How can you not be a moral relativist? You had to learn your morals from somewhere. After you learn what the moral behavior is you need to do it in relative terms to the situation.
The rabbis had figured this out a long time ago. If things were not relative to the situation why do we need a fence around the laws in the Torah. This fence or grey zone is ever widened so that you do not accidentally transgress.
Today we have the Pope giving yet another speech on the moral relativism of the world. Relative to what? Jews and Christians drink wine and Muslims don’t. Christians and Muslims eat chicken with milk but Jews do not. The law says do not boil the kid in the mother’s milk. And what does this have to do with chicken? To keep you from mistaking meat for chicken it is applied to all meats besides fish. It is all relative.
Christians pick and choose which laws they would like to follow from the Hebrew bible but remain moral relative to the teachings of Jesus. Jews do not follow any of the teachings of Jesus or Mohammad. Relative to which religion do we make the morals work?
Let me give another example where all three religions would agree. Stealing is wrong. It seems very clear. So let me ask you at what point do you believe it is stealing? Let’s say you work in an office all day long and:
- You remember you have a few things to do at home and you take a piece of paper and write down your list and you bring it home. Are you stealing?
- You have to buy your mom a present and you have some time before your next meeting, so you use the computer at work and buy a gift. You use both company time and their computer is that stealing?
- You are going to professional meeting not associated with work and you forgot a pencil. You go in the closet to get a pen and pencil and bring it with you.
- You need to print something out at home and you do not have time to go to the store so you bring a few sheets home.
- Your kid needs a notebook and you have an unused one on your desk. You bring it home for him to use.
Have any of these made you think that you were stealing?
Technically speaking these are all stealing. Now what if your company has a policy that allows you to do any one of these things every once in a while. Now when does it become stealing? How frequent do you need to do it to be stealing?
Moral relativism is a human trait. Those who believe that they are not moral relativists really need to provide me some good proof because I just don’t believe it.
Cross-posted on Blog Midrash
