Some profound common sense here from J. Budziszewski which grows out of Romans chapter 1…
But there is a common moral ground. Certain moral truths really are common to all human beings. Because our shoes are wet with evasions the common ground may seem slippery to us, but it is real; we do all know that we shouldn’t murder, shouldn’t steal, should honor our parents, should honor God, and so on. Preposterous, I know. Detail and defense of this outrageous claim are presented later in the book. The reason for writing it is just that the claim has become outrageous — outrageous in the original sense of provoking outrage. People become angry when one asserts the moral law.
This outrage is itself an amazing fact. It needs to be explained. Although I think that an explanation can be provided, the explanation does nothing to diminish the strangeness of the thing explained. We are passing through an eerie phase of history in which the things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard-of doctrines, a time in which the elements of common decency are themselves attacked as indecent. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Although our civilization has passed through quite a few troughs of immorality, never before has vice held the high moral ground. Our time considers it dirty-minded to treat sexual purity as a virtue; unfeeling to insist too firmly that the sick should not be encouraged to seek death; a sign of impious pride to profess humble faith in God. The moral law has become the very emblem of immorality. We call affirming it “being judgmental” and “being intolerant,” which is our way of saying that it has been judged and will not be tolerated.
The whole meaning of morality is a rule that we ought to obey whether we like it or not. If so, then the idea of creating a morality we like better is incoherent. Moreover, it would seem that until we had created our new morality, we would have no standard by which to criticize God. Since we have not yet created one, the standard by which we judge Him must be the very standard that He gave us. If it is good enough to judge Him by, then why do we need a new one? Now any thinker can commit an error in logic. Multiple, matted incoherencies, like Glover’s, seem to call for a different explanation. When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts. The closer to the starting point his swerve, the more likely this explanation becomes. Somewhere in his mind lies a mystery of knowledge which he must hide from himself at all costs. If he presupposes the old morality in the very act of denying it, the lesson is not that the old morality should be denied, but that he is in denial. If he makes humanity God and yet cries out against God’s inhumanity, it is clear who has really been accused.
J. Budziszewski (Boojee-shefski) earned his doctorate from Yale University in 1981. He teaches at the University of Texas in Austin, in the Departments of Government and Philosophy where he specializes in the relations among ethical theory, political theory, and Christian theology. Among a number of other books, he is the author of How to Stay Christian in College, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide