August 12, 2025 • 33 mins
Are right and wrong the same for everyone, or do they depend on personal or cultural views? Pastors Louis, Zack, and Alex discuss the history and implications of moral relativism and how we see it playing out in our lives today.
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Episode Transcript
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Zack (00:14):
Welcome to the very first episode of Between Sundays.
It's a podcast of CityAwakening Church.
My name is Zach Casey and I'mthe executive pastor at City
Awakening.
And today I'm joined by ourlead pastor, Louis Tamboro, and
our community pastor, AlexRobinson.
Each week, each episode of thepodcast, we'll be bringing in
different members of our team todiscuss topics that we believe
(00:37):
can be helpful to our churchmembers or really anyone who
might be listening.
And the idea is for us just tohave some honest,
behind-the-scenes conversationsWe'll be right back.
around those topics.
(01:01):
So you know our vision at CityAwakening is to see both
skeptics and believers seektruth, find joy in community,
and live with purpose in ourcity.
So we thought it'd be perfectto launch this podcast in
conjunction with our Augustteaching series, Kingdom
Thinking, where each week we'regoing to be hitting a culturally
relevant and maybe evencontroversial question that we
(01:22):
are all facing in our day-to-daylives.
And really there's so much moreto cover than a 30 or 40 minute
message allows for, and so thisplatform Thank you.
What's happening outside?
(01:49):
We don't have a professionalstudio, so you're going to pick
up some of those sounds today,probably.
But we're going to jump in withour very first topic today, and
that is, are right and wrongthe same for everyone, or do
they depend on personal andcultural views?
This is really a question ofmoral relativity versus moral
truth or moral absolutes.
(02:10):
And normally, I don't plan todo this much talking in each
episode at the beginning of thepodcast, so I apologize for the
longer intro.
But I do think it's importanttoday with this topic,
especially to give some contextfor the discussion and some
background information that canbe helpful.
And so I want to start just byus defining some terms that
we're going to be talking about,the first being moral truth.
(02:33):
And we can break that down intothe two terms, morals and
truth.
If morals refer to what isright and wrong, what separates
good behavior from evilbehavior?
Morals are not an explanationof how things necessarily are,
but a description of how thingsought to be, which implies a
level of obligation because it'swhat's right and good.
(02:54):
Truth is how we define reality.
It's what separates what's realand what's not real.
So if morals are how things areought to be, truth is how
things really are.
So when we combine those twoterms, take moral and truth, it
combines those ideas into what'sright and good and actual and
(03:15):
real.
So an example of this would besomething like human life is
valuable.
That's a truth, and thereforeit should be protected.
That's a moral.
And so it's a moral truth.
We take that further into theidea of moral absolutes.
So we would define that by,it's the idea that moral truths
apply to everyone.
(03:35):
It's true for everyone nomatter what.
So again, human life isvaluable and should be
protected.
That, we believe, applies toall people, not just a certain
group of people.
It's a moral absolute.
We compare that with moralrelativism, which is something
you'll hear us refer to in thepodcast.
That is the view that moralityis subjective or culturally
(03:56):
dependent And so therefore,there's not moral absolutes.
Those ideas of what is rightand true and good are relative
to the individual and theircontext and space and time, and
so therefore don't apply toeveryone.
All right, so as we talk aboutthis idea of moral absolutes and
moral relativism, do you thinkthat this is a new issue, or if
(04:19):
not, how has it changed in morerecent times?
Louis (04:24):
Yeah, I don't believe this is a new issue.
I believe this is somethingthat's been around for quite
some time.
You go back to like Greco-Romansocieties and you will see that
people were, the elites oftheir cultures were creating
laws that would basically fittheir own relativistic views of
what would bring them thegreatest pleasure in life.
And so the difference I thinkbetween then and now is that now
(04:48):
we live, at least in WesternAmerican culture, a society
where it's a bit moredemocratic.
So we have the opportunity tovote for certain things, certain
laws and stuff like that.
And we have a bit more freedomthan what maybe others had in
Greco-Roman societies.
And so I would also say,though, that some of the
technology has changed.
(05:08):
So even though the root isstill there, as far as it's all
about whatever makes me feelgood, whatever's going to bring
me the greatest pleasure, maybesome of those things have
shifted in the varieties that wehave or the extent of what we
have, like the advancement oftechnology.
So we have more opportunitiesnow to try and seek other
pleasures that maybe they didn'thave back then when they didn't
(05:30):
have the technology that wehave today.
day and I think this evenreally goes all the way back to
the fall we saw this issue goingon since they are all
throughout biblical history wecan see over and over again
where people are really seekingtheir own pleasure for
themselves instead of reallytrying to find their greatest
pleasures in God and trustingGod to determine what's going to
bring them the greatest joytheir creator who created them
(05:53):
knowing them better than theyknow themselves and what's going
to bring them the greaterpleasure in life better than
they do because he created themhe wired their DNA but we
rebelled against that since thebeginning of creation, thinking
we know better than God.
Alex (06:07):
Yeah, I mean, you see it all throughout.
You see it all throughoutscripture.
And I think throughout history,you just see, like anything,
just...
the rationale for why we sin orwhy we rebel against God
changes through time, but itends up in the same place.
So you just see differentmovements throughout the
modernist movement or thepostmodernists.
And you just see, they get todifferent things and we'll
(06:29):
probably talk about some of thatmore as we go.
But yeah, I mean, this is not,this is not a new thing.
We just see, we're seeing, ourcurrent day's version of it now.
And so we'll see how that kindof plays out in life.
Zack (06:43):
Yeah, for sure.
I did a quick search on thisbecause I wasn't super familiar
with how the history of it brokedown.
I knew that it had always kindof been there, but it's
interesting to go back and see.
You know how, of course, itgoes back to biblical times and
Genesis and the garden, as youguys mentioned, but from a
recorded history standpoint, itkind of starts with Plato and,
you know, around 400, he lived400 to 300 BC area.
(07:06):
And so, yeah.
He kind of argued for moraltruths that are objective and
eternal.
And then that was met by somecontroversy or pushback by the
sophist who challenged Plato bysaying that man is the measure
of all things.
And so this was really kind ofthe beginning of implying that
morality is subjective.
(07:26):
And from a philosophicalstandpoint and introduced the
idea of moral relativism.
So as you move through time,you kind of see that pattern
continue into medieval thinkingwith Augustine and Aquinas, who
believe that moral truths areuniversal because they reflect
the will and nature of God.
So this is back to kind of amore biblical viewpoint.
(07:49):
But then in the Enlightenmentmovement, you have guys like
Immanuel Kant, who sought asecular, rational basis for
morality.
In other words, moral laws areuniversal, but it was
discoverable through reasonalone.
It wasn't based on a religionor religious beliefs.
And then as you get into moreof the postmodernism in the 20th
(08:12):
century, people begin toquestion all claims to universal
truth.
Morality is seen more as acultural construct shaped by
power, language, and evenhistorical context.
So there's definitely more ofan individualistic idea there.
And then more contemporarydebates, which we'll talk a
little bit about later, thatbegin to challenge us.
And almost kind of a shift backto a more universal way of
(08:38):
thinking, but again, notnecessarily based on biblical
principles.
worldview.
