Relativism

Generation Z isn’t convinced monogamy is the best relationship structure, and more than half of them are considering relationship styles long considered taboo in American culture.

New data from Ashley Madison, the dating website built for affairs, found Gen Z was over represented among new signups to the site, regardless of if they were married or not. In 2022 alone more than 1.8 million Gen Z joined (of which more than one million were from the U.S.) representing 40% of all signups.

More and more Gen Zers, like reddit user r/Marmatus, are sharing their experience of having non-monogamous relationships. Marmatus wrote:

It’s nice having the freedom to explore your sexuality safely and ethically with other people. The thought of going an entire lifetime only ever having one sexual partner is not something I’d choose for myself. There are only so many experiences that one person can give you.

Ashley Madison’s Chief Strategy Officer Paul Keable said he thinks what makes Gen Z different when it comes to non-monogamy is the way this generation understands shame. He mentioned the prevalence of premarital sex–something that’s most Americans feel is no longer morally wrong. Studies have found that premarital sex is practically universal in America with 95% of survey respondents saying they had sex before they were married.

Leanne Yau, a relationship expert said,

What is it about exclusivity that is so precious to society, particularly given that infidelity is extremely common in monogamous relationships? I think the normalization of queer rights and kink becoming more mainstream and people exploring their desires has opened people to the transformative power of exploring your sexuality.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sin has consequences, as God’s Word so clearly says. Any generation who thinks that it can live in defiance of God’s standards is headed for destruction. Both Sodom and the world of Noah’s day learned this difficult lesson by way of God’s judgment.

At some point in the stretch of days between the start of the pandemic’s third year and the feared launch of World War III, a new phrase entered the zeitgeist, a mysterious harbinger of an age to come: people are going “goblin mode.”

The term embraces the comforts of (laziness): spending the day in bed watching [the TV] on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth; downing Eggo waffles over the sink because you can’t be bothered to put them on a plate. Leaving the house in your pajamas and socks only to get a single Diet Coke from the bodega.

“Goblin mode” first appeared on Twitter as early as 2009, but according to Google Trends “goblin mode” started to rise in popularity in early February 2022. “Goblin mode is kind of the opposite of trying to better yourself,” says Juniper, who declined to share her last name. “I think that’s the kind of energy that we’re giving going into 2022 – everyone’s just kind of wild and insane right now.”

But as the pandemic wears on endlessly, and the chaos of current events worsens, people feel cheated by the system and have rejected such goals. On TikTok, #goblinmode is rising in popularity. “I love barely holding on to my sanity and making awful selfish choices and participating in unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms,” said another with 325,000 views.

Many people tweeting about goblin mode have characterized it as an almost spiritual-level embrace of our most debased tendencies. Call it a vibe shift or a logical progression into nihilism after years of pandemic induced disappointment, but goblin mode is here to stay. And why shouldn’t it? Who were we trying to impress, anyway?

Possible Preaching Angle:

The world seems to be unraveling as people give themselves over to apathy, selfishness, and hopelessness. Let’s remember “the hope we have” (1 Pet. 3:15) and “shine as lights in a dark world” (Phil. 2:15) and keep up self-discipline and godly behavior while we wait for the Lord’s return (Phil. 3:20).

Physicist Alan Lightman is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for specializing in the intersection between science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality. He writes about a profound, transcendent experience in his life:

It was a moonless night, and quiet. The only sound I could hear was the soft churning of the engine of my boat. Far from the distracting lights of the mainland, the sky vibrated with stars. I turned off my running lights, and it got even darker. Then I turned off my engine. I lay down in the boat and looked up. A very dark night sky seen from the ocean is a mystical experience.

After a few minutes, my world had dissolved into that star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity. A feeling came over me I’d not experienced before. ... And the vast expanse of time — extending from the far distant past long before I was born and then into the far distant future long after I will die — seemed compressed to a dot. I felt connected not only to the stars but to all of nature, and to the entire cosmos. I felt a merging with something far larger than myself, a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute.

Lightman is in awe of nature but is unsure where that should lead him:

It is almost as if Nature in her glory wants us to believe in a heaven, something divine and immaterial beyond nature itself. In other words, Nature tempts us to believe in the supernatural. But then again, Nature has also given us big brains, allowing us to build microscopes and telescopes and ultimately, for some of us, to conclude that it’s all just atoms and molecules. It’s a paradox.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God offers unbelievers opportunities to consider the meaning of life, eternity, and their place in it. Some, like this professor will taste and then turn away (Heb. 6:4-10), while others will recognize the hand of Almighty God and bow before him (Ps. 8, Ps. 19).

