I continue getting to back issues of Breakpoint that have been lying in my "in-box" far too long. This one came out January 11, 2012. It's importance can hardly be overstated. We weeps for this culture. Colson wrote:
For years, I’ve been warning you about the dangers of relativism and what happens when society abandons a Christian worldview. Now I’d like to show you.
Dr. Stephen Anderson teaches philosophy at A.B. Lucas Secondary School in Ontario, Canada. His students had just finished a unit on metaphysics and were about to start one on ethics.
To jump start the discussion and to “form a baseline from which they could begin to ask questions about the legitimacy of moral judgments of all kinds,” Anderson shared with them a gruesome photo of Bibi Aisha, a teenage wife of a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. When Bibi tried to get away from her abusive husband, her family caught her, cut off her nose and ears, and left her to die in the mountains. Only Bibi didn’t die. Somehow she crawled to her grandfather’s house, and was saved in an American hospital.
Writing in Education Journal magazine, Anderson relates how he was sure that his students, “seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, [they] would have a clear ethical reaction,” one they could talk about “more difficult cases.”
But their response shocked Anderson. “[He] expected strong aversion [to it], … but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused . . . afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize,” as he said, “any situation originating in a different culture. They said, ‘Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.’”
Anderson calls their confusion and refusal to judge such child mutilation a moment of startling clarity, and indeed it is. He wonders if it stems not from too little education, but from too much multiculturalism and so-called “values education,” which is really just an excuse for moral relativism.
Continue reading "MORAL RELATIVISM AND EDUCATION: ARE WE PRODUCING ETHICAL PARALYTICS?" »
This past weekend, I had the privilege of honoring a fellow Marine--FRC's own Doug Werk, who, along with his wife Shirley, has been a mainstay of this organization for more than 20 years. First as Vice President for Administration and later as Presidential Envoy, Doug anchored everything from the construction of FRC headquarters to the building of FRC's reputation as the premiere pro-family organization in Washington. On Saturday, we honored his decades of service at a special reception in Orange County. Without the Werks' passionate commitment to faith, family, and freedom, FRC would not be where it is today--among the strongest, most respected voices on Capitol Hill. Our deepest thanks to Doug and Shirley for inspiring generations of FRC staff to love God by fighting for America's best.
For Chen Guangcheng, it was a bittersweet trip to New York City. The blind pro-life activist, who escaped years of torture by Chinese authorities, is acutely aware of the family he leaves behind. His mother, brother, and nephew are still in China, their fate uncertain. But for today, the human rights attorney, his wife, and two children, will celebrate their first taste of freedom the Big Apple, where the family will make its home. "For the past seven years, I have never had a day's rest," Chen said. And he doesn't plan on taking one now--at least when it comes to his crusade against forced abortion and sterilizations. "We should link our arms and continue in the fight for the goodness in the world and to fight injustice," he told the press. Let's hope Chen's influence extends to his new home, where the inhumanity of abortion is so often ignored.
