Who Decides What is Moral?

One thing I’ve noticed while working with animals on the farm is animals don’t live by a moral code. Living things in the wild live by the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest. There is no moral code in nature. Nature while beautiful, is cruel. Living things in nature live by feeding off of other living things. Animals kill. And not just for their own survival. I’ve seen pigs kill other pigs. I’ve seen chickens kill other chickens. There is no chicken police or nature judicial system to enforce justice. Is nature immoral?

We, on the other hand, live by a moral code. Where does that moral code come from? Who exactly determines what is moral. Given what we know about living things in the wild, we have to agree that what is moral can’t be determined by nature. In nature, anything goes. If anything goes, there is no moral system.

We as humans believe in a moral way to live. We believe in justice. We acknowledge good and evil. We live by a moral system pointed towards good and away from evil. We all agree there is right and wrong, although we all disagree (to a certain extent) on what right or wrong looks like. Our laws and judicial system is evidence that we all believe justice to be real and worthy of pursuing. The fact that people disagree about what’s right or wrong is evidence that we all believe there is something true to argue about. Why have a judicial system? Why establish laws if there’s no real truth to base our laws on? If there is no objective moral truth, why argue? If moral truth is not objective, we should just all accept that everything is fair game right? Anything goes.

Throughout history people in positions of power have been the law of the land. Considering the long list of evil and ruthless leaders throughout history, I hope we can all agree that what’s truly moral can’t simply be determined by people with power.

What about people as a whole? Is real moral truth determined by the culture? By what the majority of people agrees on? While this sounds more appealing than people in power, it’s still no more a reflection of moral truth. Culture’s change. Is moral truth determined by what’s popular? By what’s culturally accepted? Our nation is very divided in many ways. Both sides of many different issues believe to be right, believe to have people’s best interest at heart. Most people have good intentions. But most people have very different ideas concerning what is good and how to get there.

If what’s moral is changing with the culture, is there really such a thing as moral truth? Truth doesn’t change based on popularity or public opinion. If a teacher asks the class the answer to 2+2… the answer is 4 no matter how many or how few students answer it correctly. The answer is not determined by the most popular answer, nor by the class average. Truth doesn’t change. If what’s moral is determined by the culture, does that mean slavery was ok so long as the culture believes it is? Was the holocaust morally acceptable simply because it was culturally accepted by the Germans? If you believe slavery and the holocaust to be immoral (which I hope you do), then I hope you can agree that what’s moral can’t be determined by the culture.

I know what you’re thinking. You thinking, “I know what’s moral. I know right from wrong. If only the whole world would listen to me and see things my way, everyone would know what’s really moral.” Mabye you’re right. Maybe you do know what’s moral. The problem is that all the other people walking the planet believe they know what’s moral as well. While we all agree that moral truth exists, we all disagree on what that actually looks like. Who’s actually right? You of course.

Is morality determined by scientists? Do you have to have a certain degree or IQ to be able to discern what is moral? Many reputable scientists come up with very differing conclusions in a variety of issues, all in the name of science. If we leaned solely on science to determine what’s moral, would we expect the research findings to be any more consistent that other research findings? Would we expect scientific studies concerning morality to be any less political than other scientific studies? One thing well respected scientists all agree on is how little we actually know. They admit that the more we know and discover, the more we realize how much more we don’t know. We should expect the same in terms of moral research. Scientific studies concerning morality, if nothing else, should reveal to us how ignorant we are morally.

But that is certainly not the case. No one will accept the possibility of not having all the moral answers. Everyone claims to know for a fact what is moral answer is. The world is filled with individuals pointing fingers at other individuals for looking at the world through a different moral lens. Of course moral tolerance seems to be the easy answer, but that doesn’t work either. Moral tolerance puts us back with the animals where anything goes and nothing is moral.

If moral truth is real, it can’t come from us or be moved by us. Before we understood gravity, gravity existed. The laws of gravity didn’t change based on our understanding of it. People can’t change what’s moral any more than people can change the laws of gravity.

The reason we live differently from all other living things is because we are different. We were made differently from all other living things. Without God how can moral truth exist? Without God morality is just made up by people. Who gets to decide how to make it up?

Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”

We were made to be caretakers. To care for everything God has created. To care for the bigger picture. To care for the greater good. This is what’s moral. According to God. We are good at caring, but what we care for has been shifted to ourselves. We put ourselves and our desires at the center of Creation. We aim our care towards ourselves. Which is selfish. Selfishness does not accomplish love. Satan is obviously sneaky and tries to distort moral truth. Considering we all have some selfishness in us, he has succeeded in confusing us to make right look like wrong and wrong look like right. We justify our selfishness and put our own moral stamp of approval on it.

Jesus came to the world not just to be a moral example; his mission was much greater. But while he was here I believe he succeeded in living the perfect moral life. He demonstrated what it means to care for the greater good. The problem is the way Jesus lived isn’t natural or even rational to us. Scientific studies on his life would conclude that his life was less than ideal.

What’s my point? Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Rather than asking: What do I believe to be moral? Perhaps the more important question to ask is: Am I living up to what I believe to be moral? If your answer is “Yes,” you probably think more highly of yourself than you ought. Or you probably have a very low standard of morality. Which is fine, but that gives you no basis to complain when you suffer the consequences of other peoples’ different but still low standards of morality.

If your answer is “No,” and you do not claim to be living up to what you believe to be moral, then why should we try to hold others to the same standard we are not capable or willing to live up to ourselves? What if we all focused more on living what we actually believed to be moral, rather than demanding the rest of the world to live like what we believe to be moral?