It just seems right. . .

In another insightful post, Carl Trueman wrote about the campuses of America as the places where the cultural Waterloo will happen.  He is absolutely correct about the role of government in applying Title IX to require the schools to accept the LBGTQ agenda as condition of support, of the role of groups such as NCAA to require those same schools to accept the LBGTQ agenda if they want to participate in intercollegiate sports (and reap the financial payoffs of those sports and media deals), and of the faculties who have made any hesitance or rejection of that LBGTQ agenda impossible for colleague or student.  But his best line was "Will and Grace carried more weight than any church catechism or tome of moral philosophy."

We have entered a time in which not only is there a wholesale rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic but it has been replaced by the most authoritative moral compass of all -- it just does not seem right to me.  In other words, any external or objective moral conscience has been replaced not by another informed rule or guide but by what feels right.  Such feelings are by and large not to the domain of principle or belief but of culture and media.  I write this as Will and Grace is headed back to the air.  The media have not merely replaced one set of moral values for another but have taught us well in something far more difficult to engage in debate and far more destructive -- what feels right to me (the me whose mind is shaped by the world around me).

So, for example, the whole issue of sexuality is treated exactly the same way as issues of life.  The Charlie Gard affair, with a family willing to pay for treatment that government (or insurance) refused to cover, was not allowed to proceed simply because the government (or insurance) could not allow this life to be valued.  In fact, here human life is seen precisely within the context of the value of the life of a pet.  Who among us has not had to "put down a pet" and found that the more humane path than prolonging suffering or the inevitable?  Again, the problem is that this debate is impossible without moral principle to address and since no moral principle applies except it does or does not seem right, there can be no real debate.

Our children, and our adults as well, have had their minds and their consciences shaped less by moral principle, less by Scripture and catechism, and less by liturgy and faith than by the free wheeling arena of feelings, intuition, a personal sense of justice, and the factors that shape or define those feelings.  This is the problem.  Having lost control of our schools, we send our children onto the school bus not merely to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic but what is right and wrong and how right and wrong are defined.  As long as they come home with good grades and do not fight too hard about going to church, we parents have assumed all is well.  It is not.

This is the reason for the rise of home schooling.  It is not primarily that the home is a better arena for learning but that home is about the only place left where learning takes place within the framework of an informed, principled, and external morality and an ethic not fueled by news, entertainment, or a progressive ideal that is intolerant of disagreement.