Sneaking this week’s Wobert Wednesday in just under the wire here, but Martin teed up just the sort of post he knows I can’t resist commenting on.

“I am beyond their timid, lying morality.”

So many directions I could go in with this quote, but I’ll start with this: What kind of morality is timid and lying? I submit that it’s no morality at all.

Francis and I would definitely take the position that no one gets to define their own morality. What is moral and good are absolutes. Where we get into the grey areas is the application. Thou shalt not murder/kill (depending on your preferred translation of the word). Absolute. Just war? Grey area.

Morality, real morality, is neither timid nor lying. Morality is bold. Why? Because morality takes a stand regarding our relationships with God and one another. Most in the Judeo-Christian world will recognize that the basis for most of the generally agreed upon laws are the 10 Commandments. At one time, these would form the basis for how every community governed itself. We still mostly use the ones after the God Commandments (Thou shalt have no other gods before me and so on) as the basis for Western laws. No killing, no stealing and no lying under oath. We’re kind of lax on the adultery one, and really, we’re kind of lax on almost all of them, really. The grey areas of application are expanding.

As Martin pointed out, maybe we never really agreed on a common morality? Nah. I think we did, but we’ve always liked our version of how it should be applied. Again, the grey area. Thou shalt not kill has exceptions beyond Just War now. Death penalty and abortion come to mind. If it’s absolute, do we differentiate between the innocent and the guilty? Some do, and that’s the grey area. Is it self-defense or is it no longer that when the guilty is locked up? Lots of ways to argue that.

But I digress a bit…

Whose morality will we choose? See, that’s the problem with moral relativism and the problem with flat-out atheistic views on morals. There must be a standard chosen. That’s what morality IS. It’s a standard. A standard of behavior. If it’s all relative, everything has equal weight. If everything has equal weight, then nothing is more moral than anything else. Meaning I can kill you and take your hot wife away from you (thereby breaking two of the 10 Commandments by the way). Who’s to say that’s not OK if it’s all relative?

But Robert… Robert! It’s okay as long as I’m not hurting anyone!!! You’re so mean!!!!

Yeah. So, you? You’re the problem. Define “hurting someone.” Seriously. Do it. Pain? Physical or mental? Financial ruin? What about accumulating so much wealth that you could never spend? What about letting you do heroin? What about crack? What about making pornography? What about saying mean things about people? What about thinking mean things? Heck define mean. What about not paying your taxes, because you view it as theft? What about voting for someone you don’t like? What about disagreeing with me? What about letting my grass grow wild? What about playing my loud acid rock at level 100 at 6am every Saturday and Sunday morning? What about taking the last roll of toilet paper on the shelf in a pandemic? Even if you only have half a roll at home at the moment? Maybe someone else doesn’t have ANY?

I can come up with ways that many of the things above harm society collectively. I can also show that several of the things on that list are just total crap, but many will call them EEEE-VILLLL. That’s part of the problem today as we’ve talked about on the show many times, disagreements now about good and evil. Preferring one candidate or policy over another now has eschatological significance, because if you disagree with me, who is all righteous and good (because I define my own morality), then you are utterly EVIL and must be destroyed.

Which then takes us back to somebody’s gotta pick a standard. And I then ask again, whose standard?

This is why I get so pessimistic about the Republic in general. Great civilizations tend to go downhill when there’s no longer a common culture which is not just what music and entertainment we all like. It’s part of it, but morality is also a big part of it, maybe even the biggest part of it. We certainly have a fracturing culture in the West. It may be irreparably fractured.

If it is, then Marty can order me a hoodie too, because I too am beyond their timid, lying morality. Meaning I still have one.