christian morality

Right and

Wrong 101

by Mark Brumley

Lewis was taking issue here with the notion that human beings create their own morality - an idea largely confined to the intelligentsia of Lewis' day but which permeates the popular culture in ours. Whether stated explicitly or merely implied, many people today believe morality to be a matter of personal "choice." On this view, we simply "adopt" a "value system" like you might adopt a style of dress or a particular hobby.

The idea that morality is more a matter of taste than truth is widespread today. What "works" for you might not "work" for me, we are told. And who are you to say I'm wrong?

"You can't impose your morality on me," is how the adulterer puts it to his former Baptist pastor on this afternoon's Donahue/Oprah/Geraldo. "I'm a Christian," he insists. "I mean, the Bible says, `Love your neighbor as yourself,' right? That's all I've done."

The World of "Ought"

A thoughtful person will note a certain contradiction in such moral relativism. People routinely claim that we should not "impose our moral views on others," without realizing that insisting others ought to adopt their relativistic view of morality is itself an "imposition" of a particular moral view on the rest of us.

Try as we might, we cannot find a morally value-free place from which to pronounce moral platitudes to others. It is like the man who argues we should never argue or someone who claims to have a proof invalidating all proofs. In less philosophical language, it is called "cutting off the limb you sit on."

If pressed, most of us would probably admit to operating by certain moral "givens," by a sense of right and wrong which is difficult, though not impossible, to ignore. Not that this moral sense is infallible (or that we always follow it). We make "moral" errors the way we might also make mathematical errors and - what is not the same thing - we also sin, by choosing to do what we know is wrong or failing to do what we know is right. In both cases, we retain an awareness of some cosmic standard of rightness and wrongness against which our actions can be measured or judged.

This standard of right and wrong is what St. Paul writes about in Romans 2:14-15, when he refers to the Gentiles who lacked the Mosaic law but who nevertheless followed certain of its precepts: "When the Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves even though they have not the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts."

Christian thinkers and others have called this universal standard of right and wrong the Natural Law.

The Natural Law is not to be confused with "the laws of nature," in the scientific sense of that expression. The scientific "laws of nature" describe how physical entities do in fact act. Atoms have no choice in the matter of how they are to behave. The Natural Law, on the other hand, is concerned with how rational beings - beings with minds and wills - ought to act, and here choice is involved.

The key word in that last sentence is "ought." Natural Law concerns what is called prescriptive truth; truth about what should or should not be done by human beings. Of course, there are people who deny the category of prescriptive truth altogether. In doing so, they deny any real difference between good and evil. Most people, however, believe in the Natural Law in one form or another, even if they do not call it that or realize it.

St. Thomas Aquinas described the Natural Law as "the rational creature's participation of the Eternal Law" of God. As a computer designer makes a computer to operate in a certain way, so God has designed human beings, as rational creatures, to operate in a certain way, according to his plan. This "certain way" is the Natural Law, which we rational creatures can know and ought to obey. The Natural Law provides the legitimate basis for our human laws and for our judgments about right and wrong.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it:

The Natural Law, the Creator's very good work, provides the solid foundation on which man can build the structure of moral rules to guide his choices. It also provides the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community. Finally, it provides the necessary basis for the civil law with which it is connected ... (no. 1959).

Morality and Law

A popular slogan today is that "you can't legislate morality." In a sense, of course, that is true. Merely passing laws will not make people behave morally anymore than merely writing the number 1 followed by six 0s in your checkbook will make you a millionaire. Besides, as St. Thomas Aquinas also affirmed, not everything immoral can or should be made illegal.

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which we not only can but must "legislate morality." If morality is about what is right and wrong, then surely we want moral laws rather than immoral ones. We want laws which forbid what is wrong and command what is right, even if they cannot and do not forbid everything that is wrong or command everything thing that is right. The alternative is as obvious as it is nonsensical - to have laws forbidding what is right and commanding what is wrong.

In fact, we "legislate morality" every day. We pass laws to protect fundamental and inalienable human rights. If we mean by such rights what we claim we mean by them, then laws protecting such rights are really laws about morality, about right and wrong - and about justice. People who invoke the language of fundamental and inalienable rights are tacitly acknowledging, whether they like it or not, that there is a higher law than mere human law. And here is where the Natural Law comes in.

People of our time face a dilemma. On the one hand, they would rather not acknowledge a Natural Law binding on all human beings because they mistakenly believe this limits genuine freedom. They want to do certain things contrary to the Natural Law - contrary to real goodness itself. But they do not want to face up to it, so they try to deny the undeniable, the way an insane man who wants to fly might deny the law of gravity and jump out the window. The results are similar.

In reality, the Natural Law does not limit freedom, only license. Genuine freedom exists for something - for doing the right thing - for the real as opposed to the merely apparent good. We are free so that we can act as we should by choice, not by instinct or compulsion. And the fact that we all know, at some level, there is a "right thing" to do implies the existence of a Natural Law.

The Demands of Justice

On the other hand, to deny the Natural Law is not only as foolish as trying to deny gravity; it also undercuts any grounds for claiming a real "right" to freedom. To deny the Natural Law is really to deny justice itself and to deny justice is tantamount to denying the basis for any claim to a right of freedom.

Since a right is something due in justice, if there is really no such thing as justice - because there is no cosmic law or ultimate principle against which we can measure human actions, only changeable human laws - then we are not due anything in justice, including freedom. Freedom becomes a gift of the government, to be granted or taken away at the government's whim. And government, under such an arrangement, invariably is government by force, where "might makes right."

Of course, someone might argue that he will grant "rights" to others, provided he be accorded "rights" by them. He might, in other words, base human rights upon a social contract among people. His defense of such rights, then, would be a carefully concealed defense, not of universal justice and rights in general and certainly not of others' rights in particular, but of himself and his own interests. True, he might not violate the law, lest by doing so he encourage others to break the law to his own disadvantage. And he may well defend the rights of others so that he can expect them to defend his rights. But would you really feel safe living nextdoor to such a man? Would you really trust him?

Consider: what if this man decides he can harm others and get away with it? Then his self-interest will no longer safeguard your rights or mine. We will be compelled to take matters into our own hands, to defend ourselves by force, if necessary. In other words, the rule of law will break down and we will be back to "might makes right."

Our society is not yet at this point, but we are rapidly approaching it. In the name of radical moral pluralism and multiculturalism, many people deny universal standards of right and wrong. Increasingly, in the interests of self-indulgence and personal license, some people refuse to acknowledge what they cannot reasonably deny - right and wrong apply to everyone, themselves included. The result of such denial can only be chaos, where "everyone does what seems right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6). And, as with the Israelites of old, that can only bring ruin, disaster and death upon the land.

Mark Brumley is the Managing Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine. He holds a Master of Theological Studies from the University of Dallas.