Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Monday, March 20, 2023
Our culture slipped away some time ago from the dictates of natural law, even though they’re fairly obvious, and have replaced them with radical individual autonomy and so-called “authenticity,” which often means simply freedom from any kind of moral, social, or natural restraint. Once we divorced Scripture’s imprimatur from natural law, it became first debatable, then questionable, then irrelevant, and now more recently and perhaps predictably, offensive.

Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. ~Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk. I, 13
In part 1, we said that a theory of a given human activity can be distinguished at three levels: Level 1 is practical, Level 2 is in relation to society, culture, and history, and Level 3 is in relation to ultimate reality, which is the realm so to speak of philosophy and religion. We also looked at what is needed for an ethical theory. An ethical theory should provide:
(1) Level 1 (practical) principles as to what we should do, including precepts, rules, duties and obligations, but very importantly, what we are forbidden to do.
(2) How we become capable of performing our duties, and also capable of avoiding bad, wrong, or evil actions.
(3) What the purpose or goal of moral actions is in terms of human flourishing and our own individual flourishing, but also in relation to God’s nature and purposes.
(4) On what basis we know right from wrong, and good from evil. This is both in relation to Level 3 questions of what the nature of morality is, but also how we know in a given situation what we should do, which occurs at Level 1.
One reason we start with the theoretical nature of ethics is the perennial danger that Level 1 and 2 considerations, the levels that look at things from a practical standpoint and the standpoint of history, society, and culture, will dominate our attitude toward and beliefs about ethics. There is of course nothing wrong with asking how history and culture affect our views of morality, but asking these questions while ignoring Level 3 will tend to undermine our confidence that ethics has to do with something that is real and true. Let’s look at an influential current example.
Probably most of you have heard the phrase “social construct.” No doubt, you’ve heard the claim that gender (whether a person is male or female), our attitudes about the family, male and female roles, or class is a “social construct.” So what is a social construct? Here’s a concise definition:
A social construct is a concept that exists not in objective reality, but as a result of human interaction. It exists because humans agree that it exists.
A good example of a social construct is etiquette. It’s considered extremely rude in Western culture to burp out loud during a meal. But in certain cultures, it’s considered a compliment because it indicates that the food is satisfying. Thus, whether burping is good or bad manners doesn’t seem to reflect objective reality, but one’s culture, that is, whether the people of the culture “agree” that it’s rude. We can say similar things about other rules of etiquette, such as how tableware is placed, or the style of clothing that a person should wear on various occasions, say, weddings vs. funerals. These seem to have been established by social agreement rather than the ultimate nature of reality.
Frequently added to the view that an ethical norm is a social construct is that it’s socially constructed to give some people power over others, such as, for example, that it’s morally appropriate to give nobles rights that serfs don’t have. But notice it’s very tempting to slip from the belief that some behavioral rules are social constructs to the idea that all behavioral rules are social constructs, although this doesn’t follow logically at all.
Against social constructivism, some philosophers seek to defend objectivity in ethics, that there really are enduring ethical norms not based merely on human agreement, and that they are knowable. A term for this view is ethical realism. To counter social constructivism, they use various arguments designed to show that constructivist views, if taken at face value, issue in absurdity or have very harmful consequences. For instance, if someone claims that a given moral belief is just a social construct designed to give some people power, why can’t we say that his view of ethics is just a social construct designed to give him power? If the person responds that he is showing that the exercise of power for its own sake is wrong, we can respond by asking why this view isn’t a social construct, too? A steady diet of social constructivism will undermine all moral beliefs, not just the ones that the constructivist wants us to abandon, but even his view that the exercise of power for its own sake is wrong.
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with pointing out logical inconsistencies. But notice: Just pointing out that someone’s wrong isn’t yet a theory of ethics. Much more needs to be said. This is where natural law comes in, especially, because it provides an account of what moral truth is, and how we know it.
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I give my time to the ordinary means and the people God has placed under our care. But saying it’s been freeing doesn’t mean it’s been made easier. Quite honestly, it’s more demanding than ever because I understand what these things are. The true biblical understanding of the fear of God takes greater space in my heart when I consider preaching, sacraments, and care of the people of God. But knowing the calling is clear and freeing; I know whom I belong to, and what that requires of me, in a light that before I only knew through observation and not personally.

