanasia. It is assumed individuals are
just atoms and cells that are here by accident. So, if they serve no purpose
and may in fact hinder the humanistic dream, there is no reason not to terminate
them.
Worldviews
under construction
Here it is
worth pausing to note that without the Bible to ground us, belief systems develop
as their implications are worked out. Humanity sort of make it up as they go
along. So, a Christian theism that held too high a view of reason led to deism
where what was believed about God had to conform to reason. That in turn led to
atheism, as the Bible as the great proof of God was no longer held to as reliable.
And that then developed into humanism with its confidence that by reason we can
save the world ourselves, and nihilism with its recognition that if we are to
live consistently without a God, there is no rhyme or reason to try to do that!
And it is here that relativism has tried to come to the rescue.
2/ Relativism
Relativism is built upon the assumption that
because there is no God to unify or govern knowledge, when it comes to ideas
there is no real truth at all that applies to everyone – there is just what
different people think.
Two types of relativism have been acknowledged:
Cultural relativism is the view that truth is therefore relative
to a community or society. In other words, the aborigines may have a certain
set of beliefs and values which are true for them, the Third Reich another set
that are right for them, and the Western Democracies another set that are right
for them.[3] Personal
relativism is the form of relativism we are perhaps most aware of. We hear it
whenever a friend labels our faith as “fine for you.” Because there is no
objective truth as to beliefs or values, each individual just chooses whatever is
true for them. It is subjective.
The rise of relativism
Now relativism
in many ways developed as a reaction to rationalism, and in three particular
ways.
1/ Reaction to the implications of rationalism
The 18th
century saw a reaction against what was seen as the destruction of nature and
suppression of true humanity brought about by science through the Industrial
Revolution. These reactionaries were known as Romantics. They urged a
return to an idealised natural state, but combined that with a rejection of
religious truth, particularly in the area of sex, because they saw it as restrictive
in restraining people’s natural instincts.
Others reacted
against the deterministic view that our decisions are simply the result
of our genes and environment. Those in the 19th century are sometimes
known as Bohemians, and they asserted a radical freedom to do absolutely
anything, living unconventional lives and embracing free love. This began to
mean a stress not on what was right or wrong for everyone, but what was right
or wrong for me.
Two characters
from the late 19th and early 20th centuries need special
mention here because their ideas reflected the same sense that inherited norms
were holding back or supressing humanity: Karl Marx held that societal (and so religious)
structures were holding back the economic development of everyday people and so
should be thrown off. And Sigmund Freud held that traditional (and so
religious) values were supressing the expression of our true sexual self which
was fundamental to happiness and fulfilment.
Others in both
the 19th and 20th centuries reacted against the nihilistic
view that we are simply a chance collection of atoms and so have no real
purpose. Their worldview is known as existentialism. Rather than face the
despair that is the logical result of rationalism, they simply took a blind
leap of faith that there is meaning and significance, and that it is to be
found in living “authentically.” In other words, we are to define our own
meaning in life by being and becoming whoever we want to be – in modern speak “being
true to our self.” This struck a cord with both Bohemian and Romantic thought.
Existentialism
lies behind the controversy over gender dysphoria. It is assumed that if someone
“feels” a different gender, that’s who they really are. And because matter is
only as it is by chance - and forever changing, there is no reason why that
person should not change their body accordingly. In fact, they should do,
because that is more “authentic.” It could be argued existentialism also fuels our
modern concern with having a cause to fight for – whether one of the various
rights movements or environmentalism. Having lost our sense of significance as
those created to image and serve God, we seek to create our own significance by
finding something to make our lives matter. The irony is that in a world without
God, there is no way of arguing that is a good or worthy thing.
So it was that
at the beginning of the twentieth century there was already a tendency towards
truth depending on me rather than on revelation, tradition or a community, and
on truth being established by my intuition or feeling rather than my reason. Moreover,
the seeds of thought that would lead to seeing my sexual feelings as
fundamental to what is most true for me were there in Freud, and the mindset
that sees any challenge to what I feel as oppressive and to be thrown off, is
there in Marx.
