Changing the Rules

The rules governing athletic events are established in advance. Players do not change them to suit themselves. Anyone who attempted to do so would rightfully be ridiculed.

The rules of life cannot be changed at will, either. God has established moral standards for the good of man, and man rejects them only to his own detriment.

History is filled with stories of men and of nations who have thought themselves above God. They have learned to their dismay that “God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7, RSV).

The most recent attempt to cast aside God’s moral absolutes is a movement advocated even by some within the Church—“situational ethics.” In this view, man determines his behavior, not according to any precepts of God’s revealed truth, but according to his own evaluation of the situation in which he finds himself at any given time.

Let us suppose for a moment this cavalier disregard for rules were applied to sports.

First, let’s look at a baseball game. With a player on first and one out, the batter hits a sharp grounder to short. Cleanly fielded—a throw to second and relay to first and the umpires signal both players “out.”

But a rhubarb starts immediately. The batter claims he hit the ball so hard it should have been fumbled, while the runner thrown out at second yelled that he had made a perfect hook slide, even if the ball did get there ahead of him.

Despite their beefing, a perfect double play has been executed. No amount of arguing can change the umpires’ decisions.

Now on to a football game. The fall classic between Yale and Harvard is under way. The ball is snapped from center and a draw play develops. The left end darts down the field, feints, and hooks back. At that moment the quarterback fires a perfect pass. But just as his teammate is about to catch the pass, an opposing player darts across his path, intercepts the ball, and with a brilliant burst of speed carries it over for a touchdown.

Immediately the quarterback protests to the umpire. He had had perfect protection and his pass had been straight as a die, he says. His intended receiver also protests, saying he had evaded his pursuers and, but for the interception, could well have scored for his team.

But of course it is ruled that there has been an interception and a touchdown, and that the six points counted for the opposing team.

What did the officials say?

The first-base umpire, dean of the National League arbiters, asked, “Wassa matter wid you guys? Ya gone nuts?”

And the referee asked, “Who do you think you are? Do you think you can change the rules in the middle of the game?”

The determination to change the rules finds expression in the new morality, which puts situational ethics into practice.

There is the man whose wife has grown cold and who uses this as an excuse to engage in extramarital relations. Both he and his partner in adultery excuse their action because it is “meaningful.”

A boy and girl in college engage in premarital relations because they can see no reason for restraint and because there are others all around them who condone some fornication as an expression of “love.”

A hard-working man yields to the temptation to gloss over certain items when reporting his income while at the same time he pads his expense account. “Everyone does it,” he says, in trying to excuse himself.

Examples of rejection of the explicit teachings of the seventh and eighth commandments are legion. That God’s laws are broken does not nullify them. When they are deliberately flouted in the name of “morality” or “ethics,” it would seem that the acme of disobedience has been reached. Unless there is genuine repentance, surely there will come the judgment of a holy God.

The breakdown of morality that finds undergirding in situational ethics strikes at the very heart of personal and national life. When breaches of the moral law go uncondemned and are even approved and accepted, the foundations begin the crumble. The psalmist asks, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps. 11:3).

Like a deadly gas, unrecognized at first, situational ethics is spreading across our land. Even some within the Church are welcoming and advancing it.

It is high time for Christians to awake and to recognize what is taking place.

One of America’s most popular magazines recently published an article in which a prominent bishop sought to justify adultery under certain circumstances.

Also recently, a well-known religious journal carried an article by a university professor of religion who advanced the case for the new morality:

… The free man is continually asking questions about what to do in respect to others: What is Susan’s good? What is, or will be, wholeness for her? What can I do that will speed Susan’s pilgrimage to the holy place of her own unique and complete identity? And from the free woman’s side: What response will help John toward love for a woman who is wholly a woman? Even if he is willing impulsively to jeopardize his future, have I any right to encourage his doing so? What can I do or say that will create a relationship so fresh in all dimensions that no one of them is permitted to destroy the others? Set against such questions, the reductionist’s formula, ‘Yes, if married; no, if not,’ seems merely silly [“Sex and the Single Standard,” by Cyrus R. Pangborn, The Christian Century, May 17, 1967].

What foolishness! Situational ethics is a conception of morals in which there are no absolutes. Man must make his decisions on the basis of undefined “love,” “fulfillment,” “meaningfulness,” and expediency.

This new approach to the temptations of life will have a devastating effect on all who succumb. That it is the subject of discussion on campuses and at young people’s conferences adds to the danger. Without the restraining thought that God has established rules of moral behavior, and that man breaks those rules to his own harm, the whole fabric of society will be attacked by a form of spiritual cancer. The end of it all is inevitable judgment by the sovereign God—the Arbiter of time and eternity.

The Apostle Paul describes people who, “though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die … not only do them but approve those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).

And again Paul speaks: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality, … that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you. For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess. 4:3, 6–8).

L. NELSON BELL

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