The Myth of Moral Neutrality

This past week Coach Brad Self suspended indefinitely one of his University of Kansas basketball players for his part in a brawl at the end of a game against Kansas State. The Big Twelve Conference swiftly suspended three other players for their part in the melee. The fight earned reprimands for both schools from the league. Conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby said, “This kind of behavior cannot be tolerated and these suspensions reflect the severity of last night’s events.”

Playing by the rules is something everybody understands. We know that there are boundaries and rules that apply to both sides. That’s what is behind the instant replay timeouts that interrupt football and basketball games these days. It’s a desire for the right call to reward the right players for playing the right way, according to the rules of the game.

This is true of life. It is impossible to play the game of basketball unless it is played according to the rules within the boundaries of the court. In the same way life is to be lived in cooperation with the moral standards which God has built into his universe. Morality is living life in agreement  with God. The game has to played within the boundaries.

Unfortunately, there are those who want to pretend there are no boundaries. A team of doctoral students went into the streets of Boston with clipboards and video cameras, interviewing people about their beliefs. One of the questions was, “How do you determine what’s right and wrong; are there moral absolutes?”

The answers they got reveal how postmodern views on morality have influenced our society. A college student was adamant: “I don’t think there’s such a thing as an absolute. I think society tries to give you their beliefs about what’s right and wrong, but really, you just have to bring it down to what is morally right for you.”

Another man on the street added, “I have to judge what’s right or wrong for me. No minister, no preacher, can tell me that.”

A young woman who was interviewed summed it up. “I don’t think there are moral absolutes. I think a person should just be able to do what they want and justify it because they want to do it. I don’t really think there is a right or wrong to anything” (Graham Johnston, Preaching to a Postmodern World).

Graham Johnston went on to say, “No wonder the tensions grow between the rights of the individual and the rights of society… . What gives any one person or any one system of morality the right to dictate to another? Someone put it this way, ‘When you lose the law of God, you end up with a society of lawyers.'”

Moral neutrality is a myth. All law is an imposition of someone’s morality. The ancient Greeks had a race in which a man would put one foot on the back of one horse and his other foot on the back of a second horse. He would then try to ride both of them standing up. This would work unless the horses separated. Then the rider had a decision to make. He had to choose one horse over the other.

American society is faced with a similar choice. We must choose to live by God’s moral agenda or we are left to fight it out among ourselves. The winners are the ones who can afford the best lawyers.

Moral neutrality is a myth. Everyone believes in standards of right and wrong. Charles Colson proved this with the following illustration. Suppose you see an elderly lady standing at a busy intersection. You have three options: ignore her, help her across the street, or shove her into the traffic. What is the right thing to do? We cannot say we do not know. Everyone knows what is right.

Where did that knowledge come from? It came from God. Philosopher Mortimer Adler once wrote, “More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.” If there is no God, or if his opinion does not matter, then  anything is acceptable. In that situation, sooner or later, society, families and individual lives dissolve into chaos.

Those basketball players in Kansas were penalized severely because they didn’t play by the rules. Playing the game of basketball according to the rules is pleasurable. Getting suspended is not. When we live life according to God’s loving commandments, we are able to live fully and joyfully, living in-bounds, playing by the rules, as we were designed to live, in the freedom of grace.

    –  Pastor Randy Faulkner

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