Relativism

...my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

~Psalm 42:10

I hear it all the time. "Religion is like blind men describing an elephant," or "how can you say your interpretation of G-d is correct when there are so many" or variations on that theme. It's all relative, ethics are relative, G-d is relative. Or that there is no G-d at all, and that I am just spouting some leftover of an ancient iron-age tribal superstition that has been superseded in our modern, "enlightened" age which is so glorious in its materialistic wisdom.

And to such people I say: no, the truth is not that I do not know or that no one knows. 

The truth is that YOU do not know AND YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Because if you knew, what you knew would change you. Your sense of your property over your own life and actions would be challenged.

This is the most fundamental faith of our culture: I do what I want.  I own me. No person or god does. Even though everything is owning us all the time. If only we truly understood what we were asking for when we ask to own ourselves, we would beg G-d to own us instead.

And you can no longer do altogether what you want if there is a universal impartial judge of everything you do and want. Make no mistake: ethics and individualism do not mix. To believe in universal objective ethics is to believe that there is something that has some prior right over our own behavior that supersedes our own rights. And if it has some prior right, in the end it has every prior right because every action has ethical implications.

Now I want to make clear that just because I understand G-d's will concerning human behavior does not mean I somehow understand the mind of G-d completely. G-d is sovereign, He decides as He decides and He is beyond human comprehension. The Eternal is not defined by men. If anything, I have a more modest opinion of human knowledge than most. People are very selective in their opinions of the value of human knowledge: that it is good for science and making money and creating human power, but for religious and moral thinking it is somehow worthless. The Eternal is not confined by human concepts, but His will for us is extremely clear and would be unambiguous to everyone except for the corruption and evil of the human heart. Do good. Do not do evil. Resist evil.

But of course we want to own ourselves, we all want to be the boss. G-d would interfere with that.

And so our government kills babies along with terrorists in drone strikes, we treat animals in horrific ways in the name of our agriculture and food, we have abortions, we have crime and drugs, we are tearing up the land and poisoning the air and seas, heating the atmosphere, we oppress our fellow man in the name of capitalism, we spread porn and the objectification of women, we are all objectified by this system, actual Nazis march in our streets, the rich go on consuming and concentrating wealth and the poor are crushed, human arrogance is without limits, and all this goes on and on in the name of the Sovereign Self. The Sovereign Self is murdering ourselves and the world.

And you may ask, "where is your God?"

He sees. He knows. He is watching.

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It is not human arrogance to submit to G-d's will and urge other human beings to do the same. It is human arrogance NOT to.

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If people really believed in the value of life, the holiness of life, they could deduce most of  G-d's commands to us by simple reason. But they don't. They believe in the value of themselves only.  They are unholy because they regard life as unholy. Their unholiness is prior to and forms whatever they may think about the matter; what they think and what they will accept is determined first by the fact that they are unholy. Of course they think that G-d is nebulous and ambiguous and uncertain and far away, because if He weren't they couldn't be sovereign selves. Or rather, they still could be, but they would have to become aware of the consequences.