And so it's interesting tothink about that this has
existed throughout time, andthere's been both sides of the
argument, although not alwaysbased on a Christian or biblical
worldview in that way.
So as we think about that, whatare some of the more prominent
issues that you see today in ourmore postmodern, post-Christian
(09:03):
time that reflect this moralrelativism rather than moral
absolutes?
Louis (09:09):
I think, I mean, we see the whole debate over gender and
identity being one of thoseissues that's prominent.
We see issues over marriagebeing one of those, including
also sexuality, LGBTQ plus orheterosexuality, you know, is
one good, is one not, is oneright, is one wrong.
(09:30):
We see the transgender issuecoming up as well.
So we're seeing this play outin so many different within our
culture right now, even beyondthose.
Alex (09:42):
Well, yeah, and I think those play on, like I said, you
get at this through lots ofdifferent ways.
Those play on kind of the truerelativism, individualism is the
definer of what is right.
So in a lot of those issues,you'll hear people say, well, if
what they're doing isn'thurting anybody and they're
choosing to do it, Then whycould you say it's wrong?
(10:04):
Right.
That's just a straight upindividualist kind of argument
and goes to the pragmatic.
Like, sure, it doesn'tnecessarily harm someone else.
So sure, if they want to dothat, they can do that.
And so that kind of comes frommaybe the more modernist thought
like humans.
We can think we've we'veadvanced enough that we should
be able to decide that.
But then you see other thingsthat come from that argument.
(10:25):
postmodern thought, whichagain, whenever you hear, we use
those terms a lot, whenever youhear modernism versus
postmodernism, postmodernismjust turns everything into what
we've always thought was truthwas because the powerful people
said it was truth, essentially.
That's kind of what it'sarguing.
And so now you'll see peoplearguing that, hey, this is like
(10:46):
a truth imposed upon us by thepowerful.
And so that comes about whenyou think of things in some of
the like racial debates whereyou can now say, you know, or
you're kind of the likeanti-colonialism type debates
where it's, Hey, if there's anoppressed group of people, they
get to, they can, they can actout on that.
(11:06):
They can maybe do violentthings to different things
because they're trying toovercome this oppression.
And so it becomes, you know, inorder to write the scales, they
get a different level ofmorality than the, the people
over them in power.
And so we see that in thegender thing, in the abortion
argument, that becomes a, well,rich and powerful men have
decided that they will controlwomen's bodies.
(11:28):
And so therefore, that's why wecan't have laws against
abortion.
That would be kind of theargument people would use, as
opposed to saying, there's ahuman life, human life being
valuable, we should protect it.
It becomes, oh no, there's apower dynamic here.
So I think you, again, you justsee it all over the place.
And again, we're picking andchoosing what our arguments are
because we're sinful people.
(11:49):
We're going to try to justifyour sin any way we can get about
it.
Louis (11:55):
Yeah, which is actually somewhat interesting to me that
you mentioned like the, youknow, overthrowing the powerful
or vice versa, right?
So that's like a socialistMarxist mentality, which is
always hypocritical to mebecause the very moment that
those who are not in poweroverthrow those who are in
power, well, then they becomethe powerful.
And so what are you going to doin that case then?
You're going to allow them tooverthrow you?
(12:16):
And, you know, ultimately itwas really started about the
poor over we're throwing therich, but it bleeds out in so
many different ways.
And as we're talking about thistoo, I'm thinking about, Even
within Christianity, I think wehave to admit that we have
brought in somewhat of asubjective view within the
church.
I think people have asubjective mentality when it
(12:37):
comes to, you know, what churcham I going to attend?
You know, it's about me.
What's going to feed me?
And if it doesn't feed me, thenI'm not going to be here.
I think this is very heavy inour nominal Orlando culture.
Orlando is a very heavy,nominal city.
And so, you know, in the momentthat you're not feeding me
anymore, then I'm dipping out.
Whereas if we go back to earlyChristianity, christianity
(12:57):
before we even had churchbuildings well what did we have
the church was a very bigmissional movement where people
were involved in the church theywere serving outside of their
local home groups that they hadand yet today we've kind of
reversed that because we've nowmade the church really about
well you know what we're goingto go to a building and so we're
going to be a bit lessmissional now and the moment
(13:19):
that the church isn't feeding meanymore then i'm going to dip
out i'm going to go to someother place that's going to you
know bring me my highestpleasure so the mentality i
think even within Christianityhas shifted in Western American
Christianity, where we have thementality, a lot of people, not
everybody, but a lot of peoplehave the mentality.
I'm going to pick a church thatis going to, you know, meet my
(13:39):
needs as opposed to, hey, I wantto go to a church that is
biblical, theological, preachingthe gospel, having those as
their primaries.
And a church where God wants meto serve and use my gifts both
for the good of the church andthe good of the city that's
around us.
So I think we've somewhatweakened the American church by
bringing in this subjectivementality of, hey, I want to
(14:03):
feed me always instead of alsobeing the one who's doing the
feeding.
Zack (14:07):
And I think that's what's led some churches and church
leaders maybe to even allow the–the cultural, subjective,
relative approach to seep intothe church because we don't want
to be the church that offendsanybody.
We want to be the church that'saccepting or affirming of these
(14:30):
different views and beliefsbecause if we don't, then those
people are just going to leaveand go somewhere else.
So even though we might say thechurch holds to biblical
teaching, there's an underlyingpressure to give or to conform
to this relativistic typeviewpoint in order to honestly
(14:55):
maintain people and keep peoplearound or even sway them to be a
part of your church, which isunfortunate when it comes to
that.
Louis (15:02):
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
And we've seen a shift awayfrom that, I mean, a shift
towards that where you know,instead of letting the word of
God, I mean, this goes back toour biblical authority code, our
core value as a church, that,you know, we're going to read
the Bible and let the Bible readus.
Instead of allowing our beliefsand our worldviews to shape and
(15:24):
change the Bible, we're goingto let the Bible shape and
change our beliefs and ourworldviews.
And I believe you're correctwhere we have shifted a lot of
that in, again, not allchurches, but in a lot of
churches, Western AmericanChristianity, to where it's,
well, we're going to let theculture and our beliefs in
society shape and change us.
the biblical view that we have.
And it helps to feed thatsubjective mentality that we're
(15:48):
in.
Alex (15:49):
Well, and I think that's the difficulty that kind of the
modern church faces in a lot ofthings because when we were in
times where maybe we were alittle more united on what is
orthodoxy or what is the trueChristian life, you might have
someone within a church thatthey start living against that
(16:09):
and you come to them, we'rethinking like a Matthew 18
church discipline type thing orsomething like that.
The option becomes they eitherrepent of that or they leave the
church and you now regard themas a non-believer and you try to
basically teach them the gospelagain.
You say, oh, this person wasnot a believer.
We're going to teach them thegospel.
But now the option is theymight just go to a church that
(16:31):
says, yeah, that's fine.
That's all good.
And now they can basically justsay, well, I'm still going to
church.
I'm still following Jesus, eventhough their lifestyle or
things that they're affirming wewould believe are completely
antithetical to what Jesus is,right?
There's now not thatdistinction.
So now you're having to callpeople out of like, actually,
that's a false church or a wrongchurch, which is a harder thing
(16:54):
to do than just, well, I don'tbelieve in Jesus.
Okay, well, here's why youshould believe in Jesus.
