1. Title: It All Depends
2. Text: Several
3. Audience: Villa Heights Christian Church, AM worship crowd, February 5, 2006, 3rd in the series “A Clear and Present Danger”
4. Type: topical
5. Objectives:
• For the people to understand the meaning of relativism, be able to cite several ways it shapes our current age, and to be convinced of the dangers it presents; to understand how to apply biblical standards to every day decision making more consistently
• For the people to feel that relativism is harmful and to feel convicted that their lives should oppose it.
• For the people to speak against relativistic ideas and to apply biblical standards to their decision making more consistently
6. Dominant Thought: God’s word speaks in absolutes that are applicable to all moral choices that face a person
7. When I’m finished with my sermon, I want my audience to understand how relativism is harmful and to oppose it by clinging to what is true and using it to make choices every day.
8. Outline:
Intro: (2nd worship hour: (after the band gets up and starts with something that sounds just horrible) What was that? That was the sound of chaos. Music shows us pretty quickly how important it is to have a standard. In fact, music is all about standards. Look in the hymnal in front of you and you’ll notice it’s the same as the others. That’s because unless everyone is singing from the same book, it won’t make much sense. And every page has numbers on it. That’s so that everyone can sing off the same page of the book. Every song has at the very beginning, a key signature. Unless everyone’s in the same key, it won’t be right. You’ve heard musicians tuning before they play. That’s because there’s a standard. I have a tuner. It plays a perfect “440 A.” When every instrument is tuned to a standard, they can sound like they go together, but it they’re out of tune, it can sound horrible. Then there’s tempo – unless everyone is going the same speed, it won’t be together. It won’t end together. It’s all about standards, in the interest of making a pleasant sound. Take away any of these standards and you get what we had a moment ago.)
Imagine for a moment a world that denies standards; a world where there are no absolutes; where everyone makes up their own rules and where no one accepts something to be true unless they decide it’s true on their own. Imagine a world where people believe there’s actually no such thing as objective truth. Imagine a world where no one is really in charge – where everyone just does as he sees fit – what’s right in his own eyes.
Judges 17:6 In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.
Judges 21:25 In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.
I imagine it would be pretty chaotic. I imagine you’d have stories about people bouncing back and forth between doing what’s right and failing miserably. I imagine you’d get stories about treachery and rashness and espionage. I imagine you’d hear about people who at times seem godly and then at others turn around and mess up terribly. I imagine you’d have the period in Israel’s history recorded in the book of Judges, when Israel had no king and everyone did as he saw fit.
Try to picture a world that doesn’t accept absolutes – a world where someone might say, “What’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for me,” where medicine commercials say, “Ask your doctor if it’s right for you.” Picture a society where everyone becomes afraid to speak up because they feel they have no right to impose a standard on anyone else. Just envision this culture where, rather than trying to teach what’s right and wrong, teachers just tell students that the important thing is that they decide for themselves what’s right and wrong, because, after all, everyone’s situation is different. Imagine a world where telling the truth is a good thing to do, sometimes, but where lying is also considered a good thing to do sometimes too. If you have a hard time picturing a world like that, then, tonight, watch TV for one hour; tomorrow, visit your kids’ school; read a newspaper; get out more. We’re in it!
The Clear and Present Danger I want to speak about this morning is relativism. Now, that’s a term from philosophy. It describes, in a general way, the belief that there are no absolutes in life. Every thing depends on circumstances; it’s all “relative” to the situation in life. Take that into your day-to-day, and it becomes what’s known as “situationism” or “subjectivism.”
Back in 1968, Will Herberg wrote an article called “What Is the Moral Crisis of Our Time?”
“The moral crisis of our time cannot, it seems to me, be identified merely with the widespread violation of accepted moral standards, for which our time is held to be notorious. There has never been any lack of that at any time;… this, indeed, is our time’s challenge to morality; not so much the all-too-frequent breakdown of a moral code, but the fact that today there seems to be no moral code to break down…To violate moral standards while at the same time acknowledging their authority is one thing; to lose all sense of the moral claim, to repudiate all moral authority and every moral standard as such, is something far more serious.”
In other words, the threat to the times – 38 years ago – isn’t that people were breaking rules. It’s that people were saying rules don’t matter at all; that there are no rules and no rights for anyone to make them. Where has that taken us today?
Here’s another source: an ethics book from 1973 cites “Playboy” magazine. A woman from Wichita had written in to “Playboy” to get the opinion of its readers on mate swapping. So, “Playboy” published her question as a poll. She asked, “When both partners consent, is adultery immoral?” One Dion O’Glass of New York responded with an editorial. Dion concluded that the first mistake is asking if something is moral at all. He wrote, “individual feelings are the most important thing there is…To realize that each man is a law unto himself is to arrive at an irreducible basis for libertarian thought – the most valuable and needed viewpoint in avoiding the pitfalls of right- or left-wing totalitarianism. Therefore I suggest to the lady from Wichita one rule that eliminates the need for all others: think for yourself.” In other words, there is no wrong decision. You don’t ask if something is “right” or “wrong.” The important thing is that you make a decision. What you decide isn’t what matters. That’s the blind leading the blind.
