Just about every morning I wake up and think about the people of Ukraine. Though I try to avoid looking at my phone for the first hour of the day, I have been waking and checking it regularly, eager to read of new developments. This morning I listened to Albert Mohler’s edition of The Briefing, which reminded me of a peculiar trend I have seen in the media. The trend is this: individuals, countries, and organizations are almost all unified in their denunciation of Russia’s wrongdoing. This collective condemnation raises the question: does this mean there is such a thing as right and wrong?

In the last few decades, post-modern thought has trained societies to reject moral absolutes (i.e. concrete, black-and-white claims of right and wrong). In fact, many assert that any claim to moral authority or to a recognition of moral truth is simply a tool of power and oppression (critical theory). Thus, what is right for you may not be right for me. What is true for you may not be true for me, and so on. A rejection of moral absolutes may be able to survive in the petri dish of theoretical frameworks, but it cannot survive in war-torn reality.

Continue reading “Russia, Ukraine, and the Reality of Right and Wrong” →