When we left Jayden and his parents in the first chapter, tensions were high. Brad and Aubrey were just coming to grips with their shock that their son had been viewing internet pornography, and they were deeply concerned. But they were more concerned with the cavalier manner in which he brushed it off:
“Okay, okay!” Jayden felt cornered, and a touch of belligerence edged his voice. “I’ll pay you back for the credit card charges, but I don’t see why you’re making this into such a big deal. Everybody does it, and I’m not hurting anyone.”
“Jayden,” his dad replied, “I know you think you’re not hurting anyone by visiting those sites, but Son, this is a pretty big deal.”
“Just how often do you view that trash?” Aubrey chimed in sharply.
“Come on, Mom,” Jayden retorted. “Can’t you lighten up a little bit?”
“Calm down, Son,” Brad responded. “Your mother and I are just trying to figure out how deeply you have gotten into all this and how we can help you.”
“You don’t want to help,” Jayden replied bitterly. “You just want to put me down.”
“We don’t want to put you down,” Aubrey said in a softer tone. “We’re just concerned about you. You’ve gone against what we’ve taught you. I mean, you do know that porn is wrong, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know it’s wrong for you and Dad,” Jayden responded. “But it’s not that wrong for me.”
“What do you mean, ‘wrong for you and Dad’?” Brad asked. “This is wrong for everyone. We’re talking about objectifying women, lust, immorality—you name it. Pornography is wrong, period, Jayden!”
“You guys are just too uptight,” Jayden responded. “I mean the movies you and Mom go to are just as bad. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about all this. And anyway, I …”
“Okay, I see we’re not getting anywhere with this,” Aubrey interrupted. “It’s late; we’re all tired and a little upset, so let’s just call it a night. Your father and I will discuss what to do next and how long you’re going to be grounded. But from now on, you won’t be using your laptop without going through me. I’ll control the password!”
Fourteen-year-old Jayden clearly sees the issue differently from his parents. Visiting internet porn sites is no big deal to him; yet it is a big deal to his parents. Jayden and his parents reflect the divergent attitudes toward pornography prevalent among teenagers and adults today. This fact is confirmed by a major study.
In 2016, we commissioned the Barna Group to survey nearly 3,000 US teens, adults, church youth, and senior pastors on their perceptions concerning pornography and their use of it. The result was published as a study titled The Porn Phenomenon—The Impact of Pornography on the Digital Age. We have included a significant portion of that study in the appendix of this book.
The study confirms that our young people do not hold to the same standards on the issue of pornography as do many adults. Only one out of three teens and young adults consider viewing pornographic images to be wrong. In fact, our young people consider not recycling to be more offensive morally than viewing porn. While 56 percent cited not recycling as morally wrong, only 32 percent cited viewing pornography as morally wrong for them.1 Additionally, our young people have a cavalier attitude toward viewing internet pornography. When discussing porn with their friends, 90 percent of teens and 96 percent of young adults say they do so in a neutral, accepting, or encouraging manner.2 Given the fact that pornography embodies characteristics Christians have historically known to be wrong—the objectification of women, lust, the condoning of immorality, and the pull toward addictive behavior—it is imperative that we ask why the majority of our kids now consider viewing internet pornography to be morally acceptable.
The answer is that strong cultural forces have pulled many of our kids away from the moral teaching of their Christian parents. The dominant thinking of today’s culture has led them to believe that the determination of right or wrong is basically a personal decision. They feel that a person has no right to judge what another does on the privacy of personal devices. They no longer believe there is a universal standard for sexual morality beyond a person’s own view as to what is right or wrong for him personally. An astounding 70 percent of American young people today fail to embrace the concept that there is a universal standard for what’s right or wrong. They have subscribed to the morality of the dominant culture. This is clearly demonstrated in the fact that 65 percent of all Americans of all age groups do not believe there is a universal standard for truth.3
Young Jayden’s view of morality allows him to do essentially anything he wants sexually as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. This is also the majority view of adults today. Sixty-nine percent believe that “any kind of sexual expression between two consenting adults is acceptable.”4
A Pew Research Center study found that 65 percent of Americans believe that premarital sex is acceptable. Perhaps the most startling factor here is that 36 percent of those surveyed don’t even think sex before marriage is a moral issue. The same study found that 58 percent of the population endorses homosexuality as a valid lifestyle, with 35 percent of that group failing to see it as a moral issue.5 One respondent summarized this view when she said, “If you want to poll attitudes toward homosexuality that is one thing, but don’t couch it in terms of morality.”6
These findings show that the majority of Americans see overarching, universal moral standards as meaningless, especially when applied to sexual issues. The only valid sexual moral standard widely endorsed today is the one you personally decide works best for yourself. That perspective is reflected in offhand remarks like: “No one has the right to impose his or her moral views on me; I decide that for myself.” “How you choose to live your life is up to you, no one has the right to judge you.” “That may be wrong for you, but it’s not necessarily wrong for me.”
