John Reisinger

Nearly forty years ago our society began to be deliberately controlled by what was called the 'new morality'. We have had more than sufficient time to evaluate its effect on the lives of our citizens. Someone has said the new morality is neither new nor moral. Regardless of how correct such an observation may be, it is very dangerous to just lightly dismiss the new morality with a joke. Like it or not, the new morality has influenced our society from top to bottom. It controls the conduct of most of our teenagers as well as adults. The Christian must honestly see the new morality for what it really is, an avowed enemy of not only the gospel, but of society itself. However, we must do more than realize it is an enemy, we must understand how it manifests itself before we can effectively fight it.

SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

First of all, it is important to realize that the new morality is not merely a change in society's attitude toward sex. Many of the very people who are horrified at pornography, free love, early sex education in school, etc. are basing their own personal, social, and business lives on the same basic premises as the sex peddlers. The new morality not only controls the philosophy of Playboy magazine, it virtually controls the way our whole society thinks. The foreign policy of the U.S.A., educational philosophy, labor, business, law, medicine, etc. all use new morality reasoning in their decisions. We must see that our society has adopted a 'new way' to look at all morality. A new method of forming ethical values and moral opinions has replaced the Judeo-Christian method. A Certified Public Accountant recently told me how shocked he has been in the last five years by the basic change in attitude toward honesty and integrity in men whose books he has kept for the last thirty years. Many of these men feel just as honest now as they did ten years ago, even though they currently do things they used to condemn.

NO ABSOLUTES

Secondly, it must be seen that the new morality is a total rejection of all absolutes in the realm of morals and ethics. Men used to think, believe, and act in terms of absolutes: there was a thesis and its opposite was an antithesis. Actions, affections, and ideas were either one or the other. These could be specifically and separately defined, and once you established the one you automatically knew that its opposite was equally clearly defined as being completely contrary to the first. For instance, there was such a concept as 'good' and its opposite was 'bad.' There were 'white areas' and 'black areas' and they could be defined, recognized, catalogued, and taught. What was bad could not possibly be good, white was always white, and its opposite was always black. Each thesis had an antithesis, until a philosopher came along and said that was the wrong way to think. We are not to think in terms of thesis and antithesis because everything is really a synthesis. There is no one-hundred per cent pure white or black, there are only shades of dark and light grays. Nothing is always good and never bad. It may be so ninety-nine times out of one-hundred, but under some circumstances and in certain situations what is usually bad may become good.

Let me emphasize the words 'Total rejection of all absolutes in the realm of morals and ethics.' The new morality is not kidding. They mean exactly what they say. Nothing, not even one single thing, is always right or always wrong. Under the right circumstances the worst evil may become right. Right and wrong are no longer categories into which particulars can be placed. The 'old' way affirmed that there were such concepts as right and wrong, and what made the specific thing right or wrong was the very nature of the thing itself. It did not matter under the old construct, who the man and woman were, or what excuse or rationalization they used, a couple who committed adultery did wrong. You did not have to inquire into the circumstances or their motives before you could label their action wrong. Circumstances and motives had nothing whatsoever to do with whether or when adultery was right or wrong. It was always wrong, and it was always wrong because adultery itself is wrong. That was considered a moral absolute. God's Word said the very nature of adultery is such that it is a sin to commit it. No situation can ever make adultery right. Circumstances and motives cannot make right what God himself says is wrong. It is God's commandments, not the situation, that make things right or wrong.

We have now used the magic word, "situation." According to the new morality, it is the situation and all of the circumstances and factors involved in any given situation that determines what should or should not be done. Different situations call for different responses and even the same situation at another time may call for an exact opposite action. All of this may sound very good, and in some areas of life it may be true, but what the new morality is saying is this: (1) there is no objective (outside of me) rule or standard that tells me what is right or wrong. Instead, the specific situation and its ingredients dictate what should be done; and (2) since the person 'in the situation' is really the one who is in the best position to judge and is ultimately responsible for his act, he must decide what is right or wrong for him in this particular situation. Nobody can decide that for him. This is the 'new' way to make all moral and ethical judgments. This is why it is called "situational ethics." The old way was to take the moral commandments of Moses literally, but after all, (we are now asked with scorn) how could an old man, six-thousand years ago, set down some simple rules of conduct that could possibly govern men and women living in the midst of the many complexities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?