2/ Reaction
to the failures of rationalism
In the first
half of the twentieth century, the hopes tied to rationalism then took a direct
hit in the unfolding of incredible evil. It was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
who had first suggested that all claims to truth were attempts to gain and exert
power over others. Well so it seemed to be. Under Hitler, the fascists used the
so-called truth they held to as justification for worldwide bloodshed and the
extermination of 5 million Jews. And under Stalin, the Marxists used theirs to
kill what is estimated to be over 10 million people.
Faced with
such wickedness, people began to realise that humanity was not necessarily good
and not necessarily evolving to the perfect utopia that was hoped for. More
than that, it was recognised that progress in science and reason meant progress
in the extent to which humanity can harm itself.
Perhaps more
than anything else this led to an increasing suspicion of what’s known as
meta-narratives or grand-stories: a rejection of any claim to overarching and
objective truth, whether it was political or even religious.
This is why
many of our friends now assume that to claim that my truth must be your truth,
will inevitably lead to my oppressing you in order to force you to accept my
truth. It’s why there is such a readiness to label those a religion critiques
as victims. Just consider how readily people reject Christianity with the
phrase “all religion causes war,” or claim that all Christians are “hateful and
intolerant.” This is particularly ironic when you consider that both Fascism
and Marxism were atheistic. They caused the greatest wars and displayed the
greatest intolerance, but people don’t reject atheism because of this, nor tar every
atheist with the same brush.
3/ Reaction
to the successes of rationalism
We noted earlier
that rationalism remains despite all this. Its greatest accomplishments are
perhaps in the area of technology. And there are two by-products of technology
that have had a huge influence on how we view truth.
The first, is the access we have to information. We
now live in a global village: We can enter and experience the culture and
religion of any country in the world within 24 hours. And if we can’t go
abroad, we can taste something of these cultures through our TV’s and on the
net, or even outside our doors as the ease of travel means that we now live in
a multi-cultural society.
Just consider
the impact that has had on how we understand truth. Faced with so many different
beliefs, values and cultures, it seems arrogant to claim that I have found
objective truth to which others need to conform. After all, what makes me so
qualified to find what is true and not the next person. Surely, people say, my
beliefs, values and customs are simply the result of my being born where I have
been born.
The second, is
the means by which we are exposed to
information. The internet in particular means that we are facing an
information overload. And just as with overeating, this leaves us unable to
digest the information we receive. We just don’t have time in our busy schedules
to do the work necessary to establish whether what was said in that blog or
magazine was actually true. Moreover, our desire for easy stimulation, leans us
away from what is thoughtful and weighty towards what is comic and lite,
leading to the infantilization of our culture where so many lack any
seriousness about life and reality.
This is only
enhanced by our surrogate mother - the TV. Consider how it has raised us as its
children to think. First, it is image based. This means that much of what it
portrays is ambiguous, because images can so easily be read any number of ways.
And this leaves us prone to prefer the same medium, and be uncomfortable with
lectures or books that may portray truth more ably. Second, TV is quick moving.
This means that it is difficult without rewinding things to actually pause and
reflect discerningly on what has just been said. And so we find discernment
something that is far from instinctive to us in other areas too. Third, TV
programming is diverse. This means that we can watch a news reel of children
starving in Darfur, and move immediately to our favourite episode of
Eastenders. This leaves us blurring what is real in our own lives, living out
fantasies, and trivialising what is serious. The right response to starving
children is to stop, pray and act. But instead we flip channels to our
favourite show. Fourth, TV is ratings driven. This means that the content of
what is shown has to relate to what we want to see. And our hearts will always
tend towards what is depraved or entertaining rather than pure and personally
challenging. So it is that even news reports and documentaries twist the facts
in order to engage the viewer, leaving us all less concerned for accuracy and less
confident we can ever really know “the truth.”
Whose authority?
A whole raft
of factors therefore contribute to the relativistic rejection of objective
truth: An emphasis on personal freedom and so personal truth, a downplaying of
reason in order to escape despair, a subsequent reliance on intuition, a
scepticism of objective truth claims as oppressive, a feeling that they are
inherently arrogant, and a general training of our brains to be undiscerning
and unconcerned about matters of truth at all.
