What is "right" and "wrong"? Is what's right for you right for me? Is there a right and wrong for everyone, all the time?
These are difficult questions to discuss in our culture. We live in a society that supports the opinion that each person should make up his or her own morality—that there is no moral truth that applies to everyone. Many of us have been affected by the relativistic outlook that pervades the modern world. Maybe some of us wonder whether there really is an absolute right and wrong for everyone. Or maybe we accept that there is a moral standard for all, but we don't know how to explain our moral convictions in a convincing way. Maybe some of us are afraid of saying something is immoral because we're afraid of offending others or of being labeled intolerant. How do we talk about morality in a relativistic world?
In this small group study program featuring Edward Sri, we'll explore the classical view of morality and find that it's not merely a set of guiding principles for theoretical situations—it is an entire way of life.
What is "right" and "wrong?" Is what's right for you right for me? Is there a right and wrong for everyone, all the time? These are difficult questions to discuss in our culture. We live in a society that supports the opinion that each person should make up his or her own morality—that there is n...
Each one of us is created for love. The good news is that we don't have to figure out how to live up to this purpose on our own. In this session, we'll discover that there really is a set of skills that will make us capable of living our relationships well and eventually building up a great socie...
Do you think that you are free to live your life to the fullest and achieve ultimate happiness? In the last session we examined the virtues as the skills necessary to live our relationships well. These same skills make us truly free. In this session we'll look at what real freedom means and disco...
What do you do when you want to learn how to do something really well? Do you get along by trial and error, with nothing to help you except your own determination to succeed? Or do you find someone to teach you, read books on the subject, or perhaps watch a tutorial? We generally learn best when ...
In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul reminds us that we are to "[speak] the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). If we try to share the truth without love, we are very likely to do more harm than good.
In this session, we'll discuss how the goal of engaging with moral relativism is to share a be...
When we love people, we want the best for them—we don't want them to make choices that will lead to them getting hurt or being unhappy. But how do we find the right balance between expressing concern and sounding judgmental? And what can we do when someone accuses us of being intolerant just beca...
Over the course of this study we have explored the classical view of morality and compared it to a relativistic worldview. But it's one thing to lay the philosophies out side by-side for comparison, and it is quite another thing to be in the midst of the difficulties and brokenness of this world ...
Challenging our relativistic culture is not easy. We must have a clear understanding of the classical view of morality and the importance of virtue and friendship, a picture of what real freedom looks like, and a vision for learning the art of living. And most importantly: the guiding and unifyin...
