When Gentiles who have not the [divine] Law do instinctively what the Law requires…They show that the essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts and are operating there, with which their consciences (sense of right and wrong) also bear witness… – Romans 2:14-15, Amplified Bible

Moral relativism is abundant in our society. Moral relativism claims that right and wrong varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Therefore, no one has the right to point out to others that they are doing something wrong. When Christians take a stand for what is right, the moral relativists come out in force, proclaiming their message so regularly and so loudly that more and more Americans – and more and more American Christians – are yielding to this teaching.

On the surface, moral relativism sounds logical. But, under scrutiny, it does not hold up. For example, if you were to ask any sane human being to tell you who was the more evil, Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler, the answer would be Adolf Hitler. No one – not even the moral relativist – would put the murderer of millions of people on the same moral plane as Mother Theresa, a woman who dedicated her life to tending to the desperate needs of the people around her.

At the very moment the moral relativist chooses Mother Theresa as the more virtuous human being, he immediately contradicts the premise of his own relativistic faith. As the late C.S. Lewis wrote in his book Mere Christianity, “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other…You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.”

To illustrate this point, imagine that two people are driving down the interstate in separate cars. The speed limit is 55 mph. One driver is traveling at 65 mph, and the other driver is traveling at 75 mph. The person driving 75 mph is obviously speeding more than the driver traveling 65 mph, and the 75 mph driver will suffer a heavier fine for breaking the law more abundantly. But the only way we can say that the person driving 75 mph is speeding more than the person driving 65 mph is because we have the standard of 55 mph with which to measure them both by. Without the 55 mph standard, we’d have no idea who was speeding more. In fact, without the standard, we could not say that either one of them was speeding at all.

If there were truly no Real Morality, then no one could say that Mother Theresa was more virtuous than Hitler. In fact, the honest moral relativist would have to admit that what Hilter did was right for him and that no one else has the right to condemn him for his actions. But, to date, I have personally failed to find an honest moral relativist willing to defend Hilter’s actions.

Every one is born with “the essential requirements of the Law…written in their hearts,” as Romans 2:15 states. Some are successful in completely burying these “essential requirements” deep down in the caverns of their wickedness, but most people will acknowledge that things like murder are never right and things like faithfulness in marriage are always right. It is when someone wishes to justify their actions – actions which are contrary to the Real Morality – that they rest on the idea of moral relativism to cover their tracks. We ought to see moral relativism for what it is – an intellectual attempt to justify sin by denying the very existence of God’s moral code.

Someday soon someone will confront you with an argument of moral relativism. When they do, help them to see – with arguments such as the ones presented here – that with their mouths they may preach relativism, but with their daily actions they acknowledge the Real Morality written in their hearts by God. Who knows, the Holy Spirit may use your arguments to open their eyes to their folly and rescue them from the relativism that threatens their eternal souls.