In our own time, moral arguments rage over abortion and gay marriage. Earlier in our nation's history, the sale and consumption of alcohol was treated in a moral-legal manner. Many other mind or mood-altering substances remain under similar prohibition.
And then, of course, there are the endless arguments over how to handle such age-old vices as gambling and prostitution.
To gain a clearer picture of how to apply objective-verses-subjective morality to these societal quandaries, let's first return briefly to the dynamics at the individual level.
If one distills religious teachings down to their essence, I think they rest upon willful choice and self-determination. In other words, the challenge or growth potential for the individual is to gain morality not through outside duress, but rather through a willing choice to take the path and embrace the resulting striving and learning process. In this case, the individual gains empowerment, and can genuinely feel that he or she is doing the right thing.
A morality begrudgingly accepted because one feels forced by others to be or think a certain way rings hollow by comparison. It is also far more likely to lead to unnecessary feelings of guilt and frustrated repression.
In that scenario, individuals will feel powerless, and are also more likely to feel worthless, or question whether they are even doing the right thing to begin with.
With those acknowledgements comes the realization that trying to force others to obey an objective and absolute moral code through the vehicle of secular law can be extremely destructive.
Let's consider again the hot-button moral issues of our time, gay marriage and abortion. We can take up various positions and argue the morality, immorality or moral neutrality of these things endlessly, and never find ourselves reaching a consensus.
But perhaps, it is merely a waste of energy to try to argue one another into any particular moral point of view.
Instead, try looking at things from a more pragmatic standpoint. We can acknowledge a faith path based upon self-determination. We can also acknowledge the value a government resting upon the freedom of choice, which is what we are at least supposed to have.
Therefore, can we not conclude that it is not only antithetical to our core principles -- both secular and religious -- as well as patently unfair, to suggest that a person be either essentially forced by secular law to carry through with a pregnancy or forbidden by secular law from marrying the person of their choosing?
Those issues seem clear-cut.
Likewise are matters on another side of this sometimes complex issue -- those being the things that nearly all of us can agree are simply too destructive to allow, even though they might germinate as matters of personal choice. In that regard, there's little debate that such things as murder, theft, assault and arson should be viewed as intolerable from the standpoint of earthly governmental law.
Things might get a bit murkier when we begin to deal with issues that are, again, strictly matters of personal choice, but might also have repercussions that are or could be harmful to society.
Such issues might include recreational drug use, gambling and prostitution.
Any or all of them could be considered objectively in violation of an absolute moral standard.
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