WHAT IS AN ABSOLUTE?

Webster defines absolute as meaning 'Positive; certain... Free from limit, restriction, or qualification... Determined in itself and not by anything outside itself; not dependent or relative. . ." Christian morality is based on God's "thou shalt and thou shalt nots." We believe every moral commandments of God is an absolute. They are right because God gave them. They are not dependent on a certain set of circumstances to make them right and nothing, and we mean absolutely nothing, can ever make disobeying them right.

As mentioned above, the new moralist completely rejects the historic Judeo-Christian approach to knowing what is right and wrong. Nothing is absolutely positive or certain, everything is dependent on the specific circumstances and the motives involved. The rightness or wrongness is not determined by the act itself, but by looking past the act to the circumstances existing at the time. Another name for the new morality is situational ethics. The old way looked at the act to discover if it was the right thing to do. The new way looks at each given situation and sees what the right thing is to do. The old system asserted that some acts could be put on a list and that list labeled "this is right and will always, under all circumstances, be right." The items on the list were absolute. The new approach says there is no list. The situation, not the nature of the act, determines what is right and wrong, and since no two situations are identical, no lists can be made. Morality cannot be reduced to a list of right and wrongs.

I hope I have not wearied the 'learned' readers, but I want the 'man in the pew' to see what has happened. The new morality is not just loose sex. It is a shift of foundations. It is a different way of arriving at any and all moral and ethical judgment. It is not a matter of making a longer or shorter list of rights and wrongs. It is shifting the authority for establishing right and wrong from the Word of God to the individual himself. It is directing man to look away from God's Holy Word to the "situation" to decide what moral response should or should not be given. 'You and I as individuals are responsible for every action. We are in the situation, we are accountable, and therefore we must have the courage to do the right that this situation demands.' You and I, not the Bible, decide what is right and wrong for us.

I remember the time a newspaper carried a classic illustration of the utter vanity of the new morality applied to real life. An unmarried female member of the Irish Parliament became pregnant. She would not have an abortion because it was against her conscience. She did not say it was wrong. She made it very clear that it was entirely up to the individual in that particular situation. For her, there could be no abortion. For someone else, it would be fine if that is what they believe. When asked about the fact that she was unmarried and pregnant, she replied that it was her own personal business. A person's moral convictions are their own and no one else has a right to criticize. But didn't she feel that as a Member of Parliament her morals were of public concern? "Absolutely not!" (It always amuses me how dogmatic the situationalists are when they express the absolute certainty that there are no absolutes.) "In Parliament, I represent a political philosophy, but my personal morals are my own business." I wonder how she would vote on a bill to allow abortions. Or better yet, would she be duty bound to cosponsor a bill advocating pre-marital sex? Providing, of course, you hold the right political philosophy.

The new moralist must have some kind of a yardstick to evaluate the particular situation and discover what he should or should not do. He rejects the idea of looking to God's Word. He will not look outside of himself and the situation for help. So what is to guide him? The one absolute is love. Do the loving thing. The loving thing is the right thing. It is not loving because it is right (there is no such thing as an absolute or ultimate 'right'), but it is right only because love says that is what should be done in that situation. The 'love' that told the Irish woman and her unknown friend what was right for them was a big liar, and no one will feel its effect more than the child. The Bible has another word for that kind of love. If this were not so tragic it would be funny.