And that's the challenge, Ithink.
Zack (17:01):
Yeah.
So with some of those things, Ithink sometimes people argue,
well, the Bible doesn't speakspecifically to this or it's
unclear on this.
So how can a Christian beconfident that there are– moral
truths, moral absolutes, if theBible doesn't clearly speak to a
particular issue?
Louis (17:20):
Yeah, I think some of the confusion ends up coming in a
lot of times when, at least hasbeen my experience in
conversations with peopleoutside the church and some
inside the church, we have todifferentiate between the three
types of laws that are in theBible.
We have the civil laws, we havethe ceremonial laws, and then
(17:43):
we have the moral laws.
The civil laws are laws thatwere, you know, God put in place
for Israel during a certaintime in history for Israel to be
able to be governed at a as anation, as they were getting
established as a nation.
Ceremonial were things that Godwas establishing for them as a
people who would worship God setapart from other faiths and
(18:05):
religions that existed duringthat time period of history.
The moral laws of God, thosewere more universal laws that
what God was giving to all ofhumanity, but through the people
of Israel during that time inhistory.
And a lot of times people getconfused and they think, well,
you Christians are picking andchoosing what you want to
believe and what you don't wantto believe about the Bible.
No, we're not.
We don't have to follow thecivil laws of God because the
(18:28):
civil laws of God would be,we're living here in America.
Jesus knew that we would bescattered to the nations, told
us we would be scattered to thenations as part of him saying to
give back to Caesar whatbelongs to Caesar, right?
And so we don't have to followthe laws of Israel because Jesus
knew we'd be scattered.
And so it doesn't make sensefor us living here in America to
(18:49):
follow the civil laws of OldTestament history or Israel
there because we're not We'renot a part of that nation.
Civil law would be a speedinglimit sign.
It doesn't make sense for us togo 25 miles an hour everywhere
all over the place.
That is a localized law.
And then the ceremonial laws,well, Jesus came to be the full
(19:10):
sacrifice for the atonement ofour sins, fulfilling all
ceremonial laws that wererequired for us to have a
restored and redeemed and joyfulrelationship with the Lord.
But the moral laws of God iswhat never changes.
Why?
Because God's moral characternever changes.
This is the immutability ofGod, a theological term,
immutability of God.
God is the same yesterday,today, forever.
(19:31):
So if God's character couldchange, then his moral laws
could change, which means wedon't have a very stable God.
It means one day God couldCould hate us, and the next day
he could love us.
One day he could tell us thisis okay, and then the next day
he'd say it's not okay.
But God, his moral characternever changes, therefore his
(19:53):
moral law never changes.
You never see Jesus one timechanging any moral law that
exists in the Old Testament.
Never speaks against itwhatsoever.
If anything, he affirms themoral laws of God in the Old
Testament.
Alex (20:06):
Or expands on them to a degree.
You think you're followingthis, but you're actually not.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Louis (20:13):
And then so then like when people come in and they
start saying things like so oneof the things that I'll get a
lot of times and I actually gotthat this week is, well, Jesus
never, never.
mentioned homosexuality.
Well, no, actually, hementioned the word porneia,
which in Greek would have beenunderstood as multiple different
aspects that God would havedeemed as sinful in the Old
(20:36):
Testament and declared them assinful in the Old Testament.
So, for example, just becauseGod didn't mention bestiality,
right?
Jesus didn't talk aboutbestiality.
Does that mean that, you know,people can just go off and start
having relations with animals?
Well, no, it's because whenJesus mentioned porneia, they
would have understood thatbestiality would have been
included.
(20:56):
So Jesus even upheld theone-man, one-woman marital
monogamous relationship when herefers back to Adam and Eve and
their marital union that theyhad back in Genesis.
So it's not that Jesus didn'tspeak about some things.
I mean, when it comes to thisstuff that we're talking about
right now.
No, he did.
(21:16):
He upheld the moral laws ofGod.
Now, there's going to be grayareas, and I think Paul
addresses a lot of that whenit's like, okay, well, should we
eat meat that's been worshippedand sacrificed to idols or not?
and we handle that in adifferent way.
Zack (21:31):
Yeah, for sure.
So what are some things when wetalk about the personal
application of this?
Like part of the goal of ourpodcast is to be a little more
real and how this applies to ourlives, the things that we teach
on Sundays.
So what are some ways thatyou've seen moral relativism
(21:52):
affect your own life or do youfeel like that you've been
influenced by it in any way
Alex (21:58):
I mean i think i think we'd be lying if we said that we
don't have aspects ofrelativism that happen that we
use to justify things right imean um i think a lot of times
we use it in If we're strugglingwith a particular sin, we'll
use it to justify that.
Well, I'm not fully indulgingthis sin, so it's not as bad as
(22:21):
if I was just going full bore onthis.
And we're basically denying thefact that we're allowing sin in
our lives, and we're not fullyrepenting of it.
We're like, I'll repent of theworst aspects of this, or I'll
avoid that, and that will begood enough to...
be moral and follow God.
I mean, I think that happens inthere.
(22:42):
I think when we get inarguments, you know, with your
wife or with something that youjust say like, well, you made me
so angry, so that's why I saidthis, right?
When we justify like, well, youstarted something, so then I
reacted.
And so, you know, I can't beheld responsible for these kinds
of things.
I think we see, again, thatjust like kind of relativistic
(23:03):
thing, which, and I think we dothat as like a coping mechanism
because we don't always trustthe gospel as fully as we
should.
When in reality, we should beable to look at ourselves and
say, yeah, I'm sinful.
I sinned there.
And know that we can go to Godin repentance, know that there's
forgiveness there, know thatthere's power to overcome sin,
(23:23):
as opposed to finding theselittle ways to justify or to
minimize or do these kind ofthings instead of just saying
like, laying bare when we're insin and saying, yep, that's me
right now.
Please help me not be this way,as opposed to, again, justify,
justify, justify, find theselittle points.
I
Zack (23:44):
I was thinking about this on the flip side of that.
So I think some of that comesin, like kind of you were
saying, Alex, like giving, wegive license to things, right?
Because it's hard not tosometimes, you know, whether
that's the things we participatein, we watch, you know,
whatever it may be, like, It'shard to hold a hard line
sometimes when you go to searcha show on Netflix and find to
(24:07):
watch something.
It's like, where do we drawthat line?
So there's also that issue thatwe lean towards legalism or
being pharisaical.
So how do we guard againstthat?
How do we hold to moralabsolutes but not be legalistic
(24:27):
or legalistic?
come across as judgmental orjust completely irrelevant even.
Louis (24:34):
So I'll give you an example of this.
So this past week I had I wasattending a funeral.
One of my good buddies, hisfather died.
And so when I was there, Ihappened to run into one of my
other good friends from highschool, played football with
him, and he's from New York.
His wife, though, is reallyseeking and also is really a big
(24:57):
believer in more affirmingculture, not church, but
affirming culture.
But she was curious aboutfinding a church.
And so they were having aconversation in the car, and
they said they wanted to ask meas a pastor does my church and
would I actually do a same-sexwedding?
And so before I answered thatquestion, I had to step back for
(25:20):
a minute because I knowimmediately as soon as you give
some sort of a response to thatquestion, you're either going to
get shot up or people are goingto shut you off because they're
going to think you're alegalistic or a bigot, right?
