I’m not insightful enough to be a movie critic. Maybe I could be a food critic. “These muffins taste bad.” Or an art critic. “That painting is bad.”
Andrew Bernard
What makes a certain food good? What makes a painting good? For that matter, what makes anything good? As they say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…or taste is on the tongue of the eater.” I like fried Spam, others may not, and to argue about it wouldn’t be worth it because tastebuds are tricky. You either like something or you don’t.
Recently I was listening to a podcast by a British sociologist named Sam Allberry. The topic of the podcast was how our worldview, specifically when it comes to ethics (determining right and wrong behavior), has shifted. Instead of using reason and living by the convictions that come from reason, our culture now determines what is right and wrong with their tastebuds.
And as stated earlier, tastebuds can be tricky because you can’t really argue people in or out of them.
In this podcast, Sam Allberry identified the three tastebuds we are now determining morality by. And I must say, it really opened my eyes to why people think the way they do, and why it seems almost impossible to reason with them.
Here they are:
- You determine what is good by harm: Is my decision going to bring pain; emotional or physical pain? If it is it is bad.
- You determine good by freedom: Is someone else’s idea or opinion going to bring oppression to someone’s ability to choose or will it bring freedom? If it is constricting or oppressive it is bad.
- Do the decisions by people in power seem fair or discriminative? If it is not fair it is bad. If you play favorites or you do not include everyone, it is bad.
These are not questions of logic as much as intuition. They all center on personal feeling. This is especially true when it comes to pain because pain is almost always relative. If you start seeing the world through the lens of these three questions it begins to make sense why people see the world the way they do. A few examples:
- Furries: these are people who are enthusiasts for dressing up like animals with human characteristics. Some furries even want to be a furry at school, in church and out in public. As a furry, they believe they have the right to meow like a cat, or bark like a dog without anyone’s disdain or disapproval. The furry lifestyle hits on all three areas: Dressing up like a cat makes some people feel good, it is self-expression or freedom, and we now should be able to be who we want to be wherever we want to be. If a teacher, parent, coach or pastor (aka – person with the power) either disallows or criticizes the behavior of a furry, it is morally bad.
- LGBTQ: What right does religion, God and Christians have concerning someone’s gender, sexual tastes, and relational choices. No one has the right to discriminate, oppress and label something as sin (that incurs emotional harm). If a person who is a man wants to marry a woman who is a man and another man, it is morally wrong to say that it is wrong.
- Progressive Socialism: This form of government caters to all three values, specifically fairness and freedom from oppression. Equality of outcome is the only way to make sure people are not offended, have pain or don’t feel marginalized.
How do you argue with these things if there is not reasonable, logical, or standard moral law to determine rightness or wrongness? That is the point, you don’t argue because it won’t work. Everything is now relative. All pain is personal.
Now I understand.
So how do you answer someone who you believe is morally wrong, but they feel morally right? One of the best answers on the podcast that Sam gave was this, “Tell people their issue is not with a law, or a set of standards, or some repressive religion, it is with Jesus. He is the one who said, ‘If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me.’” If you notice Jesus’ answer assumes you will feel pain, you can’t have complete freedom to do as you wish, and the cross is not fair. Jesus didn’t deserve it, but you did.
Jesus has turned morality on its head – what we think is your bad is actually God’s good!
