Mosley's Morality
FNT reader:
What do you think of what Max Mosley did? Was it wrong?
Their friend:
Well, I think it’s fine – I mean I wouldn’t do it myself – but, as Mosley said, it’s none of anyone else’s business what consenting adults get up to in private.
reader:
But don’t you see the dangers in that? Effectively, what you’re saying is that each individual – as long as they’re an adult – gets to define for themselves what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour, what is right and what is wrong. For Mosley, it was OK to engage in sado-masochistic sex, so who are we to judge? Is that really what you think – that right and wrong are just what each individual happens to think?
friend:
Well, yes. How else are you going to define right and wrong? You’re not going to tell me that the church gets to define it, are you? If we went down that route, then we’d be burning witches, stoning gays, and oppressing women. Is that what you think?
reader:
That’s not what I think. I don’t think we should be doing any of those things, and yes the church has made huge and dreadful mistakes in its time. I’m deeply ashamed of them, and sometimes it makes it hard to be a part of a church like that – but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about whether morality is, at the end of the day, whatever we as individuals decide or whether it’s grounded in something bigger than just me and my opinions.
friend:
What else could it be?
reader:
Well, we both agree that it shouldn’t be the church, and we might also agree that leaving morality up to the individual is dangerous as some individuals choose to do unspeakable things. So, I think morality – what’s right and what’s wrong – is really up to God. God gets to define it. I think that preserves us from both the worst excesses of the church, and the worst excesses of the individual. It also enables us to say that some things – rape, for instance – are just absolutely wrong, have always been wrong, will always be wrong, and that doesn’t depend on whether the culture I live in believes that or not. It means it’s still wrong even if I’m the only person on the planet saying so. Isn’t that important? Isn’t it important to say that some things just are wrong, and always will be? You keep talking about the absolute immorality of using torture in the War on Terror, for instance.
friend:
I’m not so sure of that. I’m not so sure that anything is absolutely wrong in that sense. After all, if I’m going to say that something is absolutely wrong then I’d have to believe in God, and I don’t.
reader:
Exactly. And that, for me, is one of the reasons I do believe in God, because leaving morality up to our personal whims is just far too dangerous.
Justin Thacker, Head of Theology
Open the PDF (Text Only) Version 