And so I had to kind of stepback and I had to to talk with
them about, all right, let'sback up.
Can we table that for just amoment?
And let's just talk aboutmorality in general.
(25:41):
So I wanted to set that aside.
And I try to do that oftenbecause we need to lay some
groundwork before we get intodetails of things.
And I also explained to them,we have to admit as a church
over the years, Christianshaven't really handled this very
well.
We've often really created anus versus them mentality on
(26:01):
this, or even culture hascreated that, this us versus
them mentality when it comes tomoral issues and especially when
it comes to the LGBTQ pluscommunity and you know there's
like this war between the twoand so I had to tell them that
no this isn't an us versus thembecause here's the reality we
all need Jesus I need Jesus justas much as you need Jesus now I
know you're a skeptic you don'tbelieve in him yet but but I
want to make a little bit of acase for why you need him and
(26:24):
why I need him and so the groundis level we both need him and
we start there but when it comesto the moral issue I had I I
had talked with them, do youbelieve that morality is up to
the person, that it's up to theindividual?
And she said, well, yeah, no,yeah, sure.
You don't get to tell me what'sright and wrong.
(26:45):
Well, yes, exactly.
And that's why you align a lotwith an affirming culture.
And I said, OK, if that's thecase, then would you be OK with
what Hitler did?
Well, no.
Okay, well, would you be okaywith somebody harming little
children?
You have kids now.
Would you be okay with that?
Well, no, I'm not going to beokay with that either.
Okay, well, so then you'redeclaring a moral absolute
(27:08):
against people who might be okaywith those things.
And then I even gave theillustration, if we're just
evolutionary beings, well, thenthat means that we should be
nothing more than like a lionwhen a lion eats a zebra.
When a lion eats a zebra, alion doesn't care about, you
know, does a zebra have afamily?
You know, hey, excuse me, areyou okay if I eat you today?
Are you okay?
(27:28):
I mean, this goes back to whatthe Finding Nemo, I think,
where, you know, the sharkBruce, I think it was his name,
Bruce, right?
He said, fish are friends, notfood, right?
Yeah, and it's like, no, like alion doesn't care.
This is survival of thefittest.
So we should have a survival ofthe fittest mentality.
We shouldn't care about...
you know, morality at all.
And so she agreed that, yeah,okay, so, you know, maybe there
(27:51):
are some moral standards, notquite sure if I'm fully aligned
with that or not, but herebecomes the question.
Once you can agree that you'redeclaring a moral absolute when
you believe in subjectivism,once you agree that there are
some moral laws that we shouldhave, okay, so the question then
becomes, well, who gets to saywhat those moral absolutes are?
I don't want you telling mewhat the moral absolutes are,
(28:13):
and you don't want me tellingyou that.
Why?
Because we're sinful, brokenpeople.
And to Alex's point earlier, Ilike me some me.
And so I want to bring a lot ofpleasure to me, but my idea of
pleasure isn't always what'sbest.
And so we need a higher powerto be able to declare what
morality is.
And there was a Yale lawprofessor by the name of Arthur
(28:34):
Leff, and he's passed away now,but he had said, Either God
exists or he doesn't.
But if God doesn't exist, thennobody gets to declare what's
right and wrong, because it'sall subjective.
And so back to your questionabout, you know, how do we not
(28:56):
become legalistic on thesethings, right?
I think we have to determinethat God is the one who declares
what moral absolutes are.
Not me, not you, not anybodyoutside the church or inside the
church.
It's God who does.
And then we have to go to God'sword to be able to determine,
okay, well, what does God's wordsay on this moral issue that
(29:16):
we're discussing?
Does that make sense?
Zack (29:17):
D Yeah, no, for sure.
And I think that just kind ofin wrapping up even leads to
just something that's more...
Recent, I think, in thisconversation, I don't know if
you guys are familiar with SamHarris, but he kind of argues
against moral relativism, butsuggesting that there are
objective right and wronganswers to moral questions based
(29:41):
on the well-being of consciousbeings.
So this kind of goes back towhat you were saying earlier,
Alex, like somebody's oppressed,what's okay for them to then...
demonstrate violence in orderto free themselves from that
oppression.
He believes that science canilluminate these answers, right?
And so, for example, this iskind of a light example, but if
(30:04):
a preference for chocolate icecream allowed for the most
rewarding experience a humanbeing could have, while a
preference for vanilla does not,then we would deem it morally
important to help peopleovercome any deficit in their
sense of taste that caused themto prefer vanilla.
So we would want to shifteverything so that they could
(30:24):
experience the greatest pleasurein their well-being.
So it's interesting to see it'salmost like twisting or
distorting what we know of moraltruths to say, yeah, these are
absolutes, but it's all aboutwhat's...
going to create the greatestwell-being for the person, you
know?
Louis (30:44):
And so to your point on that, so here's how we determine
the difference between what'smaybe an objective truth or an
absolute truth versus asubjective truth.
A subjective truth is all basedupon your opinion.
So if I were to say to you thatthe best cake in the world,
which I know you guys willdebate, but the best cake in the
(31:06):
world is carrot cake.
Microwave carrot cake, man,that's really good, right?
That's a subjective claim.
Microwave carrot cake?
I do.
Yeah, you got a microwave.
Yeah, you
Alex (31:16):
got a microwave.
You got a melt microwave.
Louis (31:19):
That's right.
So that's a subjective claim.
Why?
Because that's based on myopinion, right?
And so, you know, my opinioncan change.
And then if you look at, if Imake this claim, though, and
this is what a lot of peopledon't understand.
If I were to make the claim,Jesus Christ...
is Lord and Savior, and theonly way to get to heaven is
(31:41):
through faith in Him.
Now, some people will say that,well, that's a subjective
claim.
No, it's not.
It's an objective claim.
It's either true or it's not.
It's either true or it's not.
And so some people want totreat faith as a relativistic
truth or a subjective truth.
No, it's not.
It's either true or it's nottrue.
And so what we have to do is wehave to put the facts on the
(32:03):
table and then determine, okay,well, Is there evidence for this
actually being true?
And that's what I wouldchallenge any skeptic to do is
to examine Christianity and tosee if some of the objective
claims that are made, is thereevidence to back those claims
that would lead you to faith?
So that would be kind of adifference between those two.
Zack (32:24):
Yeah, that was good.
So, I mean, I think this is agood point to stop and even kind
of tease out our next topics.
Our next sermon, next podcastwill be around the idea of
Christianity and science and howthey can coexist.
Are they friends?
Are they foes?
And so that kind of comes back.
We'll bring back some of thoseideas of what are the facts, how
(32:46):
do we find what those are, anddoes that contradict what the
Bible teaches, which is going tobe always interesting to
discuss that.
So hopefully this is helpful topeople.
Hopefully it will encourage...
you that are listening toreflect on your own moral
beliefs where they come frombecause again it's important for
us to understand where thoseare.
Are those subjective?
Are they objective?
Are they based on scripture?
(33:06):
Are we getting those fromsomewhere else?
And hopefully invite somediscussion amongst you and your
friends or family.
And if you have questions orcomments, we would love to hear
those.
You can contact us at info atcityawakening.org.
And we would love to just tohear your thoughts on this
topic.