In his book, Rick Mattson writes:

I’m not the one making the exclusive claim about salvation—Jesus is. He is the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). I’m simply trusting his authority to know these things. It’s like going to my excellent family physician, Dr. Lehman. If he tells me my cholesterol is too high and that I need to cut down on sweets and fatty foods, I believe him. He’s an expert on the matter. Sure, there are plenty of other voices I could listen to about my health, including celebrities, infomercials and tabloid articles. To the extent that these voices disagree with Dr. Lehman, they’re most likely wrong. My physician has made the “exclusive” claim that his patient, me, has a certain malady that requires a certain treatment. I’m just the amateur who believes him.

Editor's Note: This simple illustration can show that proclaiming the exclusive claims of Christ need not be arrogant. Preachers can easily adapt this illustration with details from their own lives. Here’s my adaptation of the illustration (with a twist of humor):

I went to a sleep specialist doctor because apparently, I snore a lot. I told everyone, including the sleep specialist doctor, “Fine, do your study, but I am NOT wearing one of those CPAP machines.” I was convinced the doctor was getting kickbacks from the CPAP machine company. So I spent the night with electrodes stuck on my head and the doctor gave me his diagnosis: you have sleep apnea and you need to wear a CPAP. Now I trusted his expertise even less. I called a doctor friend to investigate this quack with his kickback scam. My friend said, “Your doctor is the real deal. Wear the CPAP machine. You’ll have more time on earth to enjoy your grandchildren.” So, every night I put that silly mask on my face. Why? Because after kicking and screaming, I have come to trust and to surrender to my doctor—his authority, his expertise. Why do followers of Jesus obey him in all things? Because they have surrendered to his authority and expertise.

Possible Preaching Angles: Rick Mattson writes, "This analogy can work with any authority figure you can think of: pilot, air traffic controller, professor, lawyer, scientist, astronaut, boat captain and so on. I prefer the doctor image because it’s so universally revered. I suppose a skeptic could push back on the analogy by pointing out that sometimes doctors are wrong and one should get a second opinion. That’s fine. The point is that somewhere in the process I, the amateur, trust in some authority who makes an exclusive truth claim about my condition.”

You don’t have to “know” a rule to know that you should be following it. Take, for example, the rule of ablaut reduplication. Chances are, you have never heard of it, but you follow it all the same. Writer Mark Forsyth explains in his book Elements of Eloquence:

There are rules that everybody obeys without noticing … Have you ever heard that patter-pitter of tiny feet? Or the dong-ding of a bell? Or hop-hip music? That’s because, when you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O. So politicians may flip-flop, but they can never flop-flip. It’s tit-for-tat, never tat-for-tit … If you do things any other way, they sound very, very odd indeed.

Teachers do not have to teach this rule in grammar school. But it is known all the same. Even when we don’t officially know the rules, we instinctively know we should follow them and can immediately identify when something is wrong.

Possible Preaching Angle: Conscience; Morals; Law of God – The same is true spiritually for each person on earth. God has “written the requirements of the law on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness” (Rom. 2:15). Though people try to ignore it or silence it, each one has a conscience that speaks of God’s rules.

Fleming Rutledge writes: Sin is a category without meaning except in reference to God. A Calvin and Hobbes comic strip illustrates this in an endearing way. Calvin, a little boy, is hurtling down a snowy slope on a sled with his friend Hobbes, a tiger, conducting a discussion about sin (the wildly improbable nature of this scene is part of its charm). Here is the dialogue:

Calvin: I'm getting nervous about Christmas.

Hobbes: You're worried you haven't been good?

Calvin: That's just the question. It's all relative. What's Santa's definition? How good do you have to be to qualify as good? I haven't killed anybody. That's good, right? I haven't committed any felonies. I didn't start any wars. … Wouldn't you say that's pretty good? Wouldn't you say I should get lots of presents?

Hobbes: But maybe good is more than the absence of bad.

Calvin: See, that's what worries me.

The British theologian Leslie Newbigin told the following story to illustrate how different cultures water down the claims of Jesus:

When I was a young missionary I used to spend one evening each week in the monastery of the Ramakrishna Mission in the town where I lived, sitting on the floor with the [Hindu] monks and studying with them the Upanishads and the Gospels. In the great hall of the monastery, as in all the premises of the Ramakrishna Mission, there is a gallery of portraits of the great religious teachers of humankind. Among them, of course, is a portrait of Jesus. Each year on Christmas Day worship was offered before this picture. Jesus was honored, worshipped, as one of the many manifestations of deity in the course of human history.

