It's good to be king.
A little break from the Atonement today.
I'm beginning to think that the best description for today's western culture is this: The least self-reflective generation.
One way to assess a culture's deepest beliefs is to consider its unexamined assumptions and cultural taboos. These are the assumptions and taboos that members of a culture have fully internalized, but the outsider must be aware of before he or she makes a social faux pas or even legal trouble.
Every culture has these, and we often smile at how silly these taboos are (for cultures outside of our own, of course.) But to those who are in a culture, well--it's just the Way Things Are (or at least The Way Things Should Be.)
Such are our assumptions about morality and ethics. We believe that we have discovered--better than any previous generation--the best ethical system ever known. We may either smile at the naivety of prior generations and their silly hang-ups; or we might, in righteous indignation, decry what we find deficient in historically different forms of ethics (and we often completely write off the achievements of prior generations because, well, they were bad people.)
But we are shocked, truly shocked, when our ethical norms are challenged. We think our ethical norms are self-evident truths, and consider someone either a fool or evil if they ask the simple question: Why?
Our culture is not completely godless--indeed, we tend to invoke a god in many spheres, public and private. We will appeal to our "faith" (or "tradition") or our "spirituality" (often contrasted with "religion" which is often used as a slur against any kind of traditional western belief that existed until about yesterday.) But--and this is key: we get to re-define god in our own image.
Our natural--and completely un-self-reflective--reaction to opposing ethical systems is one of shock and outrage. Adherents of the ascendant cultural norms will read the Bible--say, Deut 13:6-18--and say "Wow! That's barbaric! Surely that can't be God's word!" But when pressed as to why that is barbaric, there is often a stunning lack of self-reflection. Why, exactly, is this barbaric? Why is it evil? By whose authority, or what evidence can you cite, that says "People ought not to behave this way!"
The atheist--many of whom would be considered quite moral by "traditional standards"--may rage in righteous indignation against what he or she perceives as the crimes of the God of the Bible; but one must ask: Why is the atheist's system of morality superior? Other than one's personal "yuck factor", why should I accept an atheist's ethical standards? Are there "moral facts" to which we can all agree?
Among lions, when a male defeats a rival male and takes over a pride, he often kills off the cubs (who are offspring of his defeated rival.) Why must humans reject what the animal world finds so natural? Why would we find it immoral for a human to do the same? What causes a nearly universal, visceral reaction against such behavior in humans (well..."universal" in our culture)?
Please understand: I am not saying that we need to call lions "evil", and I'm certainly not saying that humans should try to emulate lion behavior. But I am saying that observing nature is not likely to give you a set of "moral facts" that are discoverable and inarguable and guides to ethical human behavior as self-evident truths.
But I do question the assumed authority that a person's opinion has on questions of ethics...or even the assumed authority of a large group of people, perhaps even a majority. One might say "Well, everyone today rejects slavery as barbaric and evil...therefore, it is a self-evident truth."
So does that mean that if the majority of people tomorrow said "Slavery ain't so bad" it would then become good? And do we look down on past generations because popular opinion then supported (or at least tolerated) slavery?
Someone might argue that. At least it's consistent, that morals and ethics change with time and circumstances. But what I don't get is when one argues with such deep passion how utterly evil a person (or a culture) was/is because they didn't or don't agree with today's majority opinion. Being outvoted by today's cultural views doesn't merely make you wrong or in the minority; it makes you evil.
Why this reaction? Why this feeling of disgust and outrage over those who break this culture's taboos? Is it perhaps we view that our culture's viewpoints (or at least some of them) are not just the particulars of our views, but something more? Something universal, something...objectively true?
Yet the incoherent mess of our language about ethics makes this argument difficult. On the one hand, we might sit in the parlor with brandy and cigars and pontificate about right and wrong being merely a social construct...but then when faced with, say, child sexual slavery, we become indignant, outranged, and demand action. Yet we can offer no reason for this demand, other than we are offended. We believe there truly is an ought. But we've undercut any basis to believe that a sense of "ought" is anything more than opinion. As Lewis wrote, "We laugh at honor, and are shocked by traitors in our midst."
And in the end, when we do this, we find we are not seeking to put the God Who is There on the throne of our life; rather, we seek to place The god Who Agrees with Me on that throne. Our desire for God to be a certain way becomes more important than finding out who He truly is.
We become King Me. Our God is not the God who speaks galaxies and quasars into existence, the one who forms vast stars and planets. Our god is a small, little friend, a yes man, a pal who supports our prejudices and opinions...until they change, of course, then he changes, too.
The ancients may be wrong about God, may be terribly wrong. But seeking to create a god in your image is most certainly wrong. This belief has a name: idolatry.
For the rest of this comic, click here.
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