So that's our wrap on our firstepisode, the thunder in the
(33:31):
background.
I don't know if it's audible inthe microphone, but it kind of
gives a weightiness.
Welcome to the very first episode of Between Sundays.
It's a podcast of CityAwakening Church.
My name is Zach Casey and I'mthe executive pastor at City
Awakening.
And today I'm joined by ourlead pastor, Louis Tamboro, and
our community pastor, AlexRobinson.
Each week, each episode of thepodcast, we'll be bringing in
different members of our team todiscuss topics that we believe
(00:37):
can be helpful to our churchmembers or really anyone who
might be listening.
And the idea is for us just tohave some honest,
behind-the-scenes conversationsWe'll be right back.
around those topics.
(01:01):
So you know our vision at CityAwakening is to see both
skeptics and believers seektruth, find joy in community,
and live with purpose in ourcity.
So we thought it'd be perfectto launch this podcast in
conjunction with our Augustteaching series, Kingdom
Thinking, where each week we'regoing to be hitting a culturally
relevant and maybe evencontroversial question that we
(01:22):
are all facing in our day-to-daylives.
And really there's so much moreto cover than a 30 or 40 minute
message allows for, and so thisplatform Thank you.
What's happening outside?
(01:49):
We don't have a professionalstudio, so you're going to pick
up some of those sounds today,probably.
But we're going to jump in withour very first topic today, and
that is, are right and wrongthe same for everyone, or do
they depend on personal andcultural views?
This is really a question ofmoral relativity versus moral
truth or moral absolutes.
(02:10):
And normally, I don't plan todo this much talking in each
episode at the beginning of thepodcast, so I apologize for the
longer intro.
But I do think it's importanttoday with this topic,
especially to give some contextfor the discussion and some
background information that canbe helpful.
And so I want to start just byus defining some terms that
we're going to be talking about,the first being moral truth.
(02:33):
And we can break that down intothe two terms, morals and
truth.
If morals refer to what isright and wrong, what separates
good behavior from evilbehavior?
Morals are not an explanationof how things necessarily are,
but a description of how thingsought to be, which implies a
level of obligation because it'swhat's right and good.
(02:54):
Truth is how we define reality.
It's what separates what's realand what's not real.
So if morals are how things areought to be, truth is how
things really are.
So when we combine those twoterms, take moral and truth, it
combines those ideas into what'sright and good and actual and
(03:15):
real.
So an example of this would besomething like human life is
valuable.
That's a truth, and thereforeit should be protected.
That's a moral.
And so it's a moral truth.
We take that further into theidea of moral absolutes.
So we would define that by,it's the idea that moral truths
apply to everyone.
(03:35):
It's true for everyone nomatter what.
So again, human life isvaluable and should be
protected.
That, we believe, applies toall people, not just a certain
group of people.
It's a moral absolute.
We compare that with moralrelativism, which is something
you'll hear us refer to in thepodcast.
That is the view that moralityis subjective or culturally
(03:56):
dependent And so therefore,there's not moral absolutes.
Those ideas of what is rightand true and good are relative
to the individual and theircontext and space and time, and
so therefore don't apply toeveryone.
All right, so as we talk aboutthis idea of moral absolutes and
moral relativism, do you thinkthat this is a new issue, or if
(04:19):
not, how has it changed in morerecent times?
Louis (04:24):
Yeah, I don't believe this is a new issue.
I believe this is somethingthat's been around for quite
some time.
You go back to like Greco-Romansocieties and you will see that
people were, the elites oftheir cultures were creating
laws that would basically fittheir own relativistic views of
what would bring them thegreatest pleasure in life.
And so the difference I thinkbetween then and now is that now
(04:48):
we live, at least in WesternAmerican culture, a society
where it's a bit moredemocratic.
So we have the opportunity tovote for certain things, certain
laws and stuff like that.
And we have a bit more freedomthan what maybe others had in
Greco-Roman societies.
And so I would also say,though, that some of the
technology has changed.
(05:08):
So even though the root isstill there, as far as it's all
about whatever makes me feelgood, whatever's going to bring
me the greatest pleasure, maybesome of those things have
shifted in the varieties that wehave or the extent of what we
have, like the advancement oftechnology.
So we have more opportunitiesnow to try and seek other
pleasures that maybe they didn'thave back then when they didn't
(05:30):
have the technology that wehave today.
day and I think this evenreally goes all the way back to
the fall we saw this issue goingon since they are all
throughout biblical history wecan see over and over again
where people are really seekingtheir own pleasure for
themselves instead of reallytrying to find their greatest
pleasures in God and trustingGod to determine what's going to
bring them the greatest joytheir creator who created them
(05:53):
knowing them better than theyknow themselves and what's going
to bring them the greaterpleasure in life better than
they do because he created themhe wired their DNA but we
rebelled against that since thebeginning of creation, thinking
we know better than God.
Alex (06:07):
Yeah, I mean, you see it all throughout.
You see it all throughoutscripture.
And I think throughout history,you just see, like anything,
just...
the rationale for why we sin orwhy we rebel against God
changes through time, but itends up in the same place.
So you just see differentmovements throughout the
modernist movement or thepostmodernists.
And you just see, they get todifferent things and we'll
(06:29):
probably talk about some of thatmore as we go.
But yeah, I mean, this is not,this is not a new thing.
We just see, we're seeing, ourcurrent day's version of it now.
And so we'll see how that kindof plays out in life.
Zack (06:43):
Yeah, for sure.
I did a quick search on thisbecause I wasn't super familiar
with how the history of it brokedown.
I knew that it had always kindof been there, but it's
interesting to go back and see.
You know how, of course, itgoes back to biblical times and
Genesis and the garden, as youguys mentioned, but from a
recorded history standpoint, itkind of starts with Plato and,
you know, around 400, he lived400 to 300 BC area.
(07:06):
And so, yeah.
He kind of argued for moraltruths that are objective and
eternal.
And then that was met by somecontroversy or pushback by the
sophist who challenged Plato bysaying that man is the measure
of all things.
And so this was really kind ofthe beginning of implying that
morality is subjective.
(07:26):
And from a philosophicalstandpoint and introduced the
idea of moral relativism.
So as you move through time,you kind of see that pattern
continue into medieval thinkingwith Augustine and Aquinas, who
believe that moral truths areuniversal because they reflect
the will and nature of God.
So this is back to kind of amore biblical viewpoint.
(07:49):
But then in the Enlightenmentmovement, you have guys like
Immanuel Kant, who sought asecular, rational basis for
morality.
In other words, moral laws areuniversal, but it was
discoverable through reasonalone.
It wasn't based on a religionor religious beliefs.
And then as you get into moreof the postmodernism in the 20th
(08:12):
century, people begin toquestion all claims to universal
truth.
Morality is seen more as acultural construct shaped by
power, language, and evenhistorical context.
So there's definitely more ofan individualistic idea there.
And then more contemporarydebates, which we'll talk a
little bit about later, thatbegin to challenge us.
And almost kind of a shift backto a more universal way of
(08:38):
thinking, but again, notnecessarily based on biblical
principles.
worldview.
And so it's interesting tothink about that this has
existed throughout time, andthere's been both sides of the
argument, although not alwaysbased on a Christian or biblical
worldview in that way.
