From Moral Relativism to Reality Relativism

For the last few decades, our culture has warmly embraced moral relativism, where right and wrong are determined based on our feelings, and so there is nothing absolute. Morality is entirely relative, which means that you can have your morality and I can have mine.

Today, we have moved from moral relativism to reality relativism, where not only morality but everything is determined by how I feel, so you can have your reality and I can have mine.

This is not a matter of a dangerous descent down a slippery slope. This is a matter of falling off the cliff entirely.

Call it reality free-fall – or perhaps, reality free-for-all, since anything goes these days.

Name the sinful behavior, whatever it is – as long as it allegedly doesn’t hurt anyone, which also becomes a relative concept – and who are you to judge? From porn to drugs to adultery to stealing, we can find justification for our actions.

In the words of Scripture, “All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit” (Proverbs 16:2).

When I was shooting heroin (1970-71) I began to hang out with junkies, and they were a very different breed than my hippie friends. (Some of the hippies wouldn’t do chemically-based drugs, since that was not “natural,” which is yet another aspect of moral relativism, but that’s another story.)

One junkie was telling me about a friend of his who was so morally bankrupt that he would steal money from his own grandmother.

I said to him, “But didn’t you tell me you stole money from your own mother?”

He replied, “Yes, I did, but I would never steal money from my grandmother!” (To my shame, I had stolen money from my own father.)

This confirms what Ravi Zacharias observed, namely, “With no fact as a referent, what is normative is purely a matter of preference.”

Well, we have taken that concept one step further today: “With no fact as a referent, what is real is purely a matter of perception.”

Who’s to say Bruce Jenner isn’t a woman. (As someone tweeted me today, “Her name is Caitlin.”)

Who’s to say that people suffering from species dysphoria are not actually part animal? (A technical description of this disorder is “the sense of being in the wrong [species] body... a desire to be an animal.”)

Why must people be confined by the “gender binary” of male-female? Why, for that matter, must they be confined by the confining boundaries of skin color, ethnicity, or even humanity? Why not transcend humanity and simply be who you really are, which means, whoever you imagine yourself to be?

I recently had a conversation with a very sweet, non-religious lesbian caller to my radio show. She insisted that gender dysphoria (meaning, transgender identity) was different than species dysphoria, just as others have told me that gender dysphoria was different than Body Identity Integrity Disorder (sometimes called “amputee identity disorder,” or, more recently, being “transabled”), and still others have argued strongly that being transgender is different than being “transracial.”

Yet all the arguments are based on perception vs. reality (with the exception of those who are born with biological or genetic abnormalities), and we are simply told that Bruce Jenner really is a woman (after all, transgender is the “t” of the LGBT movement) whereas Rachel Dolezal really isn’t black. Based on what objective criteria? None.

I’m convinced that the LGBT war on gender will undermine itself, being part of the larger war on reality, and that soon enough, sanity will prevail in our society.

That being said, this is an issue I would gladly drop for now if not for the fact that it continues to shout at us day and night, calling for a response, the latest example being the outrageous interview with Rachel Dolezal on NBC’s Nightly News.

I was so grieved by her comments during the interview that I prepared a special video response, which you can watch here.

R. C. Sproul once wrote, “I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.”

In the same way, there’s not much hope for a world in which all reality becomes relative, but when we cut ourselves off from the one true God, the ultimate source of reality, we really do lose our bearings.

The community fellowships that used to be called mainline churches embraced relativism decades ago. They ignored the following:

"But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one." - Matthew 5:37

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20

"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; [What? No middle ground of relativity? - ed.] therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;" - Deuteronomy 30:19

"Seek good and not evil, that you may live; And thus may the LORD God of hosts be with you, Just as you have said! Hate evil, love good, And establish justice in the gate!" - Amos 5:14

Along with the "relativism" came the so-called "progressive" movement, a movement which has dominated what came to be known as "education" in America.

Referenced below is a document from the year 1886,

"Poison drops in the federal Senate: the school question from a parental and non-sectarian stand-point: an epitome of the educational views of Zach. Montgomery on account of which views a stubborn but fruitless effort was made in the United States Senate to prevent his confirmation as Assistant Attorney General (1886)."

Readers here may be familiar with it, but if you haven't seen it in a while, Montgomery's conclusions about the consequences of what he aptly called the "anti-parental" system of education being pursued by legislators of the day were shocking for that time; and his words are even more pertinent today.

Looking back, we can see the date coincides with the beginnings of the "liberal," now "progressive" movement which dominates the Administration, media, and much of academia today.

Montgomery's work bears a certain relationship and provides historical background for the subject of this thread.

Prior to Montgomery's "Poison Drops. . . " publication, he had been passed over by the U. S. Senate for an important federal government post as a result of his outspoken, well-documented, well-informed and principled ideas on the subject of what was and continues to be labeled as "public" education.

Now, almost one hundred thirty years later, his work proves to be a valuable piece of commentary. His statistical analysis from actual government records to that date, as well as his philosophical analysis of then-actual and what he saw as potential future societal consequences of such a system are remarkable.

The complete work can be read here

Sample excerpts:

"My countrymen, disguise the fact as we may, there is in this country to-day, and in both the political Parties, an element which is ripe for a centralized despotism. There are men and corporations of vast wealth, whose iron grasp spans this whole continent, and who find it more difficult and more expensive to corrupt thirty odd State Legislatures than one Federal Congress. It was said of Nero of old that he wished the Roman people had but one head, so that he might cut it off at a single blow. And so it is with those moneyed kings who would rule this country through bribery, fraud, and intimidation.
"It is easy to see how, with all the powers of government centered at Washington in one Federal head, they could at a single stroke put an end to American liberty.
"But they well understand that before striking this blow the minds of the people must be prepared to receive it. And what surer or safer preparation could possibly be made than is now being made, by indoctrinating the minds of the rising generation with the idea that ours is already a consolidated government ; that the States of the Union have no sovereignty which is not subordinate to the will and pleasure of the Federal head, and that our Constitution is the mere creature of custom, and may therefore be legally altered or abolished by custom.
"Such are a few of the pernicious and poisonous doctrines which ten millions of American children are today drinking in with the very definitions of the words they are compelled to study. And yet the man who dares to utter a word of warning of the approaching danger is stigmatized as an enemy to education and unfit to be mentioned as a candidate for the humblest office.
"Be it so. Viewing this great question as I do, not for all the offices in the gift of the American people would I shrink from an open and candid avowal of my sentiments. If I have learned anything from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustaining solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices and honors in the gift of man."

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