It’s easy to see why deciding what is morally right for yourself would catch on and become so widespread. It puts you in the driver’s seat. It feels good to make your own choices without having the moral police looking over your shoulder. No one wants their views to be under constant scrutiny and judgment. Shouldn’t we have the right to make up our own minds about what is right for us personally? Didn’t God Himself give us that freedom in the Garden of Eden?
There is a germ of truth in that viewpoint. God did give humans the right to choose their own way. And once that choice was made, God allowed it to stand. But this fundamental truth has been distorted and applied in a way it was never intended—as people tend to do to justify choices that are at odds with God. Yes, we have the freedom to choose whether to follow right or wrong, but we do not have the freedom to choose the content of right and wrong. And choosing wrong, even if we convince ourselves that it is right, does not exempt us from the inevitable consequences of our choice. This is where most of our young people and many others suffer from deep-seated confusion. That confusion revolves around the difference between the concepts of truth and beliefs. There is a vast difference between what one may believe personally and what is true universally.
Clearly, we are each entitled to hold our own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that we are each entitled to create our own respective truths. Truth must conform to reality, which means by its very nature it is independent of our beliefs. Beliefs, on the other hand, are essentially personal, and they may or may not conform to reality. One may hold a belief based on erroneous data that later information proves to be false. Or, as we will explore below, there are neutral areas of thought and action where universal truth need not intrude, and in these areas, making decisions based on opinion and personal belief is appropriate. But in areas where truth is defined by God, it makes no sense to say that something is true for you and not for me. Either that “something” conforms to God’s universal standard for truth or it does not, and if it does not, then no amount of believing it to be true will make it so.
For example, imagine that you and your friend see a green apple lying on a table. Your friend believes its insides are rotten and full of worms. But you, on the other hand, believe it to be crisp and worm-free. Can your opposing beliefs about the apple create two distinct realities that are contradictory yet equally true? No. The two of you can subjectively believe what you want, but there is only one objective truth about the inside of the apple. The only way to determine that truth is to slice open the apple and observe the reality of its inner condition. Then you will discover the real truth about the apple—whether or not it has worms. The instant the apple is sliced, the objective truth will be revealed and the false belief will be exposed. The truth about the apple exists independently of the beliefs of either you or your friend.
Just as the truth about the apple exists independent of one’s beliefs about it, the truth about right and wrong exists independent of anyone’s beliefs about it. There are very specific and particular truths that exist independent of Jayden, his parents, and all of us. But while one can easily determine the truth about a concrete object such as an apple, the truth about an intangible moral principle such as sexual morality may not be so immediately obvious, especially to a generation bombarded continually by sexual stimulation from entertainment, advertising, education, and the media. So how can a generation skeptical of universal truth discover the independent and unchangeable truth about sexual morality?
All human beliefs have a source. The primary way to determine the validity of a moral truth is to look for that source. Did it come from human thinking and experience or some mesmerizing political demagogue or a famous philosopher or sage or prophet? If so, where did he get the idea? Human-made concepts of truth rise and fall with the times and are inevitably swept into the oblivion of history. But for morality to be authentic and universal, it must have a source beyond the human mind—a source that rests at the base of all sources—a source that is self-originating, self-existent, and has no source of origin but itself. The only source that fits that requirement is God. God has defined the truth about sexual behavior in His Word for all humans. That means the truth about sexual morality is universally true for all people for all times and in all places, and it is not subject to change based on anyone’s personalized belief. God as the creator of humans laid out the terms of sexual behavior: He designed sexual relations to be expressed between one man and one woman within the exclusive bonds of marriage. To experience sex outside that boundary is to adulterate or contaminate the sexual experience. Scripture teaches that engaging in sexual behavior outside the exclusive nature of marriage makes sex impure or adulterated. That’s why sex outside of marriage is called adultery.
Jesus said, “You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). Scripture goes on to say, “Put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires” (Colossians 3:5). That kind of moral truth is not up for consideration. It is not a matter of Jayden deciding whether it’s right for him. It’s not an issue of personal choice that one can modify or reject in favor of a morality more conducive to one’s personal wants.