That was over 30 years ago. Around that same time there was an influential book written by an ethics professor at an Episcopal seminary. His name was Joseph Fletcher. The book was called Situation Ethics: The New Morality. Fletcher rejected the idea that there is no absolute. He didn’t accept that we should approach life with no standards at all. At the same time, he rejected the idea of what he called legalism. He believed a legalist is someone who “enters into every decision-making situation encumbered with a whole apparatus of prefabricated rules and regulations. Not just the spirit but the letter of the law reigns…Solutions are preset, and you can ‘look them up’ in a book – a Bible or a confessor’s manual.”
Fletcher taught that, instead of a list of rules, there’s only one rule: love. Love outshines all other rules because love puts people first. That sounds good, doesn’t it?
“The ruling norm of Christian decision is love.”
“Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not.”
“Love is an attitude and not just a feeling.”
Those are Bible concepts…sorta -
Galatians 5:14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Certainly the Bible has a lot to say about love. And situation ethics says that this is the one rule – love. Rather than entering into life’s situations with a list of clumsy guidelines, you wait until the moment and do the loving thing. That way, for all those times when it’s tough to decide what to do, you make the choice based on one simple thing – love – and don’t feel bad about it.
Ill - After the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, a Mr. Bergmeier was captured by the Russians and held in Wales as a prisoner of war. His wife was also captured and put in a prison in Ukraine. When Mr. Bergmeier was released, he searched and found his 3 children. None of them knew where Mrs. Bergmeier was, and they all began searching. While she was in prison, she had learned that her family was searching for her. She loved her family, and she wanted to return to them, but the only conditions for release were pregnancy or a serious illness. So, she asked a guard to have sexual relations with her and she became pregnant. Within a few months, she was sent back to Berlin, and back to her overjoyed family. They all knew how she had arranged for her release, but they all loved baby Dietrich when he was born, because he had brought the family back together.
Fletcher takes this true story and asks if it was right or wrong for Mrs. Bergmeier to do what she did. According to Fletcher, it was OK, because, in that situation, it was the loving thing for her to do. As long as we have relativism as a basis for morality, no problem. In fact, lying, stealing, adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, killing, can all be justified as long as it’s the loving thing to do in a given situation. As someone has written:
It all depends on where you are,
It all depends on when you are,
It all depends on what you feel,
It all depends on how you feel.
It all depends on how you’re raised,
It all depends on what is praised,
What’s right today is wrong tomorrow,
Joy in France, in England sorrow.
It all depends on point of view,
Australia or Timbuktu,
In Rome do as the Romans do.
If tastes just happen to agree,
Then you have morality.
But where there are conflicting trends,
It all depends, it all depends…
"What is moral is what I feel good after, and what is immoral is what I feel bad after."
- Ernest Hemingway, quoted in Newsweek
Most people wouldn’t admit that’s the way they make decisions, but there are plenty whose approach is exactly that. If something turns out well, if I feel pretty good about it, it was a good choice. If I feel bad later – if it doesn’t turn out making me feel good, then it’s a bad choice. It all depends…
What are we supposed to do? In real life situations, that happen every week, how are we supposed to decide what to do?
• A member of your church insists that you’re not a Christian and that you should be cast out of the church because you view certain movies.
• A member of your youth group has an opportunity to star in a musical that would require being in some off-color skits, and to refuse would really make him unpopular.
• A good Christian friend of yours is planning to marry an unbeliever and has just come to tell you the news.
• Your friend’s husband has been cheating on her. She suspects something and asks you if it’s true.
• You have a scholarship that will probably lead you into a big money career, but you’ve also felt a burden to enter vocational Christian work. It’s your senior year.
Are we all just too high strung about these kinds of questions? Too legalistic? Too caught up in do’s and don’ts? Paul said that in these “last days” these things would happen…
2 Timothy 3:1-7
…People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money,…disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, …without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--having a form of godliness but denying its power….always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth…
Is that what situation ethics is, or is it really a good thing? After all, it sounds Christian, doesn’t it? Place people above rules. Do the loving thing. Doesn’t the Bible say that God is love?
Yes, it does. It also says that God is more…
1. God is Love, and More!
Fletcher took 1 John 4:8, which said God is love, and then went on to say that only love is good. Does that mean that everything else about God is bad? Of course not! To reduce God to just love you have to trim away a whole lot of other attributes of God:
Deuteronomy 4:31 - For the LORD your God is a merciful God…
John 3:33 - …God is truthful.
1 John 1:5 - God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
Deuteronomy 7:9 - he is the faithful God…
James 1:17 - …the Father…does not change like shifting shadows.
Matthew 5:48 - …your heavenly Father is perfect.
Psalm 99:9 - …the LORD our God is holy.
2 Thessalonians 1:6 - God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you
Deuteronomy 4:24 - For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Psalm 7:11 - God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.
Nahum 1:2 - The LORD is a jealous and avenging God…
Yes, God is love, and just and righteous and merciful and much more. God never acted as if love was the only attribute He has, and He didn’t tell us to do that either! He didn’t tell us all of those other attributes about Himself so that we would live as if we never knew them. God is love, and more.
