The Moral Abyss: because there's no such thing as neutral

A prominent headteacher has described teenage culture as a “moral abyss”.

What’s interesting, and important, is that Dr Helen Wright didn’t describe the culture her girls are growing up in as a “moral vacuum” (a phrase we hear, inside and outside churches, fairly often). And so Dr Wright is, probably without realizing, touching on a crucial and often-forgotten aspect of the biblical doctrine of sin:

When we turn away from God as our moral authority, we always turn towards something else.

There’s no such thing as neutral—nature abhors a moral vacuum. Our morality is always directed and defined by something. That something should be God. If it isn’t, it must be something else—and the something else won’t work.

So Jeremiah talks about turning away from the “spring of living water” (God) and turning to try to drink from “cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2 v 13). In Romans 1 we find that the “turning to” is part of God’s judgment for “turning away” from Him (Romans 1 v 28).

We see this most starkly of all at Jesus’ trial. The crowd demand for Christ to be crucified, and ask for Barabbas, a murderer, to be released to them (Luke 23 v 18-25).

They don’t only not choose the Lord of life—in doing so, they do choose a bringer of death.

In the UK, we seem to be further from Christian morality than we have been for centuries.

And we haven’t replaced Christ’s authority with a vacuum, where we’re free to choose how to live, what morality to breathe. We find ourselves in an abyss, where we’re trapped by the consequences of what we longed for, damaged by the very culture that we chose.

So far, Dr Wright, I’m right with you. But how sad that your conclusion is that “only education could break the cycle”. Education can do many things. But it can’t save us from ourselves, our choices, our sinful society.

For that, Dr Wright, you need forgiveness for the “turning away”. You need to be “turned to” a God-directed morality and culture.

You need the Son to die and rise for you, you need the Spirit to dwell and work in you. You need the gospel.

Education is not the saviour from the moral abyss. God is.