To clarify an issue that we noted briefly above, God does allow His people to adopt personal beliefs in some areas that are legitimately matters of opinion. It’s what some have called “personal convictions.” In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul addressed the fact that some Jewish followers of Christ were conflicted over what eating restrictions to follow, what festival days to observe, and on what day to celebrate the Sabbath. He told them that these decisions could be made individually on the basis of preference or conscience, and then he went on to warn that “those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them” (Romans 14:3). Addressing what day a person should worship on, he said, “You should be fully convinced that whichever day you choose is acceptable” (Romans 14:5).
Paul was making the point that there are issues outside the universal moral law of God that required a personal decision—a decision that God accepts even though it may differ from the decision of a fellow Christian. I know some people who feel strongly that to honor the Lord’s Day they must refrain from buying products on Sunday. Some people are convinced that to enroll their kids in public schools is wrong; they must either be educated in Christian schools or homeschooled. God allows freedom to make such choices based on personal convictions. The apostle Paul made this point quite clear when he referred to the Jewish regulations concerning what foods were pure or impure: “I know and am convinced on the authority of the Lord Jesus that no food, in and of itself, is wrong to eat. But if someone believes it is wrong, then for that person it is wrong” (Romans 14:14, emphasis added).7
The point is, God has given us certain universal truths. On the other hand, he has given us areas of choice in which we may form our own beliefs and do whatever works best for our situation or convictions. But when a culture treats universal truths from God as if they were malleable personal beliefs, it twists the truth into an error. We are free to determine our personal convictions on a variety of issues, but moral truth lies beyond one’s personal determination. God has already defined that.
Someone has said—accurately, I think—that all disagreements come from differing assumptions. Jayden worked from the assumption that he had the right to decide whether viewing internet porn was right for him. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t even a moral issue. His parents, on the other hand, worked from the assumption that God had established the truth about sexual morality, and that lust is a violation of that truth. They determined, therefore, that pornography is morally wrong because it stimulates lust.
Had Jayden been required to make a “truth statement,” it would be that he had the right to choose whether internet porn is right for him based on his standard of morality. Brad and Aubrey’s “truth statement” would be that viewing internet porn is wrong for everyone, based on God’s standard of morality. It really comes down to determining which standard is the correct one—which should be applied when faced with moral choices. Understanding the definition of truth helps us to make this determination.
Webster defines truth, in part, as “fidelity to an original or standard.” To illustrate what this means, let’s assume you and I are talking together when a stranger approaches and asks, “What time is it?” You look at your cell phone and say, “It’s 2:23 p.m.” But I look at my watch and say, “No, it’s 2:26 p.m.” Whose claim is true, yours or mine?
We could argue all day about whose device is the better timepiece. But to determine the correct time, we would have to compare the times shown on our devices with the international standard by which all world time is measured. That standard is set by the prime meridian, which is the longitude that runs through Greenwich, England, and is thus called the “Greenwich Meridian.” That is home to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The day’s date changes when the sun rises on that meridian. GMT is world time, and it is the basis for setting every time zone around the world. Although GMT has been replaced by atomic time (UTC), it is still widely regarded as the official measurement of time around the globe.8
So, if you and I want to establish which of our “truth statements” about time is in fact true—your 2:23 p.m. or my 2:26 p.m.—we would simply compare the times shown on our devices against the “original or standard” of timekeeping in Greenwich. Whichever of our claims about time is in accord with GMT will give us the truth about the correct time.
When we search for the “original or standard” for moral truth, we find it in God. Basing our claim on sound, solid, and testable biblical principles, we confidently assert that Creator God is the original and the universal standard for all moral truth. It is God who defines what is right, good, and true. Anything that does not conform to His standard is wrong, evil, and untrue.
Neither Jayden nor his generation can create their own moral truth. That truth cannot be individually created because it already exists in God as revealed in His Word. The task of Jayden’s parents—and of us as well—is to lead our kids to discover God’s truth. We must help them realize that the standard for moral truth doesn’t lie within ourselves; it exists independently outside ourselves and in fact resides in the Holy One who created us.
The culture that is presently influencing our kids does not look to God as the original and standard for all moral truth. In this respect, today’s culture is quite different from that of America’s past. The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, in part, reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Somewhere along the way, America abandoned its original foundation and no longer looks to God as the source of moral truth. Why and how did we as a nation lose our dependence on God? The answer to this question will give us insight into how we can reestablish that dependence within our homes and churches.
It is not that the majority of our kids today are nonreligious; it’s not that they are rejecting God. They are very spiritually minded, and most believe in God and the Bible. It’s just that they feel it’s okay to define God and shape truth differently than their parents do. It’s not that they don’t have a set of values—they do. The problem is that those values and morals are personally shaped by their own self-constructed standards. Truth and morality are therefore relative, situational, and personally defined.