So as we think about that, whatare some of the more prominent
issues that you see today in ourmore postmodern, post-Christian
(09:03):
time that reflect this moralrelativism rather than moral
absolutes?
Louis (09:09):
I think, I mean, we see the whole debate over gender and
identity being one of thoseissues that's prominent.
We see issues over marriagebeing one of those, including
also sexuality, LGBTQ plus orheterosexuality, you know, is
one good, is one not, is oneright, is one wrong.
(09:30):
We see the transgender issuecoming up as well.
So we're seeing this play outin so many different within our
culture right now, even beyondthose.
Alex (09:42):
Well, yeah, and I think those play on, like I said, you
get at this through lots ofdifferent ways.
Those play on kind of the truerelativism, individualism is the
definer of what is right.
So in a lot of those issues,you'll hear people say, well, if
what they're doing isn'thurting anybody and they're
choosing to do it, Then whycould you say it's wrong?
(10:04):
Right.
That's just a straight upindividualist kind of argument
and goes to the pragmatic.
Like, sure, it doesn'tnecessarily harm someone else.
So sure, if they want to dothat, they can do that.
And so that kind of comes frommaybe the more modernist thought
like humans.
We can think we've we'veadvanced enough that we should
be able to decide that.
But then you see other thingsthat come from that argument.
(10:25):
postmodern thought, whichagain, whenever you hear, we use
those terms a lot, whenever youhear modernism versus
postmodernism, postmodernismjust turns everything into what
we've always thought was truthwas because the powerful people
said it was truth, essentially.
That's kind of what it'sarguing.
And so now you'll see peoplearguing that, hey, this is like
(10:46):
a truth imposed upon us by thepowerful.
And so that comes about whenyou think of things in some of
the like racial debates whereyou can now say, you know, or
you're kind of the likeanti-colonialism type debates
where it's, Hey, if there's anoppressed group of people, they
get to, they can, they can actout on that.
(11:06):
They can maybe do violentthings to different things
because they're trying toovercome this oppression.
And so it becomes, you know, inorder to write the scales, they
get a different level ofmorality than the, the people
over them in power.
And so we see that in thegender thing, in the abortion
argument, that becomes a, well,rich and powerful men have
decided that they will controlwomen's bodies.
(11:28):
And so therefore, that's why wecan't have laws against
abortion.
That would be kind of theargument people would use, as
opposed to saying, there's ahuman life, human life being
valuable, we should protect it.
It becomes, oh no, there's apower dynamic here.
So I think you, again, you justsee it all over the place.
And again, we're picking andchoosing what our arguments are
because we're sinful people.
(11:49):
We're going to try to justifyour sin any way we can get about
it.
Louis (11:55):
Yeah, which is actually somewhat interesting to me that
you mentioned like the, youknow, overthrowing the powerful
or vice versa, right?
So that's like a socialistMarxist mentality, which is
always hypocritical to mebecause the very moment that
those who are not in poweroverthrow those who are in
power, well, then they becomethe powerful.
And so what are you going to doin that case then?
You're going to allow them tooverthrow you?
(12:16):
And, you know, ultimately itwas really started about the
poor over we're throwing therich, but it bleeds out in so
many different ways.
And as we're talking about thistoo, I'm thinking about, Even
within Christianity, I think wehave to admit that we have
brought in somewhat of asubjective view within the
church.
I think people have asubjective mentality when it
(12:37):
comes to, you know, what churcham I going to attend?
You know, it's about me.
What's going to feed me?
And if it doesn't feed me, thenI'm not going to be here.
I think this is very heavy inour nominal Orlando culture.
Orlando is a very heavy,nominal city.
And so, you know, in the momentthat you're not feeding me
anymore, then I'm dipping out.
Whereas if we go back to earlyChristianity, christianity
(12:57):
before we even had churchbuildings well what did we have
the church was a very bigmissional movement where people
were involved in the church theywere serving outside of their
local home groups that they hadand yet today we've kind of
reversed that because we've nowmade the church really about
well you know what we're goingto go to a building and so we're
going to be a bit lessmissional now and the moment
(13:19):
that the church isn't feeding meanymore then i'm going to dip
out i'm going to go to someother place that's going to you
know bring me my highestpleasure so the mentality i
think even within Christianityhas shifted in Western American
Christianity, where we have thementality, a lot of people, not
everybody, but a lot of peoplehave the mentality.
I'm going to pick a church thatis going to, you know, meet my
(13:39):
needs as opposed to, hey, I wantto go to a church that is
biblical, theological, preachingthe gospel, having those as
their primaries.
And a church where God wants meto serve and use my gifts both
for the good of the church andthe good of the city that's
around us.
So I think we've somewhatweakened the American church by
bringing in this subjectivementality of, hey, I want to
(14:03):
feed me always instead of alsobeing the one who's doing the
feeding.
Zack (14:07):
And I think that's what's led some churches and church
leaders maybe to even allow the–the cultural, subjective,
relative approach to seep intothe church because we don't want
to be the church that offendsanybody.
We want to be the church that'saccepting or affirming of these
(14:30):
different views and beliefsbecause if we don't, then those
people are just going to leaveand go somewhere else.
So even though we might say thechurch holds to biblical
teaching, there's an underlyingpressure to give or to conform
to this relativistic typeviewpoint in order to honestly
(14:55):
maintain people and keep peoplearound or even sway them to be a
part of your church, which isunfortunate when it comes to
that.
Louis (15:02):
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
And we've seen a shift awayfrom that, I mean, a shift
towards that where you know,instead of letting the word of
God, I mean, this goes back toour biblical authority code, our
core value as a church, that,you know, we're going to read
the Bible and let the Bible readus.
Instead of allowing our beliefsand our worldviews to shape and
(15:24):
change the Bible, we're goingto let the Bible shape and
change our beliefs and ourworldviews.
And I believe you're correctwhere we have shifted a lot of
that in, again, not allchurches, but in a lot of
churches, Western AmericanChristianity, to where it's,
well, we're going to let theculture and our beliefs in
society shape and change us.
the biblical view that we have.
And it helps to feed thatsubjective mentality that we're
(15:48):
in.
Alex (15:49):
Well, and I think that's the difficulty that kind of the
modern church faces in a lot ofthings because when we were in
times where maybe we were alittle more united on what is
orthodoxy or what is the trueChristian life, you might have
someone within a church thatthey start living against that
(16:09):
and you come to them, we'rethinking like a Matthew 18
church discipline type thing orsomething like that.
The option becomes they eitherrepent of that or they leave the
church and you now regard themas a non-believer and you try to
basically teach them the gospelagain.
You say, oh, this person wasnot a believer.
We're going to teach them thegospel.
But now the option is theymight just go to a church that
(16:31):
says, yeah, that's fine.
That's all good.
And now they can basically justsay, well, I'm still going to
church.
I'm still following Jesus, eventhough their lifestyle or
things that they're affirming wewould believe are completely
antithetical to what Jesus is,right?
There's now not thatdistinction.
So now you're having to callpeople out of like, actually,
that's a false church or a wrongchurch, which is a harder thing
(16:54):
to do than just, well, I don'tbelieve in Jesus.
Okay, well, here's why youshould believe in Jesus.
And that's the challenge, Ithink.
Zack (17:01):
Yeah.