But this wasn't a step toward leading people to faith in Jesus Christ. It was actually what Newbigin called "the cooption of Jesus into the Hindu worldview." He explains:

Jesus had become just one figure in the endless cycle of karma and samsara, the wheel of being in which we are all caught up. He had been domesticated into the Hindu worldview. That view remained unchallenged. It was only slowly, through many experiences, that I began to see that something of this domestication had taken place in my own Christianity, that I too had been more ready to seek a "reasonable Christianity," a Christianity that could be defended on the terms of my whole intellectual formation as a twentieth-century Englishman, rather than something which placed my whole intellectual formation under a new and critical light. I, too, had been guilty of domesticating the gospel.

Lee Strobel uses the following illustration to highlight the moral rebellion that makes clear truths of Scripture much more ambiguous than they are.

Imagine a daughter and her boyfriend going out for a Coke on a school night. The father says to her, "You must be home before eleven." It gets to be 10:45 p.m. and the two of them are still having a great time. They don't want the evening to end, so suddenly they begin to have difficulty interpreting the father's instructions: What did he really mean when he said, "You must be home before eleven"? Did he literally mean us, or was he talking about you in a general sense, like people in general? Was he saying, in effect, "As a general rule, people must be home before eleven"? Or was he just making the observation that "Generally, people are in their homes before eleven"? I mean, he wasn't very clear, was he?

And what did he mean by, "You must be home before eleven"? Would a loving father be so adamant and inflexible? He probably means it as a suggestion. I know he loves me, so isn't it implicit that he wants me to have a good time? And if I am having fun, then he wouldn't want me to end the evening so soon. And what did he mean by, "You must be home before eleven"? He didn't specify whose home. It could be anybody's home. Maybe he meant it figuratively. Remember the old saying, "Home is where the heart is"? My heart is right here, so doesn't that mean I'm already home? And what did he really mean when he said, "You must be home before eleven"? Did he mean that in an exact, literal sense? Besides, he never specified 11 p.m. or 11 a.m.

And he wasn't really clear on whether he was talking about Central Standard Time or Eastern Standard Time. In Hawaii, it's still only quarter to seven. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, it's always before eleven. Whatever time it is, it's always before the next eleven. So with all of these ambiguities, we can't really be sure what he meant at all. If he can't make himself more clear, we certainly can't be held responsible."

Christian apologist Nancy Pearcey uses the following story to show how "stealth secularism" can bypass our critical grid and hook us emotionally:

In the nineteenth century, a movement called literary naturalism offered novels and plays that portrayed humans as merely products of nature … Virtually every student I have taught has read books by Jack London, like Call of the Wild. But what they don't know is that as a young man, London underwent what one historian calls "a conversion experience" to radical materialism by reading the works of Charles Darwin. He memorized long passages from Darwin and could even quote them by heart (like Christians who memorize Scripture).

He wrote about dogs to soften the blow, but his real message was that humans are nothing but evolved organisms, with no free will, governed by natural selection and survival of the fittest. In London's short story "The Law of Life," an old Eskimo is left behind by his family to die in the snow. As the wolves close in to devour him, the old man ponders that evolution assigns the individual only one task: to reproduce so the species will survive. "Nature did not care. To life she set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the task of life." After that, if the individual dies, "What did it matter after all? Was it not the law of life?"

The story pounds home the theme that humans have no higher purpose beyond sheer biological existence. High culture filters down to pop culture, so materialist themes appear in movies and television as well.

Editor's Note: Nancy Pearcey also adds this interesting detail, which also works as a stand-alone illustration: "In a famous episode in Star Trek, the characters debate whether the android Lieutenant Commander Data is a machine. He is, of course, but Captain Picard retorts, 'It is not relevant. We [humans], too, are machines, merely machines of a different type.'"

An August 2015 poll from Barna highlighted what's been called our "new moral code." Here are the percentages of those who agreed "completely" or "somewhat" with the following statements:

• "The best way to find yourself is to look within yourself"—91 percent of U.S. adults agreed; 76 percent of practicing Christians agreed.
• "People should not criticize someone else's lifestyle choices"—89 percent agreed; 76 percent of Christians agreed.
• "To be fulfilled in life, you should pursue the things you desire most"—86 percent agreed; 72 percent of Christians agreed.
• "The highest goal in life is to enjoy it as much as possible"—84 percent agreed; 66 percent of Christians agreed.
• "People can believe whatever they want, as long as those beliefs don't affect society"—79 percent agreed; 61 percent of Christians agreed.
• "Any kind of sexual expression between two consenting adults is acceptable"—69 percent agreed; 40 percent of Christians agreed.