What you may
have spotted in all this, is a change in what we look to as our authority in
what we believe. No longer is it religion – God speaking in his word, tradition
– what we have received from history, community – what we inherit from
our families, or even ideology – what is taught by a system like
communism. Now it is very much the individual who only buys into any of these
things if it seems true for them at this time. This should not surprise us,
because relativism is built on rationalism’s confidence in the individual.
Of course, some
still talk of the authority behind cultural relativism being the majority
opinion of religion, tradition, community or ideology. But, the fact, is that
in the west there is no received consensus as to truth, but only an ever-changing
mass of individuals and their ever-changing convictions. This is why our society’s
views can change so rapidly as has been in seen in matters of sexuality and
gender under the influence of the LGBT lobby. If the individual can be made to
feel something is more true to them than something else, they will shift and
embrace it with little thought as to what might be said by any of the authorities
appealed to in the past. And in an entertainment culture, they may make this
move on the basis of little more than a three minute youtube clip that has been
carefully crafted to appeal to their emotions.
What this all means
is that the “truth” most embraced by a western culture tends to reflect that embraced
by its most vocal and influential members – especially if they can control the
media. In other words, its cultural relativism reflects the changing winds of
personal relativism. And there are five related authorities that tend to govern
this: Emotion determines truth by what “moves me.” So, a moving documentary
telling how a gay couple met and faced opposition, leans us towards acceptance
of their relationship without consideration of what it is really like, of its
impact on others, or its acceptability to God. Intuition determines
truth by what “I sense.” Things are accepted or rejected by whether they instinctively
feel right or wrong, without thought of how our instincts are themselves shaped
by our ideas and environment. A lady I knew was convinced she was a reincarnated
Abbess because she visited an Abbey and sensed she’d been there before. Preference
determines truth by what “I like.” Harder truths about God and his purposes
are therefore rejected with the words “I like to think of God like this,” as if
that really makes a difference! Experience determines truth by what “I perceive.”
Those raised in broken homes may therefore reject marriage as an institution
because of their bad experience of it. Pragmatism determines truth by
what “works for me.” If being a Christian, Buddhist, Environmentalist, or non-Binary
gender-fluid millennial gives a sense of belonging, identity and wellbeing, it
is adopted. But when it stops doing so it is rejected.
The impact of relativism today
As we will
see, none of these authorities are wrong in themselves. But it is not hard to
see how uncertain, limited and prone to error they are. Whereas rationalism majors
on what is thought, and so engages our critical faculties, relativism majors
on what is felt, which is much more immediate and so potentially undiscerning.
And this leads to a number of traits that mark our relativistic society.
1/ Individualism
At its heart,
Western society is individualistic. It is concerned with the freedom of the
individual to act as they please – so far as this doesn’t encroach too severely
on the freedom of others. And this does follow, if truth is ultimately a matter
of individual preference. Laws today therefore seem less concerned with
restraining wrongdoing in areas that are objectively wrong, than protecting
people’s right to act as they wish. However, individual freedom always impacts
the community. A woman’s right to abort her foetus, impacts not only the foetus,
but the way wider society sees (and teaches its children to see) the unborn, the
role of women, and the nature of personhood itself.
2/ Pluralism
Many of our
friends will regard all beliefs or views as equally valid. Assuming that God
hasn’t revealed himself, they look on the numerous cultures and convictions in our
world and consider it impossible to establish whether one is more true than another,
and arrogant to suggest ours is right. This is exacerbated by the fact that what
is felt is given such authority. Everyone’s feelings seem to point in different
directions. And sifting their beliefs or views with our reason is seen as intolerant
because rejecting certain ideas is assumed to be a rejection of those who hold
them, which feels negative, uncaring and so wrong. God is therefore whatever
you believe him/her/it to be – and morality is what you want it to be too.