2. Love has been defined
Fletcher says we should always do the most loving thing, but he doesn’t tell how we’re supposed to know what that is. Have you noticed, what I consider to be the most loving thing may not be the same as what someone else thinks? Someone may think that most loving thing to do to a child with defects is to have him destroyed before he’s born. I disagree. So, who’s right? What’s right? According to situation ethics, it all depends on the situation. In fact, it all comes back to ME. If I’m the one who decides what’s the most loving thing to do, I’m actually dictating my own morality – regardless of what I know, what I’ve experienced, or how mature I am.
The Bible defines love for us – that it’s patient, kind, not envious, boastful, or proud, not rude, not self-seeking. The greatest love is the kind where a person lays down his life for his friends. We learn that perfect love casts out fear. We learn what love is, acc. to I Jn 3:16, because Jesus laid down His life for us. This tells me what love is and what it does. This answers for me the question about “what is the loving thing to do?” before it ever arises.
3. God’s word assumes there are absolutes
The unchanging God has given us an unchanging word with unchanging principles that are given in absolute terms. Words like “always” and “never” and “all” and “none” and “forever” and “whoever” and “everyone” don’t leave room for subjectivism. There are absolutes in God’s word. It doesn’t say, “In some situations, liars will be cast into the lake of fire…” “Depending on the situation, homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God…” “In most situations I will never leave you or forsake you.” God speaks in absolutes about Himself and what He wants from us.
4. Christianity can be consistently lived out
Like other alternative worldviews, situationism really can’t be lived out consistently when you take it to its conclusions.
For instance, it requires that you don’t go into a situation with a list of guidelines – only one: love. Everything else has to be decided at the moment. Let me take you to a pivotal scene in a movie called “The Legend of Bagger Vance.” It’s about a golf tournament, and a man who’s the underdog coming from behind to the last hole of the tournament where it’s all going to be decided. But a situation comes up, and the golfer, Rannulph Junuh, has a moral choice to make. Watch the people around him, including his 2 opponents, as he decides what to do.
(show movie clip – 1:45:47ff)
Now, what if Junuh had never given a thought to what’s right or wrong before? What if he had waited until that moment, until that situation, to begin thinking about what a person ought to do?
What if a soldier waited until he was scared and entering into the heat of battle to decide what he should do?
What if a couple on a date waited until the situation was overheated in the backseat of the car before they tried to decide what’s right to do?
What if a student, who wasn’t quite ready for a test and had someone offering to help him cheat, waited until that situation to begin thinking about what’s right?
Would they make the right choices? Would they be able to clearly discern what’s moral?
What if Joseph hadn’t decided to keep himself pure before Potiphar’s wife threw herself at him?
What if Daniel hadn’t decided beforehand that he would not defile himself with the King’s food?
What if the Apostles hadn’t already thought through the implications of civil disobedience when they were ordered to stop preaching in the name of Jesus? Would they have made the right choices? Would they have been able to clearly discern what was moral? Would they have thought to say, “We ought to obey God rather than men!”? No way.
Christianity can be lived consistently because it addresses life before the heat or confusion or fear or frustration or temptation of the moment. Situationism requires you to wait until it’s upon you. Be honest. When do you do your best thinking?
Situationism makes ME the focus of moral choices, not God. Sure, God has told me to do what’s loving, but I have to decide what’s the most loving thing to do. I can’t go to some outside source. I can’t take an opinion poll. It’s up to ME to figure it out.
It doesn’t matter if I’m a selfish twit. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know the circumstances around me. It doesn’t matter how limited I am in experience. It doesn’t matter if I’m 10 or 80. It doesn’t matter if I’m sober or drunk. I become the deciding factor in what’s right or wrong to do.
You know, when it comes to decisions about life and death and eternity, I don’t want to be the one whose judgment is the most important. Frankly, I don’t like being surrounded by people who think they’re opinion about right and wrong is more important than what God has said.
Situationism ignores God’s absolutes. It assumes that God didn’t intend for me to take the Bible and use its principles. But the NT is prescriptive in nature. It tells me what I need to do in order to please God. It tells me what I ought to do to reflect that I belong to the family of God. It tells me what I need in order to be in a right relationship with God. Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will do what I command.”
Conclusion
There is such a thing as absolute truth. There is a standard. There is a right and a wrong. There is a perfect measure for me to try to reach.
Ephesians 4:13-15 - …until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
Take away the standards, and there’s nothing but chaos. But when we learn to recognize them for what they are, we can live them out, together, into the beautiful picture that God intends.
(Let’s have the band come back up here and play with some standards and see what a difference it makes.)
Invitation:
God wants you to be a whole person. You’re not, if you’re outside of fellowship with Him.
He has given us a standard to live by. He has given us His perfect Son. The reason Jesus is the ultimate standard is because He lived perfectly. He was without sin. That means He always did what was right. It was always the most loving thing too. That’s why Jesus could die for you and for me and take away what we deserved. The punishment that brings us peace was upon Him and by His wounds we are healed.
