Just two pages into the introduction to Tim Keller’s The Reason for God and he’s already stimulating my mind. I can’t wait to get into the real meat of the book.
In his introduction, Keller is recounting his early years as a college student battling over the questions of moral relativity and social justice. In the church he saw two “camps”. The liberals, who seemed to have a looser, amorphous sense of morality, but had a burning passion for the oppressed all over the world. And on the other side, the conservatives, who seemed to have less concern for social justice, but a strong moral foundation.
Keller explains:
I was emotionally drawn to the [liberal] path—what young person wouldn’t be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted! But I kept asking the question, “if morality is relative, why isn’t social justice as well?”
Keller’s question, I think, is just one of the many logical problems that faces the church today. I don’t say that only because I occupy a more conservative position, but because it really is illogical. There isn’t a satisfying way around the question.
If the church is going to stretch God’s word to demand less of us, why can we not stretch our social standards to demand less of us? In fact, if we believe the bible loosely, then couldn’t we also believe life loosely? For example, if God produced a person into a dreadful situation, perhaps he wants them to be there? After all, if God creates homosexuals, then he must want them to be homosexuals and therefore the lifestyle is okay, right?
So Keller’s question is poignant, I think. If our morality is relative, so our justice should also be relative. Maybe even more so.
