On morality and public opinion

I’ve read with some interest the recent news stories about the hacking of a website whose purpose was to enable married people to have affairs. I’m interested in the moral questions it raises.

First, I wonder why people who sign up to a site that encourages deceit, are so surprised when they are in turn are dealt with deceitfully?

And secondly, I’m curious about people’s reactions. Some apparently fear being blackmailed because they don’t want their activities made public. But if having affairs is as common as implied by these revelations, why it is still thought to be shameful?  However, it clearly is!

Here we see clearly the difference between knowing what is right, yet doing something felt to be wrong.

As a Christian I would like to think that people have some inherent sense of right and wrong, but I’m not sure whether this is actually the case.  Just a few decades ago having sexual relationships outside marriage was commonly thought to be wrong (though of course it still happened), and it was seen as wrong for a couple to live together outside of marriage (though it did sometimes happen), and to have a child outside of wedlock had serious consequences.  But in Western society nowadays these behaviours are all so commonplace that the Biblical view of sex belonging only within marriage is regarded as absurdly old fashioned and quaint, even among some Christians!

So, attitudes about morality can and do shift, sometimes quite quickly. [For example, redefining the question of gay marriage as an issue of ‘equality’ rather than an issue of ‘morality’, was a sleight of hand that changed public opinion remarkably quickly.]

So, where does morality come from? If it is just a matter of shifting public opinion, will there soon come a time where there will be no felt shame, no need for deceit and no risk of blackmail when one has an affair?

The Christian view is that morality is certainly not just a matter of public opinion - in fact it doesn’t come from people at all, but from God’s revelation; it is necessarily something defined beyond human beings. The most obvious example is the 10 Commandments in the Bible's Old Testament. These were not a moral code that Moses thought up, nor were they guidelines for good living offered by God to humankind in order to be helpful, but commandments about how people should live and the consequences laid down by God if they did not do so. (By the way, the 10th Commandment says “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife”, Exodus 20 v17.)

But as most Western (supposedly ‘Christian’) societies have stopped believing in God, or at least in his authority, the resulting moral vacuum has been filled by 'public opinion’, which not only shifts but is different in different societies.

There is evident self-righteous hypocrisy when Western ‘morals’ are thought to be ‘right’ but another society’s ‘morals’ - for example that it is acceptable to marry girls at the age of 12 - are ‘obviously wrong’. Sorry, you cannot define your morality by public opinion and then condemn others who do what is considered normal amongst their public!

Either way, the Bible tells us clearly (e.g. Matt 10v26, Luke 12v2-3) that there will come a time when everything we have done - and even thought! - will be made public.  Although my name will not be on that particular list which has just become public, I do not gloat. There are plenty of other things that I would be ashamed of when they become public, were it not that Jesus’ already knows about them, and died so that I could be forgiven.

However, it hadn’t occurred to me before that the fulfilment of the Biblical prophecy that 'all will be made known' might come about through computer hacking! I suppose this is just a tiny foretaste of the judgement still to come.

Can we have the Nanny State back please?

In decades past, much of state policy had a moral dimension to it - including concepts such as the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor - which influenced the degree and nature of any help or benefits offered.

We now expect the State not to make judgements about the ways in which people live. So the tax and benefits systems treat people the same, regardless of behavioural choices or lifestyle. Thus we affirm that it is not the job of the State to make moral judgements and so avoid having a 'Nanny State'. After all, it is not the job of the State to decide who is 'right' or 'deserving'!

At first sight this appears to be fair: people are treated equally regardless of their circumstances, and it avoids the State having to make difficult judgements at an individual level; straightforward regulations can be drawn up which apply to all.

But this stance has a number of unintended consequences: in avoiding making moral judgements, we promote amorality. And in an amoral society we do not face any consequences from our decisions; it makes no difference if we behave morally or immorally, responsibly or irresponsibly! Moreover, this system is not felt to be 'fair' either, for some groups are widely felt to be 'milking the system' at the expense of 'the rest of us'.

So there is a perverse consequence of this amoral stance: the irresponsible are in effect rewarded, by not reaping any negative consequence from their actions; and the responsible are in effect discriminated against, for there is no positive outcome from taking personal responsibility, as well as from having to pick up a share of the consequences arising from others' irresponsible behaviour.

And hence the 'neutral' stance is not neutral after all: in being amoral, we are promoting amorality. A state system which is blind to people taking personal responsibility, encourages and grows immature and irresponsible people. People unfamiliar with difficult moral decisions and judgements are ill-equipped to do so when needed, including about the interplay of personal and societal responsibilities.

And those who sneer at idea of the 'Nanny State' and strut around saying 'they don't want to be treated like children' appear to be behaving exactly like stroppy children who are trying to assert that they are grown up.

Others say that grappling with morality is the responsibility of the church, not the state. In part this must be true, for the ultimate questions of right and wrong are religious. But making judgements about balancing personal and societal responsibilities are not just a religious matter. People who have no religious faith make judgements of this kind all the time, and the state cannot wash its hands of doing so too; that is the state shirking a difficult responsibility!

Personally, I would rather we grappled with the problems associated with a Nanny State, than promoted an amoral culture. The former pushes us as a society to make judgements which balance the needs of the individual with the best interest of society. This will certainly involve difficult discussions and decisions about what is 'moral' or 'right', and what 'acting responsibly' means in relation to the rest of society.

But promoting an amoral culture is definitely wrong!