True freedom
Part 4: We have paid a high price: we wanted joyful liberation and created a horrible mess
The second freedom the atheist valued was to choose their own moral code. In response, the first thing I note is that claiming the freedom to choose your own moral code very easily becomes a slippery slope to immorality. This is just to do with human nature. We are so adept at justifying our own behaviour, so clever at manipulating the facts to suit us, so quick to see faults in others but slow to spot them in ourselves, so very easily biased, that it is extremely likely that relying entirely on our own judgement will become a mealy-mouthed self-justification for harmful behaviour. In this respect, I become sceptical of the atheist claim that ditching God was a genuine principled action to achieve higher values than a supposed restrictive and oppressive God was allowing, and it was, instead, an attempt to ditch the voice of conscience holding us to high standards. The believer will, of course, say that the atheist has got an inadequate picture of God, so the God they are rejecting is, in fact, a false caricature of God, which the believer themselves rejects. Atheists have, in effect, set up God as an Aunt Sally to make it easy to knock down. It is true, of course, that there can be very principled grounds for atheism, and also that believers have often distorted their own picture of God in ways that can have very negative effects. For now, I simply note the psychological motivation for the atheist to ditch God in order to do things that they would not be able to do if they still felt that God was there and that such a God disapproved of their actions. It is certainly a complex task to review the multiple effects, positive and negative, of atheist society’s decision to reject God. For now, I simply challenge the atheist assumption that rejecting a value system based on belief in God in order to attain the complete freedom to make up your own moral standards actually produces a positive effect overall.
The third freedom was to value sexual freedom above all others. This is the price we pay: in order to gain greater sexual freedom we have to abandon moral values that would prevent us from getting what we want. Again, I must resist the traditional religious negativity to sexuality; perhaps sexual freedom is a good thing – at least to some degree, and humanity has been longing for generations to have more sexual freedom. However, especially given what we’ve mentioned above about our ability to fool ourselves in moral matters, and our understanding of how corruption has a creeping destructive effect, we should be fully alert to the possibility that our desire for freedom will lead us astray. Within our current focus here of paying a high price, it is clear that we have had to abandon many moral values to do with modesty, decency, privacy, intimacy, as well as our commitment to faithfulness in relationships. We have commercialised sex and treated the body as a commodity – and clearly this applies overwhelmingly to women. The pornographisation of society has distorted relationships between men and women, with women under huge pressure to play out the fantasies of their partners. The breakdown of marriage and the unhappiness from multiple failed relationships is a severe burden to individuals and fractures society. The “safety-net” industry of abortion has become a necessary corollary to cope with the “mistakes” that our human use of sexual freedom causes. We have paid a high price for it.
Spiritual Devotion 