The morals of the reprobate mind
When I’m driving to the gym in the morning, I occasionally tune in to the Bob and Tom radio show. To be sure, things can get a bit off-color at times, but by and large, they have some pretty good comedy that’s fun to listen to.
Once a week they have a spot where comedian Alli Breen reads letters sent to her asking for relationship advice. The cries for help lobbed over the fence to Breen and the Bob and Tom crew range from the mundane to the galactically insane.
Last week, though, came one that really stopped me in my tracks:
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Dear Alli — I have been dating a guy from seeking arrangements for about a year. He’s married so I see him maybe two weekends a month. He recently found out that I have been occasionally dating other guys from the site and he lost his mind. Isn’t it crazy that a married man would demand loyalty or am I the one who’s out of line?
OK, let’s break this down point by point.
For those of you unaware (I was), “seeking arrangements” is a website that connects individuals with a “sugar daddy/mommy.” So, for example, a young woman might offer to be a fella’s ‘girlfriend’ a couple of times a month if he agrees to pay her rent.
As a quick aside, if someone can explain why this is not a look-the-other-way prostitution site, I’d really like to hear it. The Bob and Tom crew tried to say that the connections that occur there can be purely platonic and therefore what goes on isn’t necessarily risqué.
Uh-huh. I just checked my driver’s license and saw that I wasn’t born yesterday, so, no.
Moving on, what we have here is a woman agreeing to hook up with a married guy for whatever demands she’s made on him, and apparently the relationship isn’t exclusive and committed. Shocking … The cheating man is in disbelief at her scruples and is morally outraged at her.
The whole thing reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the unjust steward where every character in the story is a moral trainwreck.
If you think this is a radically rare case of whacked-out morals, think again. Here’s a recent Dear Abby letter:
DEAR ABBY: I started having sex with a married co-worker. He cheated on me with other women. When I found out, I told him to tell me he was sorry because I didn’t deserve it. He could have just left me alone. He won’t apologize. What do I do? I’m really upset about it. He’s married, living a single life. — NOT THE ONLY ONE IN GEORGIA
Beyond causing the head shaking you’re most likely doing right now, what the Dear Alli/Abby letters also do is showcase a couple of very important points about the moral framework we see lived out today and how it’s reflective of God’s judgment on our world.
How dare you!
The first thing these situations demonstrate is that many love to espouse a view that morality is relative. That is until moral relativism reaches out and bites them hard on their backside.
Understand that our culture’s rejection of God naturally results in moral relativism. “Without God all things are permitted,” wrote Dostoevsky.
Explaining his point in greater detail, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre used Dostoevsky’s statement as the jumping-off point for his existentialist philosophy: “Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plain where there are only men. Dostoevsky said if God didn’t exist, everything would be possible. That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist”.
Except that God does exist. And that means we have objective morality that comes from a transcendent Lawgiver.
Want sure-fire proof that morals are absolute, and everything is not permitted?
Take the same people that cheerlead moral relativism and lie to them, steal from them, harm them physically, or act unfaithfully in a hurtful way and they will immediately show you how they believe that morals are absolute.
“I know I’m cheating on my wife … but I’m paying your rent so you should be committed to me and only me. How dare you!”
Oy.
If you want to toss God and His moral moorings out of your life, go ahead it’s your funeral. When you do, get ready for the rude awakening penned by humanist Paul Kurtz: “If man is a product of evolution, one species among others, in a universe without purpose, then man’s option is to live for himself.”
When this happens, things turn ugly fast with truly incredulous moral acts and results following. Witness the recent rejection in Montana of a proposal that merely required doctors to give life-saving treatment to babies born alive after a botched abortion. It lost 53% to 47%.
We shouldn’t be surprised at these things because God’s Word warns us this will happen to nations that reject him. It’s the judgment of a reprobate mind and morals where people become “futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart [is] darkened” (Rom 1:21).
Scroll through your favorite news sources and count how many stories are “filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:28-32).
It gets exhausting and depressing, doesn’t it?
Thankfully there will be an end to it one day. God has told us both why we see the reprobate morality we do and what He’s going to do about it.
“But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13); a time when “all your people will be righteous” (Is. 60:21).
Bring it Lord; that can’t come soon enough — no more crazy Dear Alli letters.
Maranatha!
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