3/ Tolerance
This is obviously
the buzz word of our culture. But it is not the old tolerance where we debate
in a gentle manner and agree to disagree. The new tolerance is one where we
effectively patronize one-another by saying each other’s beliefs or views are
“fine for you,” even when they are mutually inconsistent and perhaps downright
evil. It has the veneer of being caring, but doesn’t care at all.
4/ Liberalism
If truth is
what is right for me, then every individual is free to do as he pleases irrespective
of the consequences to others. This is radical liberalism, but its roots are
there throughout our culture and even politics. Just consider the lack of response
when someone commits adultery. “I fell out of love with my wife” seems to be adequate
justification. There is no outcry over the appalling damage inflicted on the wife
and children, or the husband’s failure to keep his promises.
5/ Hedonism
Hedonists seek
pleasure above all else. This is certainly a mark of our culture. Relativism leans
people towards being unconcerned about injustice in the world or responsibility
at home. All can live as they please, ignore the weighty things in life, and
wallow instead in entertainment and the pursuit of personal happiness. Perhaps
the massive use of pornography in our day best illustrates this. It is enjoyed now
in the mainstream, irrespective of how it supports the sex trade or displays an
unfaithfulness towards one’s spouse.
6/ Deconstructionism
Because truth
is what I want it to be, some have gone as far as removing meaning from words
altogether. At an extreme level this is said to mean that communication itself
is impossible, because my own context will always mean I interpret things in my
way. At a milder level this is seen to mean that I can establish my truth from
a book irrespective of what the author intended. And this has led some to
readily reinterpret history to assert their own particular agenda – whether by
denying the holocaust, or reading homosexual relationships into history where they
may not have actually been present.
7/ Nihilism
Ultimately
relativism brings us to the same place as rationalism. Rationalism leaves us
without meaning or morality because it tells us we are just a chance collection
of atoms without accountability. Relativism leaves us without meaning or morality
because it concludes, therefore, that there is no over-aching truth to live for
or live by. Either way, if these worldviews were lived out consistently, they
would end in utter chaos, purposelessness and evil.
The problem with relativism
It’s not a pretty picture. And the fallout of
relativism is all around us. But there are three particular problems with it that
we need to be aware of as we engage with our culture and teach our children to
be discerning.
1/ Relativism’s
inconsistency
The fact is that
relativism is self-refuting. The relativist claims there are no absolutes, but
by doing so they make an absolute statement. They claim all views are equally
valid, except the view that all views are not equally valid. They hold that
everything must be tolerated, but are intolerant of intolerance. You can see
the point. The fact that there is objective truth is proved by the very claim
that there is no objective truth.
2/ Relativism’s
circularity
In his book “The righteous mind” Jonathan
Haidt notes how western more “liberal” cultures tend to decide matters on the
basis of how caring, fair and free of oppression something seems, whereas more “conservative”
non-western cultures also have a concern for loyalty to the community, outside
authority, and the idea of things having a sanctity. What is striking is how
the more liberal basis for decision-making is therefore particularly focused on
the individual and their feelings. We’ve seen this is a quite logical outworking
of the relativism that will inevitably mark a more atheistic society. The problem,
however, is that our feelings or instincts themselves are a product of our
cultural environment. And so, this way of deciding matters is self-reinforcing:
Culture tends to reflect the instincts of the majority, that in turn shapes the
instincts of any others within it, which in turn strengthens the culture’s
sense that what it holds to is obvious. This is why people cannot conceive Christianity
even being worth consideration. So much of it goes against their feelings and instincts,
which have been crafted by the culture from the moment they were born. Ironically,
the only thing that might challenge this is a word from outside of themselves and
their culture, like a revelation from God!
