I'm afraid this is a loaded question, but since it's rhetorical, who cares?
If we say that absolutes do not exist and that all truth is relative, then we have come to a paradox of meaning. If all truth is relative, then the truth that "all truth is relative" is also relative, therefore allowing absolutes. However, if all truth but "all truth is relative" is relative, then "all truth is relative" is an absolute, which renders "all truth is relative" necessarily false.
I hope you at least know that I completely believe in Absolute Truth, and - as a direct result of that belief - I also believe in Absolute Morality.
I believe that there is a standardized, codified, and bona fide way that everybody should live their lives, and I believe that the adherence to that Morality is of inexpressible benefit to your eternal soul. Deviation is not encouraged.
Are you ready? Here it comes!
Good.
Good Morality. That's it. That's the thing. That is all you've got to worry about. Be Good.
It isn't a hard concept, as much as everybody in the world is trying to tell you that it is, but please, do not listen to them, they are selling you a load of crap because they have an agenda. I am giving you gold, but I will admit that I have an agenda as well: my agenda is that you have gold.
If I just ended the post right here, I know it wouldn't be very long at all before someone dropped the "But Aaron, who are you to say what is 'good'? After all, everyone's definition of 'good' changes from--'"
And I'm just gonna cut off the faucet there because the water's runnin' brown anyway.
That is a load of poop and everybody knows it. (I really hope you're picking up the doo-doo metaphors here. I'm trying to drive a point home.)
You know what Good is. I know what Good is. Everybody who has ever experienced a single regret for the slightest of pain they have ever caused another person knows what Good is.
And then everybody chooses - in greatly varying degrees - to ignore it.
Some people are taught to ignore it, yes... And I doubt that God's mercy extends very far to those who teach others to hate and steal and cheat and ruin and destroy... But Good makes itself known in each of us at some point in our lives, and all of us know what is Good and what is Bad to varying degrees.
At the very least, we can all - and I mean all - agree that "I don't want bad stuff to happen to me" is a constant, right? Isn't that true of everybody everywhere everywhen no matter what religion, race, nationality, sexual orientation, whatever in the whatever of whatever?
So we at least know that we don't want other people to hurt us. So it doesn't take too long for most of us to be aware that we have the potential to hurt other people, which we know we don't want to happen to us...
We know what Good is - whether we can really express it or not - because we know what we want to happen to us. We know what Bad is - whether we really agree on all of what that looks like or not - because we know what we don't want to happen to us.
It doesn't take much to connect the dots from there.
But I am not so dense as to say that the discussion ends here.
There is Absolute Truth, there is Absolute Morality...
But there are relative positions between people and those Absolutes, so, guess what! There's relative morality within the realm of Absolute Morality!
In all things we must be Good.
So what do you do with a homeless guy who asks you for some money, openly admitting that it's so he can get drunk?
What would be Good for that guy?
Well, I'd say rehab, a good shower, shave, haircut, place to live, life skills, new wardrobe, an impressive résumé, a can-do-attitude, and a couple of acts of Congress would be Good for him...
But if it takes a few bucks for a 40 of cheap suds so he can get over the DTs and maybe sleep a full night for the first time in a month... Would that be Good for him, too?
(I don't know, just so you know.)
And this brings me to why I think God is necessary.
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right.- James 2:8
I think James is right. I think that if you really manage to Love everybody on this planet the way you love yourself, you got nothin' to worry about.
But I also think that's impossible for us to do on our own.
I think that we are already so behind on what it is to actually be Good to other people that we need some help. I think we need supernatural help, in fact. That's how behind we are - we are so behind that we cannot possibly pull ourselves up by our secular humanist bootstraps and become a peaceful global society; we must rely solely on the direct intervention of God.
And that's why I think there are actually two parts to the Absolute Morality: Love God, Love Others.
Those are the only two things you have to do, but you absolutely have to do those things. Those are the things you are here to do. If you aren't doing one part of it, you're not doing the whole thing.