You didn’t lead your kids to think like that, which raises the question, who did? Where did they get their relativistic approach to truth? The thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that influence how we view the world don’t simply pop into existence. The personal approach to determining truth that is dominant in America today is merely the current link in a historical chain of changing thought. It will help us know how to correct the moral relativism our kids have adopted if we familiarize ourselves with how attitudes toward truth have evolved from generation to generation to produce the current moral climate of the West.
For centuries in Western culture, the starting point for all truth and morality was God as revealed in scripture. Life and death and the meaning of human existence were understood in the context of the universe as created and governed by God.
For some thirteen centuries after Christ, the acknowledged purpose of science and philosophy was to discover more about God and His design for humanity. The recognized end of all human effort and creative activity was to honor God. Art, literature, music, and architecture were intended to reflect God’s glory. The acknowledgment of an infinite, almighty God made sense of the whole of human experience and provided the proper foundation for questions about right and wrong. But all that began to change some seven hundred years ago at the end of the period we call the Middle Ages. And that gradual change has brought us to where we are today.
Beginning in Italy in the 1300s, great strides were made in literature, learning, art, and architecture. This period of European history is called the Renaissance. It stretched over the course of two centuries and spread throughout Europe, lasting through the sixteenth century.
Writers and artists such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giotto, and Michelangelo sparked an era of extraordinary human accomplishment. The Renaissance also marked a significant shift in human thought. While the major focus of art, literature, and philosophy during the Middle Ages had been on glorifying and serving God, the Renaissance artists and thinkers began to exalt man and his abilities as the standard of all accomplishment. This shift gave birth to a doctrine called humanism, which stressed human dignity and ability. God was not yet eclipsed; most of the paintings of the Renaissance period depicted biblical events and much of the architecture was glorious and enduring cathedrals. But God’s glory was often diluted as the artists themselves were often revered as much as their work. Renaissance thinking opened the door to regard man as the center of all things, the master of his fate, the captain of his soul. This emphasis led eventually to an unbiblical view of humans and their relationship to the Creator. As this way of thinking began to take hold, men and women’s dependence on God as a source of truth and morality began to wane.
The Renaissance may have had minimal impact on human thinking had it not been followed promptly by the next period.
This period, which began in the 1600s and lasted through the next century, was also referred to as the Age of Reason. Enlightenment thinking advanced the idea that individuals have the right to reason for themselves. It’s true that humans are rational beings with not only the right, but also the responsibility to exercise their God-given reasoning capacity. But the problem with Enlightenment thinking was that it tended to elevate reason above divine revelation. This was done, in part, as resistance to the religious superstition and dogmatism prevalent at the time. People began to feel free to determine what they believed on their own, independent of God and His Word.
While the Renaissance mind acknowledged God, many leaders of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, claimed that if there were a God who had created the world, He had no contact with it now. This meant that men and women were left to discover truth on their own by the power of reason; they could expect no help from God. Thus, standards determining right and wrong were no longer based on God and His Word, but on human reasoning. In the Renaissance, humans (not God) became central; in the Enlightenment, human reason became transcendent. The error of the Enlightenment was not in recognizing human reason as a wonderful thing (which it is); it was the attempt to crown human reason as king in God’s place.
This laid the foundation for the present-day thinking that the individual has the right to determine his or her own truth. If that approach to truth is valid, then no one has the right to judge the morality of another. Once the transcendence of individual reason was firmly enthroned within culture, it set up three more periods that have brought us to where we are today.
The Industrial Revolution was an explosive period of human ingenuity and productivity. It overlapped much of the Enlightenment period, extending from the 1700s through the 1800s. Feeling empowered to think for themselves, people were motivated to unleash their creativity. The inventions, innovations, and improvements of the Industrial Age fueled more than factory furnaces; they stoked the fires of human confidence. The progress that men and women saw all around them encouraged them to look to themselves for hope and guidance. People no longer felt such a need to look upward (to God); they needed only to look inward (to themselves). With freedom of expression, entrepreneurship, and economic prosperity, much of society was led to conclude that their potential was limitless. This human-focused perspective all but pushed God out of the picture, except for the recognition that He was, of course, our Creator. That too would soon change.
The momentum of the Industrial Revolution was still in effect when the theories of Charles Darwin, a former theology student, completed the seismic shift that the Renaissance had begun. The publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859—which introduced the theory of evolution—had a profound impact worldwide. His theory presented an alternative to the theistic understanding of origins; God was no longer needed to explain or understand how the world and humans came to be.
