The folly of relativism

I WONDER if people in general are aware of the folly of relativism.
They may not even be aware of relativism itself, the menace we have
been warned about quite strongly since the pontificate of John Paul II
and now of Benedict XVI.

In spite of its dominant presence in the world today, I believe people
are still ignorant of it and therefore clueless as to what to do about
it. They seem unable to point what’s wrong. The anomaly has become so
widespread it seems it has become normal.

Its effects are actually all over. Abortion is now legalized in many
rich and supposedly developed countries. Divorce is, of course,
already a non-issue in many places. Contraception is also a given.

Marriage is now deformed and defaced in many ways as more and more
people and societies are approving same-sex unions and are even open
to have national leaders, let alone leaders of less stature, whose
marital status is clearly irregular.

There is now a growing sector of people who believe they should just
be left alone on practically whatever they like to do, including
infidelity, pornography, gossips, slanders, etc., as long as they
don’t cause public trouble.

All these are manifestations of a relativistic culture engulfing the
world today. It’s a mindset and attitude that is based on the belief
that everything is relative, nothing is absolute.

Everything is relative to one’s preferences or at worst the consensus
of the people. Relativism makes us in the great variety of our
situations and predicaments as the ultimate arbiter of what’s good and
bad, what right and wrong. It’s not God anymore.

Or, another way of looking at it is that we make ourselves our own
God. What’s right and wrong simply depend on us. They can be a
negotiable affair, a matter of consensus. There can be no intrinsic
good or evil applicable to everyone in all places at all times.

This is a very terrible predicament because in the DNA of relativism
is the inherent weakness that unavoidably would lead us to
subjectivism, disunity, fragmentation, conflicts. Everyone would be
left to his own preferences, often a result of feelings and other
conditionings. Differences and conflicts become inevitable.

And to resolve or soften the impact of these unavoidable consequences,
there can be no other recourse than to violence and even anarchy, or
to a drift toward totalitarianism.

It’s ironic to note that relativism is often invoked as the soul of
democracy. It gives the illusion that with it, people are respected
for what they are. It’s a very tempting idea but detached from the
fact that we are not our own being, but rather creatures of a Creator,
God.

And so a democracy that upholds this rotten spirit and does away with
a transcendent God will be a democracy that will not be guided by an
absolute law that comes from God. It will be a democracy that will
surely contradict itself and plunge sooner or later to totalitarianism
to keep itself above water.

That’s because that democracy will not anymore work for the common
good, but rather for the good only of its stronger part, or the
majority, and not all, of its people. But as an aside, we can still
say that of all forms of government, democracy is still the best
because “it ensures the participation of citizens in political options
and guarantees them the possibility both of electing and controlling
their rulers,” John Paul II said.

As to why relativism is attractive to many people, we can posit the
idea that it appears respectful of the views and opinions of people.
The problem is that many people have lost the sense of the absolute,
have hardly any serious life of religion, and that’s why everything
seems to be matter of opinion only.

There are also those, more intellectually gifted and convinced about
relativism, who claim that if God exists then he is a God who is
constantly evolving because a God who is not dynamic cannot be God.

The flaw with this reasoning is that they equate the perpetual
dynamism of God with the process of evolution. But God, if he has to
be God, cannot anymore evolve even if he is also in constant dynamism.
That thought contradicts the very essence of God.

This is, of course, a mystery to us, due to the limitation of our
reasoning. But we cannot deny that if God is God, then he is both
stably perfect and dynamically acting. His action does not imply
change in him.