moral relativism

My husband and I have these recurring talks about what we're going to tell our son about God. In between these talks, he lives his life and engages the world around him, and I make a concerted effort to do the same, while carrying on a sometimes-rewarding-often-exhausting internal monologue about these conversations.

It seems that it is very easy to introduce children to a concept of God that they will either vehemently reject or simply abandon as irrelevant later in life. After that, it seems like the question becomes whether the children in question are going to become, like, secular humanists, who manage to care about those around them and construct a self-referential moral code by which to live, or, I don't know -- new atheists? Nihilists? A breed of people for whom compassion and kindness is optional: they may choose to give a shit, if they feel like it, but don't tell them they should.

I've had encounters with people who subscribe to both of these views. The first challenges me to re-examine my own view of God, love, and goodness. The second just makes me feel like I am speaking to someone in a language I thought I understood, but actually don't. At this point in my life, I'm not really able to seriously engage the idea that human beings are essentially all programmed to be self-serving, so that giving up one's career to raise a disabled child, for example, is the moral equivalent of taking pole dancing classes in order to embrace one's sexuality.

I think that it is one thing to say that my moral view is not the only one, and that I don't know everything, and another to say that every set of priorities is equally valid, or that people who act out of concern for others are really just doing what they want, anyway, so it's all the same.

Or, to put it more simply: I think it matters whether you spend your weekends building habitats for humanity or having sexy parties or drinking beer and watching reruns of Archer. This isn't to say that any of those things are unquestionably, unequivocally bad ways to spend one's life. But it matters which of them one chooses to do.

Matters to whom? To God? If that's what I believe, I guess, it makes total sense that the statement is self-negating when presented to someone who doesn't believe in God. And I do understand that it is a serious problem, the way people who believe that there is a God and that that God privileges some life choices over others, also tend to understand God as privileging those choices they prefer to make.

But: I don't think that is the only way of understanding God's will, or even the most common. It's probably both the most comfortable, convenient way, if "God's will" is your jam, and the easiest target for critique, if it's not -- so it ends up being the most visible manifestation of this belief that I Should be doing something particular with my life, that my personal preference is not the best indicator of how I should spend my time.

But if discerning my own will is an ongoing challenge for me, discerning God's will, as I understand it, is probably even more fraught: maybe I would just rather do x than y, but I also want the feeling I get from believing I'm doing the Right Thing. Maybe it is easier for me to justify doing x if I think God wants me to do it.

Maybe. But I don't believe that. And I don't want my child to believe that. I believe it is important to make distinctions in life, especially when our way of communicating information seems bent on eroding our ability to do that (it is news that Obama is tightening gun control; it is also news that Kim Kardashian is pregnant). And to the degree that it is okay to be deliberate in instilling specific values in another human being, I believe he will be happier and the world better if he grows up believing that goodness is a real thing, not just a floating signifier for one's personal preference; that the happiness engendered by ice-cream-sandwich eating is of a different -- yes, lesser -- quality than the happiness engendered by cheering up a friend or donating money to an animal shelter.