I was playing golf with a good friend one summer and we were discussing the new morality. We stopped at the end of nine holes and I bought a Coke and a pack of crackers. I went to the wash room and upon returning discovered half of my Coke and crackers were gone. I said, 'Brother, did you steal my Coke and crackers?" My friend said, "No, John, I did not steal them. You are gaining too much weight, and for your own good, and because I love you, I helped you by relieving you of the temptation." I said, "Brother, I am going to need a policeman to protect me from your love." Right now, I am sure many of my readers can think of several instances where our "loving and liberal" government is "helping" us poor stupid people who cannot think for ourselves.

WHERE AND HOW DID IT ALL START?

The next step that is important is to trace the new morality to its source. There is no doubt that it goes back to the devil himself in the Garden of Eden. Eve's whole approach to 'should I or should I not' was situational. She rejected a clear objective commandment. (We will say more about this later). It is not enough to go back to Eve and Eden; we must see the immediate steps that led to the present condition. The new morality did not take over our society in a week or month, nor did people decide by a sudden impulse to cast off God's Word as the rule of life.

Basically, the new morality is the 'new theology' applied to life and living. For years the liberal pulpit has proclaimed that it doesn't matter what a man believes as long as he is sincere. Creeds, doctrines and propositional truth were despised and an individual's sincerity was made the test of truth. When "it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere" is applied to a specific life situation it becomes "it doesn't matter what you do as long as you are sincere." The more popular way to say it is, "Just as long as you do it out of love." I am sure you can see that the present generation is putting into practice the theology and principles of the 'as long as you are sincere' preachers.

I am sure some of my readers will wince when I say this, but I am going to say it anyway. 'It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere' is the most asinine statement anybody ever made. Sincerity of belief has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of truth. A lie is a lie even if you believe it with all your heart, and a truth is true even if you vehemently reject it. All of the sincerity in the world will not turn a lie into a truth and all the insincerity in the world will not make a truth become a lie. A thing is true or false simply because it is true or false! I hope you can now see the reason that I was so belligerent above is the fact that nobody will use this kind of reasoning in any area except religious doctrine. Can you imagine a banker telling investors that if they are really "sincere and believe wholeheartedly" they can't go wrong in choosing stocks? Could a surgeon, an engineer, a chemist or anyone in any other scientific field substitute sincerity for concrete facts? The finest refutation of this utter nonsense I have ever read is found in Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's book, Truth Unchanged Unchanging. I urge you to read the whole book. (The chapter on 'Sincerity' is printed in this issue Sound of Grace on page 5).

THE RESULT—-UTTER CHAOS

The utter chaos and confusion in our present society is the natural and certain fruit of turning from God's absolutes to the individual's sincerity as the basis of moral judgment. If there is no clear revelation of truth to show me what I must believe, then there is no sure moral direction to tell me how I must act. If God's Word is rejected as the absolute, then it is only a question of time until "every man does that which is right in his own eyes." The Bible calls that the sin of rebellion and the new morality calls it the duty of mature enlightened man.

Can you imagine what would happen if we applied the philosophy of the new morality to our highways? Who says it is always right to stop at certain corners? Are not speeding limits, curve signs, lights and painted lines an insult to our ability and freedom? After all, we are mature people ('come of age' is the educated phrase) and it is our automobile. Why can't we be the judge of what speed is safe, etc? All we need is to always act out of love for our neighbor and the childish, inhibiting rules and signs can be eliminated. Of course, we laugh. However, the moral, physical and mental wrecks among our society in general and youth in particular are no joke; and the 'smart people' who preach the new morality bear a large share of the blame. They took down the signs. They turned every man loose to 'do his own thing' in the area of morals.

I hope many young people read this article. However, I also hope a legalist with his head in the sand pile of unreality doesn't say, "Here, read this. It proves our generation was right and yours is wrong." I am sorry, but that "just ain't so." In fact, a major difficulty in fighting the new morality is the necessity of showing that the old morality was just as wrong as the new morality. Yes, you read it right. The old morality was no more built on the Bible than is the new. Both the old and the new morality departed from God's Word. The church of yesterday very often misrepresented the truth of Scripture, In fact, it must be honestly admitted that some of the new morality is a simply just rebellion against some of the errors of the old morality. Let me quickly spell out what I mean. Please, no red hot letters to the editor until you finish the article.