It is only by Loving God that you can understand what Love really is. Once you understand God's Love for you, you can understand God's Love for Others, and then you, Loving God, can begin to properly Love Others.
And not only is Loving God necessary to understand how to Love Others, Loving Others is the means by which you express your Love for God.
You can't do B without A, and you aren't doing A unless you also do B.
So does Absolute Morality mean that there are some things that are just wrong? I believe so.
But the beauty of Absolute Morality and Absolute Truth is that they can both be summed up in one thing: Absolute Love.
God Loves you the way that only God can Love you - Absolutely. Unconditionally. Limitlessly. Never failing, never questioning, never shrinking, never weary, never hesitant.
If you can equate yourself with God and say that you honestly Love everyone with the same unflinching boundlessness, then I congratulate you. But I am pretty sure we've all screwed up a few times. I'm pretty sure we've all done things that we know are Bad.
So why the confusion?
Why do people insist that morality is relative and that there are no absolutes?
Don't we all know what's really Good deep down? Don't we all, way deep down, really know what's Bad?
Could the idea that morality is relative be simply a clever ploy on the part of the armies of darkness to trick us into thinking we don't really have to worry about it? That we're good enough as it is? That we really don't have to try much harder, even though we all still know that's crap?
Does the world seem like we're in a good place? Does it seem like relative morality has allowed us to settle our differences peaceably?
Or can we maybe, hopefully, prayerfully be approaching a time when humanity as a whole realizes that the only thing we have to do to make this place completely awesome for everybody is not put ourselves first?
Love God. Love Others.
That's it.
That's all there is to it.
But you can't do one without the other, and if you're not doing both, you're missing the point anyway.
If you are sent to the store to buy a gallon of milk but just drive to the store and back, did you do what you were sent to do? Does that count? Are you going to get credit for "trying"?
The thing about that homeless guy is that it's hard to decide between what's best for him in the moment and what's best for him in the long run, especially when he might not survive to see the long run if the moment isn't taken care of.
But the thing about God - the amazing thing about God - is that when you're actually doing it, when you're really Loving Him by Loving Others and Loving Others because you Love Him, He helps.
Just try it. See what happens. See what happens to you. See what happens to the people around you. See what happens to the whole world.
COUNTDOWN TO AMBERLAND UPDATE:
Hey, I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of May, so here's what's up: at the end of May, I'm going to Amberland, which is turning into this nexus-of-all-realities type event in a lot of people's lives. There are entire destinies that hang in the balance at Amberland, it seems, and that is, frankly, awesome.
If you didn't know yet, I'm performing a wedding - my first - at Amberland. I only know the couple through the Perpetual Groove crowd. It's an incredible honor, and I feel that this wedding is an exclamation point to what is promising to be an incredible weekend.
But the other significance of Amberland is that it'll be my first time back to Tennessee as a Facebook-official Texan. I would like all of you to know what is going on in my life, but I realize that time does not always permit us to see each other.
So here's an update:
It's been about three weeks now since I laid in a bed.
I've been staying with the wonderful Foster family, who have provided me a place to sleep the entire time I've been here so far. The couch is sleeping me as well as any 4-star hotel room ever could. The generosity of this family, especially in a time of an especially hard loss, has been overwhelming. They have welcomed me in as another son, as a brother, as a friend... I thank God for the Fosters, and I would thank you to thank Him for them, too.
Every day is an adventure. Every day is an explosion of God's work in me. I am starting to understand more of what John means at the end of his gospel when he says that "the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." The whole internet does not have room for the stuff I could write if I had the infinite time it would take me to write it. It's incredible. My head doesn't stop spinning from the last one before God throws another lightning bolt of Love and Wisdom my way. Things just keep happening. Oh, my God, my God... How Awesome.
Amberland is a mere 22 days away. I am already nearing my critical meltdown stage in excitement. It will be good.
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