This shift in thinking could now lead men and women to believe that they—not God—were the arbiters of truth and morality. Human reason had replaced God as the object of modern man’s worship. Human accomplishments had fueled an arrogance and confidence in one’s ability to create good and judge evil. Finally, with the publication and increasing acceptance of Darwin’s theories, God became unnecessary and, in the minds of many, left individuals free to judge truth and to reach their own conclusions about right and wrong independent of God and His Word. Friedrich Nietzsche took that line of thinking to its logical conclusion and, just prior to the dawn of the twentieth century, proclaimed that God was dead.
The previous eras set the stage for Modernism, the age of unprecedented scientific achievement. It was during this period that the world heard these incredible words: “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” Science had put humans on the moon. Twentieth-century modernists began to see all the world through the eyes of science. This led Western culture to begin placing its faith in rationality and empiricism, the belief that objective knowledge can only be gained through our senses and evaluated by our minds. Any truth that cannot be observed and experienced—such as spiritual or moral truth—is to be considered subjective and must not be elevated to the position of objective knowledge. Since the standard for right and wrong cannot be apprehended through experience or the senses, the natural conclusion is that morality is solely dependent on what people feel inwardly is right or wrong for themselves. Lacking any standard for morality that can be experienced by the senses, one is free to formulate his or her own standard by integrating sensory data with personal preferences. In its simplest form, this method can be characterized in this way: “This feels good. I like it. I perceive no harm in it. Therefore, I will call it right for me.”
Jayden and most young people today have adopted this modernistic thinking. Remember Jayden’s response when his mother asked, “You do know that porn is wrong, don’t you?” His answer: “Yeah, I know it’s wrong for you and Dad. But it’s not that wrong for me.” Jayden is simply reflecting the way of thinking about truth and morality that has been institutionalized within our culture. Moral truth is not something you can scientifically observe and measure. And if pornography, premarital sex, or extramarital affairs can’t be scientifically proven to be wrong, then we are left to decide subjectively if it’s right or wrong for ourselves. That makes perfect sense to an entire generation.
In nonscientific areas, the effect of Modernism has devolved into a sort of foggy, roiling intellectual void commonly called Postmodernism. Jayden’s thinking is representative of this extension of Modernism in that it separates the scientific from the spiritual, placing the former in the realm of absolute, verifiable knowledge and the latter in the realm of personal determination. Young people today are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology. Those fields deal with observable reality, producing results that are objectively verifiable. But when it comes to matters of religion, ethics, and morals, which make claims that cannot be verified by data apprehensible by the senses, young people treat those areas as subjective and relegate them to the realm of personal choice. They assume to themselves the authority to decide what kind of morality is right for them.
We now live in the Digital Age. It is a time of explosive growth in technology, massive dissemination of information, and giant steps in medicine and science. There is a growing belief among this generation that advanced science and technology are the only sure disciplines that can actually explain the world we live in and transform it for good. This makes human ingenuity and technological advancement our only hope for the future. So, we have no need to look to anyone or anything else to save us.
It is likely that your young people view God, the Bible, morality, and the values you are trying to teach them through this postmodern lens. This means they are working from a set of assumptions as to what is morally right and wrong that are totally different from yours. As long as they retain that working premise of moral relativism and the corresponding assumption that they decide for themselves what is right and wrong, nothing is apt to change. They will continue to adopt a process of mixing and matching the kind of God, morals, and religion that makes sense to their subjective feelings. That, of course, is highly troubling to those of us charged with our young people’s spiritual welfare.
The pervasiveness of the postmodern philosophy makes it seem that the very foundations of moral law and order for our families and nation are crumbling. King David’s question is as relevant today as it was when he penned it some three thousand years ago. “The foundations of law and order have collapsed. What can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). The question cannot be more pointed. What can we do right now to build or rebuild a more solid moral foundation for our families and churches?
King David went on to direct us to the answer:
The LORD is in his holy Temple; the LORD still rules from heaven. He watches everyone closely, examining every person on earth. (Psalm 11:4)
God is still there as the definer of true morality. He hasn’t changed; He still watches and cares for this generation. The problem is that this generation is not seeing Him clearly for who He is. The secret to getting our families and churches on a firm foundation for making right moral choices is to lead them to a fresh revelation of the one true God. Many of our young people do not see God for who He truly is, nor have they experienced Him as their definer for all that is right and wrong. Changing that perception is definitely doable. We need not resign ourselves to the inevitability of our children being shaped by their culture. But they can still be shaped by God and His ways. In the following chapter, we will begin to share a process designed to rebuild the crumbling foundations of a universal morality based on God. By following this process, you can restore in your young people the power to make moral choices with God and His Word as their standard for truth. Read on!