Based on these results, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons conclude: "The morality of self-fulfillment is everywhere, like the air we breathe. Much of the time we don't even notice we're constantly bombarded with messages that reinforce self-fulfillment—in music, movies, video games, apps, commercials, TV shows, and every other kind of media."

In his book Visions of Vocation, Christian author and thinker Stephen Garber tells the story of meeting a woman who directed the Protection Project, an initiative under Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government that addresses human trafficking. Garber asked her, "So why do you care about the issue of human trafficking?"

She told the story of her heart opening to the cries of women and girls who were sold into slavery, often involving sexual bondage. After writing on the issue, the Kennedy School hired her to work at their Protection Project initiative in Washington D.C. Then Garber describes what happened next:

As we talked in her office, I watched her staff walking by in the hallway outside her door, and their serious and eager faces impressed me. She eventually said, "I get the most interesting applications here. Just imagine. Harvard University, Washington, D.C., human rights. It's a powerful combination, and it draws unusually gifted young women and men from the best universities in America."

But then she surprised me with these words, "After a few weeks they almost always find their way down the hall, knock on my door and ask to talk. Now, I know what they are going to say. After thanking me for the position and the opportunity, a bit awkwardly they ask, 'But who are we to say that trafficking is wrong in Pakistan? Isn't it a bit parochial for us to think that we know what is best for other people? Why is what is wrong for us wrong for them?' To be honest, I just don't have time for that question anymore. The issues we address are too real, they matter too much. I need more students like the one you sent me, because I need people who believe that there is basic right and wrong in the universe!"

Words change meaning over time in ways that might surprise you. Here are just a few examples of words (so, preacher, take your choice) you may not have realized didn't always mean what they mean today.

1. Nice: This word used to mean "silly, foolish, simple." Far from the compliment it is today!
2. Silly: Meanwhile, silly went in the opposite direction: in its earliest uses, it referred to things worthy or blessed; from there it came to refer to the weak and vulnerable, and more recently to those who are foolish.
3. Awful: Awful things used to be "worthy of awe" for a variety of reasons, which is how we get expressions like "the awful majesty of God."
4. Fizzle: The verb fizzle once referred to the act of producing quiet flatulence (think "SBD"); American college slang flipped the word's meaning to refer to failing at things.
5. Clue: Centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. Think about threading your way through a maze and you'll see how we got from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve things.
6. Naughty: Long ago, if you were naughty, you had naught or nothing. Then it came to mean evil or immoral, and now you are just badly behaved.
7. Guy: It comes from the name of Guy Fawkes, who was part of a failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. Folks used to burn his effigy, a "Guy Fawkes" or a "guy," and from there it came to refer to a frightful figure. In the U.S., it has come to refer to men in general.

Possible Preaching Angles: Doctrine; Word of God; Theology; Love; Repentance; Marriage, and so forth—You can pick many words in the Christian vocabulary, words about biblical doctrine or a biblical lifestyle, and examine how these words have changed meanings from Scripture to today. Unfortunately, many of these changes in definitions of biblical words aren't just interesting or innocent; they damage our faith and weaken our understanding of Christ.

Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland has written about an encounter with a student at the University of Vermont. Moreland was speaking in a dorm when a student told him, "Whatever is true for you is true for you and whatever is true for me is true for me. If something works for you because you believe it, that's great. But no one should force his or her views on other people since everything is relative." As Moreland left, he unplugged the student's stereo and started out the door with it.

The student protested: "Hey, what are you doing? … You can't do that." Moreland replied, "You're not going to force on me the belief that it is wrong to steal your stereo, are you?" He then went on to point out to the student that, when it's convenient, people say they don't care about sexual morality or cheating on exams. But they become moral absolutists in a hurry when someone steals their things or violates their rights. That is, they are selective moral relativists.

Interestingly, a few weeks later this student became a follower of Christ because he recognized the connection between God and human dignity and rights—that God made us in his image. I like to tell churches that this could be a great new evangelistic method called, "Stealing Stereos for Jesus."

Do you remember the famous story about the six blind men and the elephant? One blind man touches the belly of the animal and thinks it's a wall. Another grabs the elephant's ear and thinks he's touching a fan. A third blind man touches the tail and thinks he's holding a rope. On they go, each grabbing a part of the elephant without any one of them knowing what it is they really feel.

What's the point of the story? We are all blind men when it comes to God. We know part of him, but we don't know really know who he is, we are all just grasping in the dark, thinking we know more than we do.

But there are two major problems with this analogy. First, the whole story is told from the vantage point of someone who clearly knows that the elephant is an elephant. For the story to make its point, the narrator has to have clear and accurate knowledge of the elephant. The second flaw with this story is even more serious. The story is a perfectly good description of human inability to know God by our own devices. But the story never considers this paradigm-shattering question: What if the elephant talks? What if he tells the blind men: "That wall-like structure is my side. That fan is really my ear. And that's not a rope; it's a tail." If the elephant were to say all this, would the six blind me be considered humble for ignoring his word?

