Here we go yet again. Another stellar example of a generation of lost youth as a result of our insistence that there are no absolute moral standards:
“Students call it an end-of-the-year tradition at the elite St. Paul’s School: Graduating seniors seek to hook up with younger classmates before departing the bucolic boarding school for college. But two days before this year’s graduation, authorities say, the spring dating rite known as the Senior Salute took a darker turn. An 18-year-old senior, Owen Labrie, allegedly led a 15-year-old freshman into a secluded area and sexually assaulted her as she pleaded ‘no.’ Investigators say Labrie may have been in a competition with friends to see how many conquests each could chalk up.”
Today, liberal educators and intellectuals insist that our children can make moral choices in a vacuum. Their position is that choices can be made without any absolute standards of right and wrong. The argument for situational ethics (any decision depends on the situation you are in) presents our youth with a shifting morality as the basis for making decisions. The fact of the matter is, however, the intelligentsia make these assertions without due consideration of the end results.
Abraham Lincoln said it this way: “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government of the next.”
And then there is this from Joseph Stalin: “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is 3-fold: its patriotism, its morality, its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”
The Supreme Court recently ruled that a hitherto illegal and immoral practice, homosexuality, has now become the law of the land in America. In the midst of heated debates today regarding abortion rights, transgenders, homosexual same-sex marriages, minor-attracted adults, and fetal tissue sales, arguments abound as to what should be considered the basis (if any) for making moral judgments.
Some time ago, an extremely well-educated, intelligent individual asserted in a discussion on morality and ethics that morality is completely separate from religious principle. I found this assertion interesting and even though I would substitute Bible for religious, I heartily disagree.
There are those who are adamant in their position that religion, based on biblical truths, has no place in the public square. They demand that all legal, social, political and economic decisions be made purely from the standpoint of reason, without regard to any standards of morality, which begs the question: Is there any standard for morality? The answer to that question depends on one’s definition of morality.
President George Washington, in his 1776 Farewell Speech, issued one of the gravest warnings in American history: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”
He continued: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education … reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
Absent religious principles (which, in Western civilization, are taken from the Judeo-Christian Bible), what, if any, are the standards of right and wrong? Who sets them? Are they merely a matter of opinion? And if so, whose? What, one could reasonably ask, is the foundation upon which we base our actions and order our society?
If one group believes it is acceptable to kill the unborn, while another group believes it is acceptable to kill those who kill the unborn, which group is right? Says who? If one group believes you should practice homosexuality and pedophilia openly and another group believes they should kill homosexuals and pedophiles, which group is wrong? Says who? This is the conundrum forced upon us by this so-called intellectual liberty.
If there are absolutely no absolutes, then there is no basis for our criminal justice system, legal system, oaths, business agreements, or any other form of contractual intercourse. Our national security, the ability of police to protect us, the pursuit of criminals, the prosecution of lawbreakers, our prosperity, and our very existence as a nation all rest upon the twin pillars of ethics and morality. Remove them from Western civilization, and we find ourselves on the brink of the same destruction that befell another of the greatest empires ever to exist, the Roman Empire.
Rome fell not from hordes of barbarians at the gates, but from the abandonment of its standards of ethics and morality, creating rot at its core, among them a weakened moral fiber, discontented, disenfranchised masses (mobs), decline in the traditional citizenry (illegal aliens), literature, amusements, and lifestyles portraying gratuitous sex and violence, and the decline of patriotism.
What, may I ask, is the foundation of ethics and morality – if not the Bible?
Ultimately, standards of morality, and absolutes, are indispensable for the continuation of our individual liberties and the free republic we enjoy. Let us pray that historians will not someday look back and say of America, as of ancient Rome:
“Professing themselves to be wise they became fools … and … as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind (a mind devoid of judgment) to do those things which were loathsome” (Romans 1:21-28).
Media wishing to interview Ben Kinchlow, please contact [email protected].
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