Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Monday, March 13, 2023
The ethical teachings of the Christian faith are the basis for morality in the West. Of this there can be little doubt. In which other civilization was there a war to end slavery, rather than the far more typical wars to enslave another people? Where else have women been emancipated in any way close to the status of women in the West? Where else is racism seen as a great evil, and not common sense? I would submit that these achievements would have been impossible without the ethical influence of the Christian religion.

“Well, the rules of the road have been lodged, it’s only people’s games you got to dodge.” —Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma”
The ethical teachings of the Christian faith are the basis for morality in the West. Of this there can be little doubt. In which other civilization was there a war to end slavery, rather than the far more typical wars to enslave another people? Where else have women been emancipated in any way close to the status of women in the West? Where else is racism seen as a great evil, and not common sense? I would submit that these achievements would have been impossible without the ethical influence of the Christian religion.
So when Christians are asked, “Do you have a moral theory? If so, what is it?” they are likely to be confused. After all, we have the Bible, God’s Word, we have an incredibly rich tradition of ethical reflection going back centuries, as well as many contemporary theologians who regularly opine on ethical topics. We can also draw from thinkers outside the Christian tradition whose moral convictions seem to align closely with Christian morality, such as the commentator Ben Shapiro or the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Why do we need to understand ethics “theoretically” if these resources enable us to answer basic ethical questions?
Perhaps we should start with the question, What is a theory, and secondly, what is a moral theory? A theory is simply an account of the nature of a thing or practice, although this question can be asked at different levels. Richard Weaver describes three levels of abstraction. The first level is practical: How can I find out what time it is? Or perhaps, How do I fix this broken clock? The second level is more of the nature of time in relation to society and culture: Does our understanding of time change over centuries, or across cultures? The third level—the highest (or perhaps deepest) level of abstraction is the level of philosophical and religious reflection: What exactly is time? Is it real? Or is it just a subjective way of understanding our experience? And how does time relate to the nature of God—Is he beyond it, or somehow within it?
So a theory of morality asks the practical question: What should I (or we) do or not do? An easy and quick, and mostly accurate definition of morality is that it has to do with what we are obligated to do or not do, not merely what we want or don’t want to do. The second level explains whether or how morality seems to change over time and across cultures, and perhaps how views of morality play out in, say, public policy or in electoral politics. Historians and social scientists are often extremely good at describing the second level. And the third level asks what morality is, and if you are a Christian, how morality relates to the nature of God.
So a moral theory provides an account at all three levels. The practical, what we should and shouldn’t do, the Do’s and Don’ts—which is what most people think of when they think of ethics. The second level is to understand why it is that morality seems to change. For example, I began above with the observation that if it weren’t for the Christian religion, slavery would likely be seen as a natural feature of social life, as Plato and Aristotle did. This is very much a second level kind of observation: The morality of the West was deeply impacted by the influence of the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. The third level is, of course, how morality relates to the nature and being of God, and to human nature, what we might think of as the metaphysics of morality.
One thing should become readily apparent, however: The three levels can’t ultimately be separated. They interact with and affect one another constantly. For example, a freshman takes a class in cultural anthropology. Strictly speaking, the student should only be learning about level 2: How morality is viewed across time and culture. However, his professor can’t help making comments such as, “So as we can see, morality really isn’t fixed or ‘absolute.’” Well, this is a level 3 observation. The professor is making a false inference from the fact of diversity at level 2 to the very nature of morality itself, one he presumably wouldn’t make if he were talking about, say, the theory of evolution, which many peoples and cultures reject. But because the student wasn’t prepared for level 2 diversity, he thinks that the absolutes he was raised with really aren’t absolutes at all. His level 3 view of morality is affected by a level 2 observation.
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When we create our identities by our own individual fiat rather than receive our identities from God’s words of life, we create counter-creations, fictional worlds which have no correspondence to what is real and true and good. The great misconception, however, is that Christians affirm that God hates us, when in reality it is that God hates our hatred of the good words he has spoken. The great irony of holding that God’s speech is hate speech is that such disdain for God’s word is hatred for the only words which present the world to us as it actually is, who we truly are, and how deeply we are loved.

