[The following is an article I published a couple years ago in our monastery newsletter, which perhaps many of you did not see. I’m re-publishing it here, since it seems still to be timely, and it makes some distinctions that Christians need to understand on this subject.]
A lie is contrary to the truth. A lie poses as truth, in order to deceive. But most lies can be 
unmasked by a presentation of facts that make the truth clear. It is then up to people with some intelligence and good will to accept the truth. Of course, people with corrupt or self-serving agendas, even if they do recognize the truth as such, will not accept it, because they value more highly the actual or potential personal, political or economic gains that accrue from perpetuating the lie.
But what if someone says there is no truth, and hence no good or bad, no right or wrong? He’s not just posing one particular position contrary to another. He’s trying to pull the rug out from under the whole enterprise and thus to render impossible any kind of discussion of issues that would appeal to any authority higher than one’s own opinion or preference. Is this just an academic hypothesis? No, people are doing it all the time, and they are changing the way that many others think, in a mostly unnoticed but systematic attempt to discourage general acceptance of the reality of objective truth, and thus of true religion and all forms of doctrinal and moral absolutes. You will find these people outside of and against the Church. You will find them inside and, in effect, against the Church. The latter are more difficult to spot and deal with, because they’re more proficient with the use of religious language to cloak their intentions.
This is a huge and complex topic, and its tentacles reach into “deconstructionist” philosophies and various trends in the social sciences, as well as to the increasing erosion of Christian faith and morals in general and, on the most base and trivial (though no less influential) level, the hackneyed mantras of today’s “political correctness.” Yet I have space only to point out one key buzzword here, one which actually has its root in Scripture, but which has become distorted and exaggerated enough to acquire a completely different meaning, and which is proudly flown on the flagships of all opponents of objective truth and divine revelation: “non-judgmentalness.”
A friend of mine recently sent me an article on this topic. The author began by approvingly quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This is at the root of the author’s argument against making judgments. Not accepting a basis of objective truth, let alone divine revelation, he urges us to reject rationally objective judgments in favor of subjective preferences, which express our personal opinion or experience. Whatever we may identify as wrong about others’ behavior, for example, is simply a manifestation of their equally valid subjective and personal preference. The ultimate sin is to make someone else “feel judged,” regardless of the reason.
From a philosophical perspective, this mentality reflects a kind of intellectual despair of ever really knowing truth. In his encyclical Faith and Reason, Pope John Paul II writes: “the assumption that all positions are equally valid is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth… On this understanding, everything is reduced to opinion.” From a more practical standpoint, it is at best an honest error, and at worst a self-serving and dishonest cloak for the justification of wrongdoing or turning a blind eye toward evil.
Let’s take this non-judgmental, subjective-preference approach to its logical end. I’m being judgmental when I say that it was wrong for a suicide bomber to blow up a dozen people in a restaurant. I’m permitted to say that I would have “strongly preferred” that he didn’t do that, but not that it was actually wrong, for it is only in my own mind that something can be right or wrong. And after all, I shouldn’t be so self-righteous as to think the bomber’s personal preference was less valid than mine; it’s merely different. But some will object and call me disingenuous for using that example. They will grant that we can say that is wrong, since it killed innocent human beings. Hmm. Then I say abortion is wrong, because it kills the most innocent of human beings. But now they retort that I am imposing my religious beliefs on the woman who wants to kill her baby, and they will not permit that (as they fail to see that the issue is not anyone’s religion, but the basic human right to life of the unborn child). But what if I did impose my beliefs on the bomber and prevented the murders? Then I’d be a hero. If I prevent abortions I end up in jail.
So it’s wrong to kill innocent persons in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, but OK to kill them in a clinic in Los Angeles. Gee, that subjective preference stuff comes in pretty handy, doesn’t it? You can, if that is your preference, blatantly disregard truth, justice and even divine decrees. You can condone evil and even do it yourself, for fun or profit. And since no one is permitted to tell you that something is right or wrong, or how you should or shouldn’t behave, you don’t have to be accountable for your actions, either. What a great idea! I’m surprised they didn’t come up with it sooner. (I’m guessing that the past few millennia of law, philosophy, theology, and common sense have exercised considerable restraint—until now.) The only requirement is that you make sure you don’t make anyone feel judged.
This is why the Church says (returning to the scenario above) that all killing of innocents is wrong. Your opinion is irrelevant in the matter. Some things are always right and some things are always wrong. Some things are true and some are false. That’s reality. Deal with it. This does not mean that there are no gray areas. There are. But the architects of universal tolerance and “non-judgmentalness” would have us abandon all absolutes, moral or otherwise, and all claims to the primacy of objective truth. Truth? “What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate, as he sent the Son of God to scourging and crucifixion. An agnostic relativism leads ultimately to human degradation and even blasphemy.
The question of truth has become a non-question in many scholarly circles today, not only in social sciences and philosophy, but even in biblical studies. One after another, scholars denounce any approach to the question of truth as unwarranted or meaningless. I was somewhat surprised to discover that they aren’t really interested in truth at all, only in the comparative accuracy of particular data about which various hypotheses can then be advanced. According to then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, such scholarly activity has “the effect of immunizing against the truth. The question of whether, and how far, something an author says is true is supposed to be an unscholarly question… In this way even the reading of the Bible is neutralized: we can say when, and in what conditions, some statement originated, and we have thus placed it in its historical setting, which does not ultimately concern us” (Truth and Tolerance). All we have left is a collection of interpretations and opinions, and an attitude toward reality that says it is meaningless to ask about what really is.
The intellectual enterprise thus goes on in its sterile pride, shedding no light upon the ultimate questions of human existence, origins, and destiny. Jan Ross writes that it therefore “has rendered itself indifferent and boring, has resigned its competence where the keys to life are concerned: good and evil, death and immortality.” And Pope John Paul II, again in Faith and Reason, writes, “The interpretation of the word of God cannot merely keep referring us to one interpretation after another, without ever leading us to a statement that is simply true.” For his assertion that there is such a thing as objective truth and that it can be known, the Pope received bitter criticism from those whose “truth” arises merely from personal opinion or from majority decisions in a given time and culture.
To be continued…
Making All Things New 