The Moral Values Article
Next article: Letting God Do His Job
Previous article: Galileo Was Wrong?
I’ve had it up to my nose with the post-election hoo-hah. I’m about to drown in the putrescence. I mean, one or two articles have been very salient. All the rest — and since I read a lot of conservative and Orthodox Christian blogs, I’ve just about vomited on them all — are just too much. Most of them revolve around this “duh! Big RED TRUCK!” epiphany: The Democrats just don’t get what makes religious folks tick.
It was only inevitable, then, that someone would pull out the old “moral values are relative” shibboleth. To which I invoke the Mighty Professor Mike Peterson: “My wife and I have taught our children that our values are the only values, by which I mean: There are things that are valuable, and there are things that are not. We may disagree about what is valuable, but values are not relative. Some things are valuable and some things are not.”
Some things are valuable, and some things are not. Life is valuable. Convenience killing is not. Marriage is valuable; pseudo-marriages pretending to be marriage are not. Recognizing all people as our brothers and sisters is valuable; patronizing those less fortunate — or being patronized by those more fortunate — is not. Freedom is valuable; slavery is not. The list is nearly endless.
The difference between people who disagree about what is valuable is just that: They are disagreeing about what is valuable. But we do not have, as a result, two different values. Nor do we have two different value systems. We have a set of things, some of which are valuable and some of which are not, and two rational people who disagree about their value. The point is, if one or both of those two rational people does not properly value the things that are valuable, they are wrong.
The URL to trackback this post is:
http://kevinbasil.com/2004/11/08/the-moral-values-article/trackback/
12 Responses to “The Moral Values Article”
Copyright © 2002–2011 Kevin Robert (Basil) Fritts, all rights reserved.
November 9th, 2004 at 9:16 am
I like you, basil! Well said.
November 9th, 2004 at 11:49 am
Would that Professor Mike Peterson happen to teach at an institution were our status as Christians might be questioned? How is that for moral values not being relative?
November 9th, 2004 at 1:01 pm
Interesting: Mike Peterson’s was, if not a dealer, at least quite a partaker of narcotics for some of the time that I knew him in high school and college.
November 9th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
James, Dr. Peterson is a professor at Asbury, of course. And, very few of the faculty (Dr. Neff excluded) would question our Christianity. Some of the students are somewhat benighted, yes; a good percentage are eventually disabused of such ignorance. That’s what college is for.
Pete: Yes, I’ve known Aaron since then, and the proverb about raising a child up in the way he should go is very true. Also, Dr. Peterson made some very difficult decisions to ensure he was a father to his son during some very difficult times. I have nothing but respect for both of them.
November 9th, 2004 at 6:10 pm
Yeah, that was all going on while I was there too. It was a rough time. I think it had a lot to do with the reason he didn’t end up at Greenville where they tailor-made a position for him.
I think that maybe a few of the faculty would question our Christianity. I wouldn’t worry too much about the Bible dept. or Philosophy, but I think quite a few in the other fields might question whether or not we are “actually” Christian. My time in student gov’t gave me a weird angle on some of those professors. To see them operate in venues outside the classroom might lead one to question their actual degree of enlightenment.
November 9th, 2004 at 10:41 pm
You misread me, and I ask your fogivness if I was unclear. I didn’t say moral values are relative – i said everyone votes their values. That’s not to say some of those values are wrong.
November 10th, 2004 at 6:10 am
Huw, I probably shouldn’t have linked to you, even though your article was the inspiration, because you did eschew the relativity of values.
My point is that people may disagree on what is valuable, but there is only one set of values: Those things which are actually valuable. A citizen can vote in a certain way because he values open families. That doesn’t make open families a value.
And, ultimately for Christians, there is only One Value, from which all the others spring.
November 10th, 2004 at 5:33 pm
Your read is your read. I’m sorry if what I wrote offended you.
November 10th, 2004 at 11:11 pm
No offense. I just felt moved to respond with a different take on the matter; I hope that you yourself were not offended by the tone of my article.
November 11th, 2004 at 9:25 am
Basil, there is a difference in degree here that I think you are setting aside (perhaps deliberately to make your point). My brother, for example, does not value publicly supported arts. I do. We each think the other is nuts, and of course we’re both wrong. So I think there *are* in fact things that can be valuable or not. Some of them are not too important.
And the more important things you listed…well…perhaps it does depend upon definitions. I imagine that a devoted same-sex couple who had been together for 40 yrs might not think they had a sham masquerading as a marriage. We think in this country that unborn-child-life is more valuable than other life, because we will gleefully make wars, let people go hungry, etc. Christians *should* be more consistent, but they are not necessarily so.
Of course I happen to agree with you about valuable things 🙂 , but I don’t think the answers are as clear as we would like. Very good article, though.
November 11th, 2004 at 11:11 am
Hehehe. I agree with Victoria about the consistency thing. Kevin, was it you who posted the thing about how abortions have soared under the Bush admin?
November 11th, 2004 at 1:15 pm
Erich, maybe. I fail to see how that is germane to a discussion of my consistency.
Victoria, yes the tone is rhetorical. You know me well enough to recognize that am quite sensitive to the gray in real situations. In writing this article, I thought about making some sort of caveat with regard to arguments like the one you describe. My caveat was to portray two hypothetical interlocutors arguing about whether such and such a thing was valuable. And perhaps, in situations like yours where the value is quite relative to many, many other choices, there is less likely to be a right and a wrong.
It is also important to make a distinction between moral values and relative values. Your example must surely be considered a relative value, whereas life must not.
Yes, this culture is, as the Pope continually reminds us, a culture of death, and consistently affirming life comes with great difficulty. You must always remember not to confuse what people actually do with what they ought to do. As Lewis reminded us, it is impossible to argue from an is to an ought.