By Dr. Mark Creech
All truth is relative. There are no moral absolutes. This is the message indoctrinated into our nation’s youth today in both our public High Schools and Colleges.
The late Dr. D. James Kennedy once told the story about one student who hadn’t got the message. When his University professor said, “We can know nothing for certain,” this same student raised his hand and asked, “Professor, are you sure of that?” The teacher then answered, “I am absolutely certain.”
We may laugh, but the illustration actually demonstrates that the contention there are no absolutes is contradictory in terms because the contention itself is an absolute statement.
Einstein’s theory of relativity applies to physics, but it most definitely does not apply to ethics. Einstein even said this, arguing, “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men… It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”
But I would suggest that many of the cultural elites in our institutions of Higher Learning know exactly what they are teaching – they know exactly what they are doing. They are deconstructing our society to be rid of God. If there are no absolutes, then there is no God because He is the ultimate absolute to which all men everywhere are accountable.
Moral relativism taken to its logical end dissolves the bands that hold a society together.
Without absolutes, we digress to the atrocities of the Nazis during World War II. They too had been trained by the great universities of their day in cultural relativism. When the German Supreme Court declared that a Jew was a nonperson – something subhuman, then it became perfectly moral to destroy them in mass.
During the Nuremberg War trials, the beastly Eichmann declared he and his fellow soldiers had done nothing wrong. They were simply operating according to the mores of their own culture. Eichmann said he was obligated to obey the laws of war and his own flag. His defense attorney argued the Americans and the British had no right to come to a foreign society and impose their own values. In essence, they said, “Don’t you know all morals are relative? There are no absolutes.” That argument essentially stumped the prosecution until they appealed to “natural law” – a vague and less precise way to describe the moral law of God. Moral relativism had not only established the evil these men perpetrated on the world, but it provided no way to judge or punish it.
Some years ago, I heard Nicki Cruz, author of “The Cross and the Switchblade,” say in an interview, “If we don’t do something to win this present generation of young people to Christ, then they’re going to eventually kill us all.” At times I fear a violent generation may be about to take the reins of control in this country – a generation raised on moral relativism – a generation that would just as soon kill you as to look at you if they deemed it proper or moral to do so.
Truth is absolute and only the absolute truth can make and keep us free (John 8:32). Moral relativism leads to chaos and death. What America needs is a whole new generation of young people who believe in God, trust in His Son, Jesus Christ and follow the absolute teachings and commandments of Holy Scripture.
That’s why I suggest that Christian parents either home-school their children or send them where they can get a good Christian education. But then, that’s another op-ed altogether.
-Dr. Mark Creech
Dr. Mark Creech gratefully acknowledges that he has drawn much of the information for this article from “Character is Destiny,” written by Dr. D. James Kennedy.