Possible Preaching Angles: This story can illustrate the truth of the Bible as God's revelation to us or the truth of Christ as the Word of God. In both cases, God (the elephant in this story) has chosen to speak to us, to reveal himself to us, so we don't have to act like the blind men.

Bill Klem was the father of baseball umpires: colorful, judicious, and dignified. He was beyond passionate about America's favorite pastime, declaring, "To me, baseball is not a game, but a religion." The first umpire to use arm signals while working behind home plate, Bill umped for 37 years, including 18 World Series. He became known as "the Old Arbitrator," a deferential nod to his keen eye for calling balls and strikes.

On one such occasion, as he crouched and readied behind the plate, the pitcher threw the ball, the batter didn't swing, and, for just an instant, Bill said nothing. The batter turned and snorted, "Okay, so what was it, a ball or a strike?" To which Bill responded, "Sonny, it ain't nothing 'till I call it."

If you go skydiving at the Southwest Florida Skydiving Club in Punta Gorda, Florida, you can count on two things: (1) an exciting experience and (2) the need to follow some basic rules. For instance, before you participate in a dive, your "Jump Master" will give you the following instructions:

• Don't curl up into the fetal position. (You can slip out of your harness.)
• Arch your back and hold your arms out in front of you. (To keep you from slipping out of your harness and to get you flying in the correct position.)
• Stick your legs out in front when landing. (No explanation necessary.)
• Do everything your jump master tells you to do. (Immediately.)
• No pets allowed on your jump.

These are not negotiable, especially if you want to live. They are absolutes.

Now let's imagine another skydiving experience. When you arrive a smiling instructor begins strapping a parachute to your back while walking you toward a plane idling just outside. Over the plane's engine noise the instructor yells, "We here at the Relativist Skydiving School believe there are many ways to get from the plane to the ground. We respect everyone's desire to skydive and we don't believe in absolute rules. Just listen to your inner voice, respond honestly to your feelings, and have a memorable experience. We'll see you when you get down!"

If that was your experience, would you go skydiving? Most people who go skydiving are glad that there are strict, nonnegotiable rules. You can't be a relativist at skydiving. The rules are there for good reason. When we know why the rules are there it helps us embrace them.

The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argues that if God does not exist, there is no basis for objective right and wrong. All things are permitted. But Craig writes that "no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view of life."

For example, Craig notes that although the atheist Richard Dawkins solemnly claims, "There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference …. We are machines for propagating DNA," he constantly makes moral pronouncements. Dawkins characterizes "Darwinian mistakes" like pity for someone unable to pay us back or sexual attraction to an infertile member of the opposite sex as "blessed, precious mistakes" and calls compassion and generosity "noble emotions." He denounces the doctrine of original sin as "morally obnoxious." He vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals, religious indoctrination of children, the Incan practice of human sacrifice, and prizing cultural diversity in the case of the Amish over the interests of their children. He even goes so far as to offer his own amended Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior, all the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism.

So although an atheist might say that certain acts are wrong—really wrong—if there is no God, he cannot honestly distinguish between right and wrong. So the atheist makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

Dr. Stephen L. Anderson, a professor in Ontario, Canada, had what he called a moment of "startling clarity" while teaching a section on ethics in his senior philosophy class. He needed an "attention-getter"—something to shock his students and force them to take an ethical stand. He hoped that this would form a "baseline" from which they could evaluate other ethical decisions. Here's how he explained what happened next:

I decided to open by simply displaying, without comment, the photo of Bibi Aisha. Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains … She was saved by a nearby American hospital. I felt quite sure that my students, seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, would have a clear ethical reaction ….

The picture is horrific. Aisha's beautiful eyes stare hauntingly back at you above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of my students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. I could see that they were experiencing deep emotions.

But I was not prepared for their reaction. I had expected strong aversion; but that's not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture. They said, "Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it's okay." Another said, "It's just wrong to judge other cultures."

I wondered, "How can kids who have been so thoroughly basted in the language of minority rights be so numb to a clear moral offense?" …. No matter how I prodded they did not leave their nonjudgmental position. I left that class shaking my head. It seemed clear to me that for some students—clearly not all—the lesson of character education initiatives is acceptance of all things at all costs. While we may hope some are capable of bridging the gap between principled morality and this ethically vacuous relativism, it is evident that a good many are not. For them, the overriding message is "never judge, never criticize, never take a position."