In a culture that is caught in the riptide of relativism, how do you help people come to their moral senses?
Ask them a question.
In love, let them wrestle–and if need be squirm–as they process real world scenarios. Why? Because relativism flourishes in the abstract but evaporates in our everyday experience.
Help Your Relativist Friends Gain Moral Clarity By Asking A Question
Let’s imagine a typical conversation. Here’s how this might play out:
YOU: If I understand your view, are you are saying that what is right or wrong or good or evil depends on the individual or culture?
FRIEND: Yes. What is morally good for you may be different than what is morally good for me.
Here is the question…
YOU: That’s an interesting way to think about things. Can I ask you a question? Are you really saying that there is no moral difference between Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler?
FRIEND: ummm….
YOU: It seems to me that moral relativism would leave us in the frustrating position of not being able to say that there is a moral difference between Adolph Hitler and Mother Teresa. But that is obviously false. The only way to do so would be to appeal to an external standard of morality beyond individual preferences or cultural agreement. Yet, this is precisely what moral relativism denies. But surely you would agree that such a conclusion is absurd? After all, Mother Teresa lived to save lives; Hitler lived to destroy them.
Pause.
At this point, the conversation could go several different ways (which I will leave for another post). Regardless of which way it goes however, you have accomplished something VERY important. You have taken the relativist out of the comfortable rarified air of the abstract and helped him or her grapple with real life.
That’s the power of asking good questions.
A well placed question helps remind people of what they already know (cf. Romans 1-2).
If you found this post helpful, you would enjoy Moral Relativism and the Reformer’s Dilemma and How to Respond to the “That’s Just Your Interpretation” Objection
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