In 2020, Dr. Clark interviewed me about my unconventional route to becoming a Presbyterian pastor and how I ended up receiving a call to the congregation I serve. It is strange to consider how much change can take place in only a few years. I still remember sitting in a coffee shop over ten years ago asking Clint, the first Presbyterian pastor I’d ever met, questions about polity, baptism, and covenant theology. Though, in hindsight, I wish it hadn’t taken so long, this eventually led to our joining a local PCA congregation four years ago as a member and having our children baptized, which to this day remains the highlight of all parts of this process. And now here I am, pastoring a PCA congregation.
I remember, on one of the last Sundays before we headed out of town to begin our new call, hearing a sermon preached by my good friend Daniel at the congregation where we had joined. As he was preaching, my heart was anxious about moving my family away from everything we knew to pastor a congregation of people I didn’t know, in a presbytery and denomination with men well beyond my gifting and wisdom, and in a denomination with a polity structure and Book of Church Order (BCO) that seemed the size of a congressional budget bill to this former Baptist pastor. Admittedly, I don’t remember the text of his sermon, but I remember his calling us to see that Christ has called us to Himself, and our tasks in the kingdom are for His sake, and that He equips us with the Holy Spirit, and we are to fear not. While the sermon certainly wasn’t given that day to me personally, it was a unique kindness from the Lord to help me in these last few days before heading to Woodstock, Georgia.
As of this writing, we have lived in Woodstock for nearly three years, and are very happy the Lord called us to this congregation, presbytery, and denomination. I can say now that in the beginning, things didn’t go as I would have thought, but at the beginning of January 2020 we never could have known the changes our country was about to face. However, our time here has been fruitful as I’ve had the privilege of baptizing a handful of covenant children, as well as two adults, and God opened an opportunity to secure a permanent facility for our church in July, 2020. We have seen our membership and regular attendance increase, and the congregation has graciously tolerated and welcomed me as their pastor. I’ve been able to give my time to pastoral care, preaching, teaching and praying, which in God’s kindness has developed a loving relationship between my family and the congregation. One unique aspect has been helping a number of new members find a home in a presbyterian church in the same way I did. How gracious of God to provide this in a time in our country—it would be easy to assume it would be the opposite.
In this kindness, the Lord has afforded me the ability to understand and mature in my beginning days of being a Presbyterian pastor. Though I had pastored for many years before and learned many things during that time, the particularities of being Presbyterian are new. I had never even been a member of a session, much less the moderator of one. I’m sure the other members have laughed thinking of the times when I clearly had no idea what I was doing.
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Failure to honor God leads to mental darkness, which leads to idolatry, which leads to a debased mind, which leads to corrupt actions, which leads to a disordered moral vision, and so on. Do people behave like beasts because they treat God like a creature, or do they treat God like a creature because they want to behave like beasts? Yes.

Earlier this week, I attended a summit at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation on the upcoming Supreme Court case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which could determine the future of any efforts to regulate children’s access to hardcore pornography. One of the presenters, Lisa Thompson, shared the results of a recent study that demonstrated that teens who regularly watched pornography were more likely to (1) have much worse relationships with their parents, (2) have poorer academic achievement, and (3) show a propensity to acts of sexual harassment or violence. Today, another of our collaborators in this battle, Michael Toscano of the Institute of Family Studies, published an article at the IFS blog documenting a recent survey that showed that frequent porn consumption doubles the risk of feeling depressed or lonely.
When hearing Lisa’s numbers, I couldn’t help hearing the voice of a devil’s advocate (in this case, it really is the devil’s advocate!) in my head: “correlation doesn’t imply causation.” The porn industry will tell us that of course, teens who are lonely and depressed and have bad relationships with their parents are more likely to take refuge in porn, and that those who have a sexually predatory streak will be more apt to want to watch porn too. They might even suggest that lazy, unfocused students are going to be the ones with more time for watching porn anyway. Now of course, none of these retorts place their industry in a very good flattering light—“So what you’re saying is that your product is best suited for depressed, anti-social, predatory drop-outs?”—but at least it gets them off the hook for causing the anti-social behaviors.
In following Jonathan Haidt’s Substack, I’ve noticed a similar theme. For the past couple of years, he’s been playing whack-a-mole with more tech-friendly sociologists who insist that the connections he’s documented between social media use and poor mental health don’t tell us anything about causation—maybe it’s just that otherwise unhappy, unstable people are just more likely to binge on X or Instagram? And indeed, they probably are!
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