The sacred season of “Pride,” the month-long panoply of indulgence and identity, recently came to a close. Through it all, many Christians have remained publicly steadfast to orthodox commitments to biblical sexuality.
In America, we saw the campaign to establish “Fidelity Month,” which sought to honor commitments to marriage vows, the family, and one’s community. We also witnessed Christians confidently expressing their convictions through Target boycotts, calling out BudLight, and lending support to a US Supreme Court case which sided with religious liberty over the LGBTQ movement’s tyranny of conscience.
But even as Christians must remain bold in their public witness, we should take seriously the questions our society often raises against our faith. Our testimony to a lost world can never merely be, “God’s word is right, and you are wrong. So repent!”
This is always essential, but we should also take seriously the deeply existential questions about whether the Christian faith is actually true, good, and desirable. Then we must offer good-faith arguments not only for why God’s words are actually true, but also demonstrate compelling reasons why they are both believable and present a way of life in the world that is actually inhabitable and leads to flourishing. Such is the task of apologetics for the Christian faith.
Are God’s Words Hate Speech?
In the wake of a month in which our whole culture is hyper in-tune to issues of gender and injustice, one timely question we need to take seriously is, “Are God’s words actually hate speech?” If what God has spoken is perceived to marginalize, deadname, or nullify someone’s chosen pronouns, surely those words must be hateful, right?
Many today certainly think so. In a society enthralled with self-pronounced identity, any limits on what one can desire or attain is deemed an injustice. So, it is no surprise that what God has spoken is quickly discarded as hateful and beyond the pale of what polite society can tolerate. In a plot twist which would be deeply ironic if it were not so shocking, many in our society have turned to Satan—whether they actually believe in him or not—because he offers complete affirmation of one’s desires and self-expression.
In the rest of this article, let us consider what God has spoken, if he is indeed hateful, and how we Christians might speak God’s words of life in a world of death.
The Subjectivity of Hate Speech
Hate speech is notoriously difficult to define. We all tend to have a sense that it is wrong to be hateful towards someone else. But what does it mean to hate something, and do we each have a right not to be hated for the way that we are or the things that we do? A simple definition might be that hate involves disdain or severe disapproval towards something. But are such sentiments themselves always wrong? In certain cases, it seems clear that there are things we should indeed hate, like the killing of innocent persons or taking advantage of the vulnerable. God himself, who says he is truly loving, hates these things (Prov. 6:12-15).
The great debate of our times seems to be not whether to hate, but what to hate. Our culture ironically tends to express great hatred towards perceived bigotry or religious intolerance. In such instances, we do not seem to be ridding society of hate so much as we are flipping the script on those that we think are showing hatred, by choosing to actually hate them ourselves.
Opposing what many today identify as hate speech does not involve true tolerance, but rather demanding everybody get with the program and accept only the sanctioned beliefs of good and evil. So, identifying something as “hate speech” is often just a veiled moral judgment of our own that we do not like what someone else is saying about us.
So, what about when it comes to what God has said? Does God hate me when he says things that I think cannot possibly be true or good? We might perceive such words as hateful, but are they really and how can I tell?
Our culture has devised a disastrous stalemate, in which the standoff between our own self-perceptions of what is hateful and whether God’s words are actually hateful in reality cannot be arbitrated. We have so elevated the individual as the supreme source of moral good and meaningful identity, that nothing can trump the self. Our mantras show this is so: “You do you” and “Be true to yourself” or “Live your truth.”
It seems that the only way forward is to invite the skeptic to step into the world God’s words create and see for themselves if there is life and love within it.
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When  [Rev.] Williams…returned to the church basement to gather his belongings, he could look up and see nothing but air where a tall church structure had once stood. When he entered the area of the basement that had protected him and two others, he found the Bible he had been using still open to the same page in First John that they had been studying when the EF2 tornado blew through.

There’s nothing left standing of the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church building except a portion of the basement. That’s where three people were studying the Bible and praying on Jan. 12 when a tornado struck.
Rev. Winston Williams, a supply preacher for the congregation for the past five years, had heard a forecast for severe weather but decided not to cancel the prayer meeting because a new couple had come the previous week, and he knew they would be there at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday looking for him. Some members of the church decided not to leave their houses after hearing the forecast.
So it was just the three of them, and they opened the Bibles to the book of First John. Just after noon, there was a sudden quiet that was quickly followed by a sound like a rushing train. Rev. Williams’ first impulse was to lead the group to a room he thought would be safer. “We tried to get into the room and couldn’t. The suction wouldn’t let me open the door.” It all happened fast, he said.
They hit the floor as the building rumbled. Dust circulated in the air, and papers flew around. But their senses didn’t fathom the gravity of the tornado’s impact.
Before long, they heard voices outside, and the sound of chain saws. They left the building and saw for the first time that the building above them had been flattened. “I was shocked when I went outside and saw the destruction.”
“At no time did I ever feel any fear or that I would die,” Williams said. “I put that to our confidence in Christ.”
The woman who had been in the church building injured her leg as she hit the floor, but otherwise the three were OK.
Rev. Williams’ next thought was for the children at the school next door—the school that the Reformed Presbyterian Church had founded to provide education for children of freed slaves. Later, Knox Academy became a public school and is now known as School of Discovery. Williams said there were over 300 children in the building when the tornado struck.
He found the children all safe, but scared. Some cried. Three trees had been toppled, and large air conditioning units had been picked up by the storm, but the classrooms were intact. Williams and the other adults stayed with the children a long time until parents came for them.
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