It has recently been reported in a number of organs that in 1944 New York City had 150,000 more inhabitants than it does today (1994), 50 years later. 50 years ago, 97% of all children were born into two-parent families; today, that is true of only 50%. In 1944, 40 people died of gunshot wounds; today, the same figure is reached every ten days. 50 years ago, 100 babies were sent to orphanages; today, thousands of babies are abandoned, some merely dropped into trash cans.
Such statistics, shocking as they are, are but the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Today, the cold war is over, the economy is in reasonable good shape, inflation is under control, the unemployment rate is at an acceptable level and still declining - and America is undergoing profound malaise. The reason is partly fear: fear of what drugs are doing, fear of crime, fear of declining standards, fear of the future. At heart there is a moral vacuum, a restlessness that betrays the loss of vision. The outcome is documented in book after book.
Hans Kung has put his finger on at least one of the fundamental problems: 'For our grandparents, religion - Christianity - was still a matter of personal conviction. For our parents it remained at least a matter of tradition and good manners. For their emancipated sons and daughters, however, it is becoming increasingly a matter of the past that is no longer binding - passe et depasse, passed away and obsolete. Moreover, there are parents today who observe with perplexity that morality has vanished together with religion, as Nietzsche predicted. For, as is becoming increasingly clear, it is not so easy to justify ethics purely rationally, by reason alone, as Sigmund Freud and others wanted to do; we cannot explain why freedom under any circumstances is supposed to be better than oppression, justice better than avarice, non-violence better than violence, love better than hate, peace better than war. Or more brutally: why, if it is to our advantage or contributes to our personal happiness, we may not lie, steal, commit adultery, or murder; or even why we should simply be 'fair'.
Well said! But the issues as still more complex. In a highly pluralistic society (both empirically and philosophically) we must steadfastly reject 'the philosophically and sociologically-impossible notion that in a pluralistic society the state can and should be neutral on all matters of morality about which there is disagreement among the people, lest the values of some be imposed on others. This notion, a half-truth at best, leads to the establishment of the beliefs of the most-secularised, materialistic and hedonistic elements of the population as normative,' as Canavan says. Canavan's point is that neutrality simply does not exist. He cites the case of Belmont vs. Belmont. A divorced and remarried father applied to the New Jersey Superior Court for custody of his children on the ground that his former wife, who held custody of them, was living in a lesbian relationship that he judged deleterious to the well-being of the children. The court 'found him to be suitable as a custodian in all respects', but denied his application anyway. It ruled that 'the mother is not to be denied custody merely because of her sexual orientation. Her sexual preference and her living arrangements with her lover are only two of the many factors to be examined in determining the best interest of the children'. As Canavan observes: 'In so ruling, the court committed the State of New Jersey to the proposition that a homosexual union is, or can be, as acceptable as one in which to raise children as is a heterosexual one dignified by matrimony. This is something more than a decision to leave sexual preferences up to individuals. It is a public stand in regard to the institution of the family.
'The point is that there is inescapably a public morality - a good one or a bad one - in the sense of some set or other of basic norms, in the light of which the public make policy decisions . . . (This is not) the advent of a truly neutral state, but the replacement of one view of man, and the ethic and the legal norms based on it, by another view.'
I offer two final observations.
First, if under the impact of pluralism public morality is declining, the continued drift toward privatised religion is a fertile soil in which to water the rapidly-multiplying and universally-encroaching roots of self-esteem. A few see the danger, but not many. The drive to sort out life's problems and my happiness along the axis of self-esteem banishes truth questions, makes feeling good about yourself more important than having a clear conscience, insists that your opinion of yourself is more important than God's opinion, and fails to deal with objective guilt. In the Scriptures, a right knowledge of yourself is contingent on having in the first place a right knowledge of God.
Second, one particular field of ethics, bioethics, is mushrooming on every hand, owing in large measure to the advancing medical and especially genetic technology. But bioethics does not have a hope of gaining decisions beyond the pragmatic unless there is established a firm basis in who and what human beings are in God's universe. Euthanasia, abortion, cloning, genetic engineering, allocation of resources - none of these can possible escape relegation to the domain of private opinion unless convincing arguments are advanced that sweep across large numbers of people.
What stance, then, should Christians adopt? What kind of mission should we pursue?
Used by permission of IVP/Apollos.
Don Carson
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