Today's post is about values. I'm sure you've heard this pro-abortion argument before: "religious groups have no right to impose their values on anyone." You can substitute religious groups with the Catholic Church or pro-life groups. The implications of course is that whether abortion is right or wrong depends on someone's values. That's relativism - the idea that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.
One thing that someone is going to have to explain to me about relativism is what happens if your values change? Mine did.
When I was in my 20's I supported abortion. Lake many woman of the 80's I believed that abortion was a personal choice and no one had a right to tell a woman what to do with her body. I also did not believe that abortion destroyed a human life.
By the time I was 32 I was strongly pro-life. I understood that all life is a precious gift from God and no one has a right to destroy innocent life.
Both of those statements can't be true, one has to be false. There is a such thing as absolute truth. Math and science are full of absolute truths. 2+2 will always equal 4 even if I don't want it to. A teacher has an obligation to teach a child that 2+2 cannot equal 7, even if the child wants it to equal 7.
The same is true of moral issues. One that is true will always be true. We have an obligation to present that truth - in a just and loving manner of course. And no, presenting the truth is not trying to impose our values on someone.
Effie
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