day no. 16,246: you cannot crowdsource morality

Isaiah 45:19-20

I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right. Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge 

A moral standard requires a moral standard Giver. Contact sports require a Referee, if you will. There must be someone who defines and enforces the moral order. Without a moral Orderer, you do not have morality. It is immoral to call something moral without a standard by which you can measure it. 

In an effort to maintain a moral standard without God, western civilization has created the myth of secular neutrality. But, as it turns out, you cannot crowdsource morality. If you make public opinion your standard, you are married to a measuring stick that must be constantly redefined by whatever the crowd is currently into or against.

If you crowdsource a standard, what you get isn’t morality and it isn't orderly. It isn't clear or consistent. In other words, it is chaos. And you cannot measure anything in an ever changing world. Stability and order are qualities of goodness and the crowd cannot have goodness as their communal source of integration and determination without appealing to Someone superintending the crowd.

Morality is a standard that comes from eternal transcendence not local preference.

You cannot create a standard that can hold from people who don't hold still, Societies ebb and flow as fads come and go. And the standards they set are as fickle as the fashions on their racks. What's in season is often at enmity with what was en vogue at last year's fashion week.

“Our Lord never nurses our prejudices, He mortifies them, runs clean athwart them. We imagine that God has a special interest in our particular prejudices; we are quite sure that God will never deal with us as we know He has to deal with other people. 'God must deal with other people in a very stern way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right.' We have to learn — 'Not a bit of it!' Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately wiping them out. It is part of our moral education to have our prejudices run straight across by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him; there is only one thing He wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.” — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Morality and stability either come from without or they do not come. We cannot muster enough resolve to build anything upon. Our collective merits cannot hold anything up and the next generation will reveal just how unstable mere sentiments can be. 

Moral order is achieved through our surrender, not our insistence.