This blog is coming a little late because our phone lines and Internet service have been down for a few days. In the United States it would incredibly rare for a person's land line to be out of service for a few days without some kind of disaster being involved. Here in Africa though, outages happens regularly. In fact, the functioning of infrastructure here in general can be very hit or miss. That's why we say here, "TIA (This Is Africa)." We have public water supply, but it goes out every month. The electricity goes out generally once a month. There are potholes on a lot of the roadways and there are lots of speed bumps, all designed to test the suspension system of your vehicle. I have to dodge cows, even on the main highways. In my neighborhood alone, there are several sewer leaks that go months without repair.
This reminded me of an argument that I had some years ago with an engineering society over how their infrastructure report card was graded. They published a report card every couple of years on the state of American infrastructure. Usually the grades ranged in the D's and C's. I began to think about how American infrastructure compares with infrastructure in Third World countries and wondered how these grades were determined. What were they comparing it to? If American water works are a "D", what grade would African water works receive? I inquired as to how the grades were determined and found out that it was done by survey. Every two years the engineering society sent a survey form to a selection of engineers in each state and got their opinions as to the state of infrastructure. This selection often changed so the surveys were surveying different people between one survey and the next. As an engineer, I was aghast. If the physical condition of something was going to be graded and then tracked over time it needed to be by some means that was measurable, some kind of standard, not an opinion survey. Before I retired from working as an engineer I developed a formula to grade physical inspections of infrastructure in an effort to create an objective standard and proposed this. While it generated some interest, I don't think my proposed standard and related formulas were accepted.
To put this in plain language instead of tech speak - we need objective standards to measure things, not surveys. Surveys are only good for measuring feelings, likes and dislikes. If you surveyed a group of children in a classroom and asked them to show you an inch using their thumb and a finger, you would get all kinds of different answers. If you wanted the correct answer you would give them a ruler and ask them to show you an inch. The answers you get might be close to an actual inch if the children had been using rulers recently and probably the answers (finger measurement) would be more and more inaccurate the longer the children went without looking at a ruler.
The same rule (going by an objective standard rather than surveys) applies to morality in society. What do you consider to be right and wrong, good and evil? Do you get this from a standard, or do you determine what is good and bad based on what the majority of your peers say is good and bad? In other words, do you just survey popular opinion and your own feelings to determine what you think is good and what is evil? If that is the case, then what you think is good and what is evil today is different from what you thought 5 years ago and what you think will be good and what will be bad will be different 5 years from now because popular opinion changes all the time. If you were asked if cannibalism is wrong, how do you determine your answer? Most people would say that cannibalism is wrong and in fact, it is against the law in most countries. But is your answer based on your feeling, "Ew, that's gross!" and the fact that most of your peers consider it gross, or is your answer based on some objective standard? I use the example of cannibalism because cannibalism has been considered to be evil by the West for a long time but now there is a growing interest in women eating their placentas. It is growing in popularity as evidenced by the fact that there is now a placenta cookbook and the concept even has a name - placentophagia. This was all featured in New York Magazine about 4 years ago. The belief is that there are supposed health benefits, even though none of it has been proven. In 1998, an English celebrity TV chef cooked a placenta on his TV show and served it up to a dinner party. Isn't that cannibalism? The definition of cannibalism is the consumption of human flesh by another human being. If you base the rightness or wrongness of this on your feelings and popular opinion, that may well mean you will think cannibalism is ok 5 years from now. No wonder Western morality is changing so rapidly. Do you like what you see now? What do you think things will be like 5 years from now? I think that a lot of this thinking came about when many people believed the lie that you can't legislate morality (meaning we can't agree on a standard of morality) and that came about from the lie that there is no objective truth or standard. Every time society says that something is illegal, it is legislating morality. Morality is our definition of what is right and what is wrong as evidenced by our laws and social norms of behavior. However if morality is determined just by the feelings of the majority then we are basing right and wrong on what is popular today and that will change tomorrow. There should be a standard and Western society once had a standard but now has gotten rid of it and replaced it with, "Do whatever you feel like."
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness ... 2 Timothy 3:16
He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind. 1 Samuel 15:29
There is an objective standard and it is the Bible, which is the Word of God. As we see in the next verse, God doesn't change His mind, however the first verse shows that our heart and mind changes constantly because it is more deceitful than anything.
So what is your standard for determining right and wrong for yourself and everyone around you? Is is a standard, or is it just a survey of your feelings and what is popular?
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