Fundamental preconceptions are sacred to us. They form the basis of everything that we know and believe. They tell us how to be right, and who else is wrong. We immediately know false statements when they contradict our preconceptions and immediately know true statements when they follow from our preconceptions. Our entire perspective of reality and righteousness is based on its alignment with our fundamental preconceptions.
Thus, when you attempt to break the fundamental preconceptions of another, you are attempting to do no less than crush their entire conception of reality. This is no mere disagreement; it is a great cosmic event with the greatest of stakes hanging in the balance. To what extent one is prepared to engage in that conversation varies wildly from person to person.
If you succeed in breaking the fundamental preconceptions of another, and they were not ready for it, you have done nothing less than dropped them into the pits of hell. There is now no sensibility to the world for them, no comforting reason, all that should be is not. If they are ready, and you are speaking the truth, then it can be the beginning of their ascent to heaven.
None of this is to say that people should be left in their deep delusions, but it does deserve proper respect for what we are doing when we try to rouse people out of them.
I grew up in a generation where accusing Christians of being judgmental reached its peak. It got to the point that even asserting the mere existence of divine truth was seen as exclusionary and hateful, and for a long while now, any mention of commandments and sin has been called judgmental. This mentality prevailed in the culture war and became assumed correct as a general rule, but we have since seen that those so concerned about Christian judgmentalism are themselves more judgmental than anyone else. The difference is that they secularize the religious terminology, but that doesn’t change that it is judgmentalism even so.
They don’t call it “righteous,” they call it “being right.” They don’t call it “being a sinner,” they call it “being on the wrong side of history.” They don’t call it “orthodoxy,” they call it “being informed.” They don’t call it “repentance,” they call it “taking accountability.” They don’t call it “heresy,” they call it “misinformation.” They don’t call it “excommunication,” they call it “cancellation.” They don’t call it “doctrine,” they call it “values.” They don’t call it “blasphemy,” they call it “hate speech.” They don’t call it “commandments,” they call it “policies.” They don’t call it “words of scripture,” they call it “experts say.” They don’t call it “moral law,” they call it “social contract.” They don’t call it “confession,” they call it a “public statement.” They don’t call it “church,” they call it “community.”
Fancy terminology aside, we see a society that believes more than ever that there are commandments and laws, and that those who stand against them are morally wrong, and they absolutely condemn those who don’t fall in line.
Indeed, the severity of that condemnation is the most shocking aspect of all. People are absolutely obsessed with being right, with winning debates, with finding surveys and studies that side with them, with proving other people wrong. People absolutely hate people that don’t share their views, and they are very open about it. They are so anxious to be surrounded with “rightness” they will cut off their own immediate family for daring to have “wrong opinions.” They will tell them to “f–k off” and never speak to them again….
But they will still be scandalized that you hold a faith that is so “judgmental.”
I’ve been part of an addiction recovery group for a while, and I’ve noticed something that can trip up addicts in our sobriety. I think it is a trap that applies universally as well.
I have witnessed and experienced how an addict will sometimes re-examine his definition of sobriety, playing with the fringes of exactly what behavior he will consider a relapse and what behavior he will not. Sometimes he will find a behavior that really doesn’t contradict his conscience or give him any guilt. So he relaxes the rules and guidelines in that one area, but not long after he finds himself pushing the envelope further and further, and ultimately relapsing multiple times in a row.
So was he wrong in his appraisal and just trying to justify doing things that he should have felt guilty about all along? Not necessarily.
As a general rule, good begets good and evil begets evil, but there are times where an action that is neutral, or even good, should be treated as evil, not for its own sake, but because of the evil places it tends to lead to. The addict has to acknowledge what actions follow his choices down the line. Lending a sympathetic ear to a friend might seem like a good thing to do, and in-and-of-itself it might be, but if spending time with that particular friend often leads to you eventually losing your sobriety, then maintaining that relationship is actually a bad thing to do.
The addict—and everyone else as well—is playing a game of chess against his own nature, and to not get caught in a trap he has to know how to play six moves ahead. He must reject what is clearly wrong, but also reject whatever leads to it. He must place a prudent and deliberate buffer around evil. He must come to know himself very, very well.
I’ve spent the last week-and-a-half exploring this concept of why we believe the things that we do, and which justifications for our moral alignment are reasonable and which ones are not. Today I’ll wrap things up by reviewing all of the things that I’ve covered.
Our Basis for Right and Wrong)
After contemplating the different foundations people set their judgment of right and wrong upon, I concluded that there were three main bases. A person judges what is right and wrong based on what God has said, or what society has said, or what he, himself has said.
I observed that people in our society have adopted a principle that they must listen to their own heart, determining their own right and wrong to live by. I also noted that usually what we think comes from our own self, has actually come from the society we live in. We tend to absorb the ideas we are surrounded by osmosis and then have those ideas come out of us word-for-word the same as we heard in the public square. Thus, most people end up basing their morals on what society has said, but they think they have based it upon themselves.
But neither individual whim or society’s favor are reliable bases for determining what is right or wrong. Both of them have too much variance and transformation to reflect any sort of objective, universal truth. What is “right” in society today was wrong yesterday, and likely will be wrong again in the future. A cursory glance at history shows us that it’s not as if society only improves, either. Sometimes it gets better, but sometimes it gets worse. Things have been brighter since the dark ages, but things were also brighter before them. Who is to say whether society today is at a local maxima or minima? We might think we know, but some future generation somewhere will surely disagree.
Sooner or later, any who believes that truth is defined by the individual or the society and pursues that logic to its end must come to the only possible conclusion: there actually is no absolute truth, no ideal, no sacred or unchanging standard by which our actions can be judged. Morality is transient and subjective, and any attempt to censure another person as being “wrong” is both hypocritical and vain.
The Proper Basis)
The only logical and consistent basis for moral judgment is God. Only a being that exists outside of the individual or society, one that is constant through all ages, one that is greater than the created world could lay down a law and a morality and a truth that would be consistent and objectively right.
Of course, the identity and exact opinion of that God would still be up for debate, but at least we would accept that truth could only come from some sort of theology. Of course, it would be important to acknowledge that whatever god was the true God, our knowledge of His universal law must transcend from heaven itself. It cannot simply be the idea of some man that this is what God must want, God Himself needs to have dictated it to some persons, and those persons need to have written it down as directed. Again, if such a thing were to occur, it would still be a matter of opinion as to which sacred book actually represents the mind of God, but at least we would accept that the truth could only be read out of the scripture He had given us.
And then, once we felt that we had identified that true scripture, from that true God, describing that universal truth that we are all beholden to, then all competing ideas and philosophies would have to be discarded. Never mind if your loved ones thought you were crazy, or your friends reviled you, or society persecuted you, or the great enemy destroyed you. Because, as we have established, none of those other voices have any foundation to stand upon as they oppose you. Let them think, say, and do what they will, their logic and methods are self-defeating, and all of them will crumble in time.
You, however, will have made yourself an acolyte of genuine truth, and having laid hold of it, you will be united with the only thing that is permanent, the only thing that can stay with you through all of life, and even into the world that lies beyond. Whether you be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, or any other believer of divinely-inspired words, hold to that inspired truth above all others, and your existence will surely work out better for you than chasing the ever-changing goalposts of society’s latest fad.
Spiritual Wanderings 