So with some of those things, Ithink sometimes people argue,
well, the Bible doesn't speakspecifically to this or it's
unclear on this.
So how can a Christian beconfident that there are– moral
truths, moral absolutes, if theBible doesn't clearly speak to a
particular issue?
Louis (17:20):
Yeah, I think some of the confusion ends up coming in a
lot of times when, at least hasbeen my experience in
conversations with peopleoutside the church and some
inside the church, we have todifferentiate between the three
types of laws that are in theBible.
We have the civil laws, we havethe ceremonial laws, and then
(17:43):
we have the moral laws.
The civil laws are laws thatwere, you know, God put in place
for Israel during a certaintime in history for Israel to be
able to be governed at a as anation, as they were getting
established as a nation.
Ceremonial were things that Godwas establishing for them as a
people who would worship God setapart from other faiths and
(18:05):
religions that existed duringthat time period of history.
The moral laws of God, thosewere more universal laws that
what God was giving to all ofhumanity, but through the people
of Israel during that time inhistory.
And a lot of times people getconfused and they think, well,
you Christians are picking andchoosing what you want to
believe and what you don't wantto believe about the Bible.
No, we're not.
We don't have to follow thecivil laws of God because the
(18:28):
civil laws of God would be,we're living here in America.
Jesus knew that we would bescattered to the nations, told
us we would be scattered to thenations as part of him saying to
give back to Caesar whatbelongs to Caesar, right?
And so we don't have to followthe laws of Israel because Jesus
knew we'd be scattered.
And so it doesn't make sensefor us living here in America to
(18:49):
follow the civil laws of OldTestament history or Israel
there because we're not We'renot a part of that nation.
Civil law would be a speedinglimit sign.
It doesn't make sense for us togo 25 miles an hour everywhere
all over the place.
That is a localized law.
And then the ceremonial laws,well, Jesus came to be the full
(19:10):
sacrifice for the atonement ofour sins, fulfilling all
ceremonial laws that wererequired for us to have a
restored and redeemed and joyfulrelationship with the Lord.
But the moral laws of God iswhat never changes.
Why?
Because God's moral characternever changes.
This is the immutability ofGod, a theological term,
immutability of God.
God is the same yesterday,today, forever.
(19:31):
So if God's character couldchange, then his moral laws
could change, which means wedon't have a very stable God.
It means one day God couldCould hate us, and the next day
he could love us.
One day he could tell us thisis okay, and then the next day
he'd say it's not okay.
But God, his moral characternever changes, therefore his
(19:53):
moral law never changes.
You never see Jesus one timechanging any moral law that
exists in the Old Testament.
Never speaks against itwhatsoever.
If anything, he affirms themoral laws of God in the Old
Testament.
Alex (20:06):
Or expands on them to a degree.
You think you're followingthis, but you're actually not.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Louis (20:13):
And then so then like when people come in and they
start saying things like so oneof the things that I'll get a
lot of times and I actually gotthat this week is, well, Jesus
never, never.
mentioned homosexuality.
Well, no, actually, hementioned the word porneia,
which in Greek would have beenunderstood as multiple different
aspects that God would havedeemed as sinful in the Old
(20:36):
Testament and declared them assinful in the Old Testament.
So, for example, just becauseGod didn't mention bestiality,
right?
Jesus didn't talk aboutbestiality.
Does that mean that, you know,people can just go off and start
having relations with animals?
Well, no, it's because whenJesus mentioned porneia, they
would have understood thatbestiality would have been
included.
(20:56):
So Jesus even upheld theone-man, one-woman marital
monogamous relationship when herefers back to Adam and Eve and
their marital union that theyhad back in Genesis.
So it's not that Jesus didn'tspeak about some things.
I mean, when it comes to thisstuff that we're talking about
right now.
No, he did.
(21:16):
He upheld the moral laws ofGod.
Now, there's going to be grayareas, and I think Paul
addresses a lot of that whenit's like, okay, well, should we
eat meat that's been worshippedand sacrificed to idols or not?
and we handle that in adifferent way.
Zack (21:31):
Yeah, for sure.
So what are some things when wetalk about the personal
application of this?
Like part of the goal of ourpodcast is to be a little more
real and how this applies to ourlives, the things that we teach
on Sundays.
So what are some ways thatyou've seen moral relativism
(21:52):
affect your own life or do youfeel like that you've been
influenced by it in any way
Alex (21:58):
I mean i think i think we'd be lying if we said that we
don't have aspects ofrelativism that happen that we
use to justify things right imean um i think a lot of times
we use it in If we're strugglingwith a particular sin, we'll
use it to justify that.
Well, I'm not fully indulgingthis sin, so it's not as bad as
(22:21):
if I was just going full bore onthis.
And we're basically denying thefact that we're allowing sin in
our lives, and we're not fullyrepenting of it.
We're like, I'll repent of theworst aspects of this, or I'll
avoid that, and that will begood enough to...
be moral and follow God.
I mean, I think that happens inthere.
(22:42):
I think when we get inarguments, you know, with your
wife or with something that youjust say like, well, you made me
so angry, so that's why I saidthis, right?
When we justify like, well, youstarted something, so then I
reacted.
And so, you know, I can't beheld responsible for these kinds
of things.
I think we see, again, thatjust like kind of relativistic
(23:03):
thing, which, and I think we dothat as like a coping mechanism
because we don't always trustthe gospel as fully as we
should.
When in reality, we should beable to look at ourselves and
say, yeah, I'm sinful.
I sinned there.
And know that we can go to Godin repentance, know that there's
forgiveness there, know thatthere's power to overcome sin,
(23:23):
as opposed to finding theselittle ways to justify or to
minimize or do these kind ofthings instead of just saying
like, laying bare when we're insin and saying, yep, that's me
right now.
Please help me not be this way,as opposed to, again, justify,
justify, justify, find theselittle points.
I
Zack (23:44):
I was thinking about this on the flip side of that.
So I think some of that comesin, like kind of you were
saying, Alex, like giving, wegive license to things, right?
Because it's hard not tosometimes, you know, whether
that's the things we participatein, we watch, you know,
whatever it may be, like, It'shard to hold a hard line
sometimes when you go to searcha show on Netflix and find to
(24:07):
watch something.
It's like, where do we drawthat line?
So there's also that issue thatwe lean towards legalism or
being pharisaical.
So how do we guard againstthat?
How do we hold to moralabsolutes but not be legalistic
(24:27):
or legalistic?
come across as judgmental orjust completely irrelevant even.
Louis (24:34):
So I'll give you an example of this.
So this past week I had I wasattending a funeral.
One of my good buddies, hisfather died.
And so when I was there, Ihappened to run into one of my
other good friends from highschool, played football with
him, and he's from New York.
His wife, though, is reallyseeking and also is really a big
(24:57):
believer in more affirmingculture, not church, but
affirming culture.
But she was curious aboutfinding a church.
And so they were having aconversation in the car, and
they said they wanted to ask meas a pastor does my church and
would I actually do a same-sexwedding?
And so before I answered thatquestion, I had to step back for
(25:20):
a minute because I knowimmediately as soon as you give
some sort of a response to thatquestion, you're either going to
get shot up or people are goingto shut you off because they're
going to think you're alegalistic or a bigot, right?
And so I had to kind of stepback and I had to to talk with
them about, all right, let'sback up.
