What happens...

...when we have a decision to make? 

One of the worst assumptions that we can make is that we are the ones who best know what we need. We cringe at the idea of someone else imposing what they think is best for us on our lives. We want to be the masters of our fate.  The irony is that we pursue this ideal of self-determination thinking that it leads to freedom.  The truth is in actuality that it begins to enslave us to the whims of the next thing that comes down the pike.  

In all of the discussion about the definition of marriage one of the key arguments is that party A has no right to impose their definition on party B.  Yet once the assumption that individual ideas and rights take precedence over an outside standard, the floodgates are opened.  If we really want to direct our own lives our own way, then we have to give others the same courtesy. 

The issue always comes down to whose "standard" are we to follow.  I get the concern.  People have manipulated "truth" for centuries.  The church has done this repeatedly.  But the church's mistakes do not negate the fact that there is a standard of right and wrong.  (Just because people eat junk food doesn't mean that eating is a bad thing.)  And when we delegate that standard to the feelings and perspectives of the individual we open the door to a room full of cans of worms...

Just a couple of weeks ago an Op-Ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen reflected this very fact.

"Looks like a historic legal battle is shaping up over polygamy, the outcome of which will surely be determined by the Supreme Court of Canada. I understand why, for political reasons, the government feels compelled to fight polygamy tooth and nail, but I suspect the government will lose. The polygamists have what seems to be an unassailable constitutional position. If polygamy is an expression of their religion, and if the participants are all consenting adults, then I don't see how the state can say no." (Read the rest here.)

People may not want you to impose a standard on them.  I get that. Even by writing this I am expressing that I don't want current society to tell me that there is no moral standard beyond the individual's own conscience.  My point is this - to deny that there is a standard and to cut off discussions about what that might be and how we discern it leads us down a path we don't want to go.  Once you lose the idea that truth is something outside of us and replace it with personal "truth" you may find that you are getting more than you bargained for.

It all starts with accepting the fact that we may not be the ones who best know what we need.