The old morality was as right as it could be when it accepted God's revealed commandments as moral absolutes. Its adherents were right in teaching their children "this is right and that is a sin." They are to be commended for refusing to bow to public pressure or popular opinion to make the clear commandments of God relative to particular situations. However, they are not to be commended for adding the commandments of men to the commandments of God. It is tragic that many sincere people believed and taught that every situation in life could be reduced to an absolute. Not only were God's Ten Commandments absolute and binding upon every person, but every single rule of each particular church group was also 'what the Bible taught.' The new moralist goes to the other extreme and sees no absolutes—everything is situational. The old moralist saw no relatives — everything was an absolute. Both missed the true message of Scripture. The old preached law for its own sake and was often 'loveless law.' The new preaches love for its own sake and it is 'lawless love.' Both the old and new departed from God's revealed Word%they just departed in two different directions. One heads for legalism and the other for anti-nomianism. Both are illustrations of the old saying, "a half truth is really no truth."

Let me illustrate what I mean. I have met and counseled hundreds of people, young and old, who were raised in 'good Christian homes and churches'. The only preaching they remembered was that the "Bible teaches that you should not dance, drink, smoke, attend movies or play cards." Some of the really spiritual and separated churches added lipstick, nail polish, hair curlers and a few other weighty matters to the list. The person was taught the following:

(1) There are two kinds of people in the world. They are the 'saved' and the 'lost.' We say, "Amen! Right on!" (2) It is a very simple matter to tell which list a person should be on. The 'saved' people don't smoke, drink, dance, attend the movies or play cards. We will save our comment.

A young son from one of these 'good Christian homes' goes off to high school and has an English teacher who takes a personal interest in him. The teacher is one of many 'good and nice' people one meets in life. He encourages the young son. He listens to his problems. He is the first adult who ever made the boy feel any personal significance. Naturally, this young son will grow very fond of such a teacher-and why shouldn't he? Young son may even say, "I want to be a teacher like him and help others as he has helped me." So far, so good. Ah, but what happens when the young son and father are out shopping on Saturday and bump into the 'good and nice' teacher, and teacher is smoking a pipe. Riveted in the boy's mind is (1) 'two kinds of people' and (2) 'how to tell the difference.' He thinks of all the harsh and nasty arguments he has heard at home or in the church. He remembers the preacher preaching about hell and five minutes after the sermon joking about football. He is forced, by the simplistic standard given him, to expect the pavement to open up and swallow the wicked sinner into hell. Right there in front of the department store that boy may 'reject Christianity' because he wants to be like the 'good and nice' teacher he likes and admires. If you think I am building a straw dummy or trying to be sarcastic, let me assure you, I am not. Let me also add that I do not smoke, drink, dance, attend movies or play cards and have no intention of starting. However, I do not refrain from those things because they are five commandments God forgot to put in the Bible and so the church added them on its own. I refrain from one for health reasons, from two primarily for reasons of time, from one for the sake of my testimony, and from one because of my brethren's conscience. I'll let you try to put each in its respective category.

In the next article we want to show how both the old and new morality departed from Scripture in specific areas. We will see that the following problems, among others, are the opposite extremes of balanced biblical truth.

(1) The old morality recognized man as a spiritual being, but considered the body and physical appetites as sinful. It emphasized suppression. The new acknowledges the physical and psychological needs and says, "Your body isn't evil, it's beautiful. Don't suppress, you must express. Let it all hang out." Neither the old nor the new can correctly answer the question, "Who am I?"

(2) The old exalted the institution above the individual and the new would destroy the institution in the name of personal freedom.

(3) The old denied the truth of Christian Liberty and the new despises Christian Law.

Copyright 2004 John G. Reisinger