Can we table that for just amoment?
And let's just talk aboutmorality in general.
(25:41):
So I wanted to set that aside.
And I try to do that oftenbecause we need to lay some
groundwork before we get intodetails of things.
And I also explained to them,we have to admit as a church
over the years, Christianshaven't really handled this very
well.
We've often really created anus versus them mentality on
(26:01):
this, or even culture hascreated that, this us versus
them mentality when it comes tomoral issues and especially when
it comes to the LGBTQ pluscommunity and you know there's
like this war between the twoand so I had to tell them that
no this isn't an us versus thembecause here's the reality we
all need Jesus I need Jesus justas much as you need Jesus now I
know you're a skeptic you don'tbelieve in him yet but but I
want to make a little bit of acase for why you need him and
(26:24):
why I need him and so the groundis level we both need him and
we start there but when it comesto the moral issue I had I I
had talked with them, do youbelieve that morality is up to
the person, that it's up to theindividual?
And she said, well, yeah, no,yeah, sure.
You don't get to tell me what'sright and wrong.
(26:45):
Well, yes, exactly.
And that's why you align a lotwith an affirming culture.
And I said, OK, if that's thecase, then would you be OK with
what Hitler did?
Well, no.
Okay, well, would you be okaywith somebody harming little
children?
You have kids now.
Would you be okay with that?
Well, no, I'm not going to beokay with that either.
Okay, well, so then you'redeclaring a moral absolute
(27:08):
against people who might be okaywith those things.
And then I even gave theillustration, if we're just
evolutionary beings, well, thenthat means that we should be
nothing more than like a lionwhen a lion eats a zebra.
When a lion eats a zebra, alion doesn't care about, you
know, does a zebra have afamily?
You know, hey, excuse me, areyou okay if I eat you today?
Are you okay?
(27:28):
I mean, this goes back to whatthe Finding Nemo, I think,
where, you know, the sharkBruce, I think it was his name,
Bruce, right?
He said, fish are friends, notfood, right?
Yeah, and it's like, no, like alion doesn't care.
This is survival of thefittest.
So we should have a survival ofthe fittest mentality.
We shouldn't care about...
you know, morality at all.
And so she agreed that, yeah,okay, so, you know, maybe there
(27:51):
are some moral standards, notquite sure if I'm fully aligned
with that or not, but herebecomes the question.
Once you can agree that you'redeclaring a moral absolute when
you believe in subjectivism,once you agree that there are
some moral laws that we shouldhave, okay, so the question then
becomes, well, who gets to saywhat those moral absolutes are?
I don't want you telling mewhat the moral absolutes are,
(28:13):
and you don't want me tellingyou that.
Why?
Because we're sinful, brokenpeople.
And to Alex's point earlier, Ilike me some me.
And so I want to bring a lot ofpleasure to me, but my idea of
pleasure isn't always what'sbest.
And so we need a higher powerto be able to declare what
morality is.
And there was a Yale lawprofessor by the name of Arthur
(28:34):
Leff, and he's passed away now,but he had said, Either God
exists or he doesn't.
But if God doesn't exist, thennobody gets to declare what's
right and wrong, because it'sall subjective.
And so back to your questionabout, you know, how do we not
(28:56):
become legalistic on thesethings, right?
I think we have to determinethat God is the one who declares
what moral absolutes are.
Not me, not you, not anybodyoutside the church or inside the
church.
It's God who does.
And then we have to go to God'sword to be able to determine,
okay, well, what does God's wordsay on this moral issue that
(29:16):
we're discussing?
Does that make sense?
Zack (29:17):
D Yeah, no, for sure.
And I think that just kind ofin wrapping up even leads to
just something that's more...
Recent, I think, in thisconversation, I don't know if
you guys are familiar with SamHarris, but he kind of argues
against moral relativism, butsuggesting that there are
objective right and wronganswers to moral questions based
(29:41):
on the well-being of consciousbeings.
So this kind of goes back towhat you were saying earlier,
Alex, like somebody's oppressed,what's okay for them to then...
demonstrate violence in orderto free themselves from that
oppression.
He believes that science canilluminate these answers, right?
And so, for example, this iskind of a light example, but if
(30:04):
a preference for chocolate icecream allowed for the most
rewarding experience a humanbeing could have, while a
preference for vanilla does not,then we would deem it morally
important to help peopleovercome any deficit in their
sense of taste that caused themto prefer vanilla.
So we would want to shifteverything so that they could
(30:24):
experience the greatest pleasurein their well-being.
So it's interesting to see it'salmost like twisting or
distorting what we know of moraltruths to say, yeah, these are
absolutes, but it's all aboutwhat's...
going to create the greatestwell-being for the person, you
know?
Louis (30:44):
And so to your point on that, so here's how we determine
the difference between what'smaybe an objective truth or an
absolute truth versus asubjective truth.
A subjective truth is all basedupon your opinion.
So if I were to say to you thatthe best cake in the world,
which I know you guys willdebate, but the best cake in the
(31:06):
world is carrot cake.
Microwave carrot cake, man,that's really good, right?
That's a subjective claim.
Microwave carrot cake?
I do.
Yeah, you got a microwave.
Yeah, you
Alex (31:16):
got a microwave.
You got a melt microwave.
Louis (31:19):
That's right.
So that's a subjective claim.
Why?
Because that's based on myopinion, right?
And so, you know, my opinioncan change.
And then if you look at, if Imake this claim, though, and
this is what a lot of peopledon't understand.
If I were to make the claim,Jesus Christ...
is Lord and Savior, and theonly way to get to heaven is
(31:41):
through faith in Him.
Now, some people will say that,well, that's a subjective
claim.
No, it's not.
It's an objective claim.
It's either true or it's not.
It's either true or it's not.
And so some people want totreat faith as a relativistic
truth or a subjective truth.
No, it's not.
It's either true or it's nottrue.
And so what we have to do is wehave to put the facts on the
(32:03):
table and then determine, okay,well, Is there evidence for this
actually being true?
And that's what I wouldchallenge any skeptic to do is
to examine Christianity and tosee if some of the objective
claims that are made, is thereevidence to back those claims
that would lead you to faith?
So that would be kind of adifference between those two.
Zack (32:24):
Yeah, that was good.
So, I mean, I think this is agood point to stop and even kind
of tease out our next topics.
Our next sermon, next podcastwill be around the idea of
Christianity and science and howthey can coexist.
Are they friends?
Are they foes?
And so that kind of comes back.
We'll bring back some of thoseideas of what are the facts, how
(32:46):
do we find what those are, anddoes that contradict what the
Bible teaches, which is going tobe always interesting to
discuss that.
So hopefully this is helpful topeople.
Hopefully it will encourage...
you that are listening toreflect on your own moral
beliefs where they come frombecause again it's important for
us to understand where thoseare.
Are those subjective?
Are they objective?
Are they based on scripture?
(33:06):
Are we getting those fromsomewhere else?
And hopefully invite somediscussion amongst you and your
friends or family.
And if you have questions orcomments, we would love to hear
those.
You can contact us at info atcityawakening.org.
And we would love to just tohear your thoughts on this
topic.
So that's our wrap on our firstepisode, the thunder in the
(33:31):
background.
I don't know if it's audible inthe microphone, but it kind of
gives a weightiness.
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