3/ Relativism’s
implications
Very few of
our friends will live as consistent relativists. They will hold objective truth
in matters of science, history, and to some extent, morality too. We need to
show them that, in this, they cannot have their cake and eat it. If there is no
objective truth then they should end up as nihilists, where anything goes. We
must show them that relativism ultimately leads to there being no grounds for law
or justice – because there is no fixed morality, no integrity –
because I can change my views and values at my personal whim, no humility
– because I ultimately see myself as the absolute centre of the universe, and
no dignity, worth or significance, because everything is just a meaningless
and ever changing collection of atoms, that can be treated and thought of in
whatever manner one feels they want to. In short, we must show them that
despite its claims to be caring, fair and a challenge to oppression, relativism
ultimately ends in tyranny, because the strongest and most powerful are given
the grounds to do just what feels right for them – often manipulating others to
get them on side. By showing our friends where relativism leads we hopefully
begin to wake them up to the fact that it is unliveable, and that it doesn’t actually
resonate with their instincts after all.
Borrowing
capital from Christianity
Of course, it
is one thing to say this, but quite another to convince people of it. They will
appeal to certain ideas and values being self evident and not in need of
justification – perhaps arguing that rationalism and relativism have left us
with a fantastic legacy of concern for equality and rights. However, in his
book “Dominion,” non-Christian author Tom Holland has convincingly shown that
this is because our society has borrowed from the Christian society which
preceded it, but without realising that. In other words, it still shows something
of the colours it was painted with before it was painted with rationalism and relativism.
In an interview touching on just this point Holland says: “That is the course
that, by and large, the west has taken. It has [said] ‘We’ll take over
Christian morals and ethics thank you very much, but we’re not actually going
to bother with any of the mumbo jumbo that requires us to go to church.’ The question
that is posed by that, of course, is whether or not you can continue to have
the bloom if the roots have been pulled up. And we don’t know the answer to
that as a society.”[4]
The thing is, we
have seen that without the root the bloom is fading. Foundational ideas of the
sanctity of life, the nature of marriage and gender, and the gracious tolerance
of those we disagree with are rapidly being re-written, with law becoming increasingly
invasive in an attempt to assert the new morality or deal with the fallout from
it. Without the Christian truth that all are equal and to be cherished in bearing
the image of God, and called to live according to his design and purpose,
rationalism and relativism will only further lead us from what is good and
beneficial.
3/ Revelation – the third R
There is some
truth in every deception. So, as Christians we would not want to reject
everything within rationalism. Our reason is God-given and important. The problem
is a failure to recognize that it is corrupted and controlled by our sinful
nature. It’s the same with our feelings, which are so significant with
relativism. They too are God-given and important. We should be moved by things
that matter. But we should not let our reason or feelings dominate in establishing
what’s true.
In short, we must
reject both rationalism – with its emphasis on objective truth found by
reason alone, and relativism – with its emphasis on subjective truth established
by feeling alone. Instead, we must look to revelation – that is, objective
truth from God, humbly understood and subjectively believed.
You can understand it
with this triangle:
But we must remember
that the key presupposition lying behind both rationalism and relativism is that
there is no such thing as revelation (scripture) – that there is no personal
God making himself known in our universe. We’ve seen that this presupposition
is without foundation, but simply reflects the historical development of ideas.
We’ve also seen that rationalism and relativism are both positions of faith
themselves, and ones that have nihilistic, terrible and unliveable consequences
that few could ever accept. In other words, the Christian worldview is a much
better fit for what people instinctively know, than the secular worldview that they
embrace so inconsistently and unthinkingly. Put another way, Christianity is
actually a much better fit with both our reason and our feelings - when they
are rightly considered.
But Christianity
also has the firmest of foundations in all Christ said and did. And so it can
be helpful to ask a rationalist or relativist to live for a moment in the land of
“if.” Without attempting to totally dissuade them from their presuppositions,
you simply ask them to imagine for a moment that there is a personal God active
in our universe. You then ask whether they would accept that “if” that
is the case, that this God could give good reasons to believe and ensure the
existence of objective truth. If they say yes, you can at least then ask them
to read the gospels for themselves before dismissing Jesus because of their
presuppositions.
[1] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian
View of Life (1995), quoted from Victor
J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)
[2] How now shall we live, p.253
[3] We see this view in the suggestion in the media that
although execution is wrong “for us” it is somehow right for the Iraqis to have
executed Saddam Hussein. Now either it is morally right or wrong to take
someone’s life as punishment for a crime. This is not something that depends on
consensus.