By David Hegg
It is clear that, for too many of our SCV neighbors, red lights have been downgraded to suggestions.
Increasingly, as I drive around our fair city, I am shocked at how many of us think nothing of running fully red, bright and clearly visible stoplights.
And before I pontificate on the immaturity and downright wrongness of those who think nothing of entering an intersection under the shining red stoplight, I must confess to having done so myself a time or two.
Why? Because I was in a hurry, or ticked at those in front who were going so slowly that I would have had to stop. Or add to those reasons any number of other rationalizations that convinced my better judgment that going through an intersection when I should or could have stopped was my right.
And besides, no one got hurt, right?
But there is an ethical lesson to be learned here.
Consider this: When you’re teaching your teenage daughter to drive, in anticipation of that awful day when your princess motors off into a dangerous world, are you going to make sure she understands that if she thinks she can make it, it is just fine to run a red light?
But honestly, while you folks who think nothing of running red lights pose a real danger to the rest of us, we have a bigger problem. What other moral stoplights have become suggestions or worse in our culture?
What other potential dangers are we as a people already rationalizing away?
And when will the ruin around us be so visible that we find those old, thrown-out stoplights and re-erect them at the ethical and moral intersections of our lives?
If we take a moment to think about stoplights, stop signs, and all the various prohibitory signs meant to protect us, we’ll find that, as a culture, our society has been steadily redefining the role of cautionary signs and signals.
And, if we’re honest, what we’re seeing in terms of traffic safety can also be said of our moral erosion as a people.
We no longer see moral and ethical stoplights and warning signs as life-savers or warnings to heed about the dangers ahead. We no longer see them as helpful, necessary information. We don’t take them seriously as a reminder that failing to align with the moral and ethical reality they proclaim will lead to disaster.
In fact, many today take prohibitions and moral standards as a challenge to do what is specifically forbidden. Instead, they see it as an old-fashioned suggestion, a relic from a time when adherence to yesterday’s moral and ethical behavior was laudable.
Today, more than ever in my lifetime, we’re seeing the rationalization of radical ideas and the behavior they produce.
We need look no further than the sexual revolution. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, all the stoplights associated with sexual activity were washed away by the tsunami that installed the “modern therapeutic self” on the throne of individual authenticity and freedom.
Almost overnight, our society began running through the stoplights of moral purity. Waiting to enjoy sexual union before marriage was rationalized away as patriarchal bondage. Suddenly, the beauty of marriage built on mutual respect, lifelong love and honor, for better or worse, in joy and in sorrow, was rationalized away under the label of being antithetical to the natural cravings of human evolution.
And, if we look around, we can see that, having run through the ethical and moral stoplights regarding marriage and sexuality, we’ve become a ruined people. Rationalizing away red lights always leads to ruin.
Today, our supposed sexual freedom has brought about the desecration of what it means to be human and of what it means to be family. When sexual activity is unbounded, and all the stoplights warning of unintended consequences are torn down, we find that being human is no longer about being a person with heart, mind, and soul.
Rather, for too many, humanity has become an object to be used for sexual pleasure, then discarded along with its unwanted byproduct, bringing about the ruin of individual human personhood.
All around us, we see the personal intersections where crashes after debilitating crashes have ruined lives after the stoplights were removed. The proliferation of broken homes, of fatherless children, of men and women drinking the saltwater of immoral sexual behavior that only increases their thirst without any chance of quenching it … these would all be seen as the new warning signs if the rhetoric of rationalization had not completely rewritten the formula for common sense in our collective societal conscience.
Look around at our country and the world, and you’ll see the consequences of running through other moral and ethical stoplights. Today, many cheer for known murderers, even as thousands support violent, rebellious protests of all kinds. Watch videos of fire-burning protests among students in France right now, and you’ll see where rationalizing away common civility’s red lights ends up.
So, if you wouldn’t coach your daughter to run red lights on Bouquet and Newhall Ranch, don’t do it yourself. And, just as important, as you look forward to voting, don’t support those who are all about rationalizing away the essential stoplights provided by natural law and historically proven moral and ethical standards.
After all, we have front-row seats in a society where running red lights eventually results in ruin. Look around. Learn. And commit to respecting those ethical absolutes that restrict the passions of the human heart for our good and the well-being of our society.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
