Makestraightpaths.com examines the teachings of the religious group variously known as “the Family,” “The Family International,” the “Children of God,” or the “Family of Love,” and evaluates these teachings from a Christian perspective.

This page is one of a series examining the Family’s unique views regarding sex.

Freedom, Truth and Relativity

This page consists of material from two authors on the subjects of freedom and God’s inalienable right to mandate ethical boundaries. This material is of special relevance to the Family, which has built a theology based on a rather loose interpretation of the Bible. Family members will often claim the right to interpret the Bible in the way they do, saying that if they have the ‘faith’ for something, then that faith legitimises the doctrine in question.

However, such a standpoint negates God’s sovereignty, giving far more authority to mankind than is delineated in the Scriptures. God retains the ultimate right to decide right and wrong, and while the application of ethics may vary a great deal, the limits of those ethics are fixed, pre-determined by God, based upon His own righteousness.

To illustrate this point, there is a clear Scriptural principle that the family unit is the core element of society. This family unit may vary considerably: there may be many children, few or one; it may consist of dozens of distant relatives living in close proximity to each other, or there may be some distance between them; it may derive its financial support from agriculture, trade or other services. However there are also clear ethical boundaries, imposed by God upon the family unit, beyond which no one may step without incurring the displeasure of God. For example, parents are to ensure that their children are cared for, taught, protected and have their necessities. There are also clear sexual boundaries delineated in Scripture, beyond which no member of a family unit may go, without doing wrong.

Among other issues, the Family has chosen to ignore these sexual boundaries, replacing the clear lines set down by God with a man-centred philosophy, where enough ‘faith’ or enough ‘love’ on the part of the person justifies his deeds.

However, God has not given that right to man. God Himself is the measure of right and wrong and no amount of faith or love can alter his truth.

Freedom Bound

By Christian Overman

Man has been created with a capacity to make choices … as one of the marks of his identity as an image‑bearer of God. Now this must be qualified. For just as in other finite features of man, the choice-making will of man has limits as well. Man, for example, can choose to build an airplane, but he cannot choose to fly without it. A man who steps off the edge of a tall building in his clean Sunday suit will fall to the ground in a bloody heap. The law of gravity is no respecter of persons. What it does for one, it does for all. Man is not “free” to choose whether or not the law of gravity will pull him to the earth, no matter how earnestly he may will it to be otherwise. In other words, he may exercise his free will by jumping off the building, but he is not free to choose the consequences.

Freedom in a world of transcendent law must be understood in terms of boundaries and prescribed limitations. This is true both in the realm of physical law as well as moral law. If there is a personal, moral God in the universe Who has prescribed boundaries to man’s moral choice, then man is not free to choose to violate those laws without suffering the consequences. Although man possesses the power to act contrary to the prescribed moral laws of God, this in no way implies that he has the right to do so. While Cain had the power to murder his brother Abel, it is clear that God did not grant him that right. His measure of freedom did not include the freedom to decide for himself whether his action was right or wrong. Men and women simply do not have the right to do things that are contrary to God’s governmental order. Man does not have a “free choice” to determine what moral code applies to him any more than he has a “free choice” to determine what physical laws apply to him. The moral code for man is not a matter of choice. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He did not present them as the “Ten Suggestions” or the “Ten Options.” He did not tell Moses that the people were free to choose these commandments or to design some of their own that they felt would be better. No. The moral code was prescribed by God for man. Men are not free to break God’s laws. On the contrary, God’s laws when violated break men. To be free in a world of transcendent order is to recognize and subjugate oneself to the prescribed order and, in turn, to function freely within those limits as God has wisely and lovingly designed

The Bible does not hesitate to tell men what they may or may not do, because the God of the Bible is a God of righteous government intent on the highest good of man. His commands are an expression of responsible love for mankind, like the love of a parent who warns a child to keep his hands away from a hot stove. God’s laws are consistent with His love. Those who understand God’s laws to be something wonderful and life‑giving embrace them with joy. They do not resist them or see them as “impositions.” They love them and seek them out. They delight in the law of the Lord and consequently they become like a “tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2‑3).

Only in a world of transcendent moral order does the concept of “doing what we ought” have meaning. For apart from any prescriptive code to live by, man would be strictly on his own to decide what ought or ought not to be, acting as his own god, making his own rules. In such a case, the oughts and ought nots would be determined by the consensus of a group or by the state or by a powerful dictator or simply by individuals who live by their own code no matter what anybody else says. Morality then would be entirely relative to the individual, or to the group, to the time, or to the circumstances, and would vary greatly from situation to situation. In such a world the dividing line between good and evil, true and false, becomes meaningless. After all, who is to say what is good or bad, or morally true or false in a world without an objective standard of goodness and truth by which to judge the thoughts and actions of men? Who is to say how things really “should be”? In a world of relative moral order one man’s opinion is as good as another. Yet the Bible presents a world in which God has clearly drawn the lines for man. He cannot decide for himself what is morally right or wrong. This choice was never given.

The Nature of Truth: Absolute or Relative?

By Christian Overman

Only in a world of transcendent moral order does the concept of absolute moral truth have meaning or validity. This kind of truth is what the Creator has ordained to be true. Anything then that is contrary to what God has determined to be morally true is therefore false. This means that if He has declared something to be evil, then it is indeed evil, and anyone who says it is good or okay is in error, no matter how one may feel about it personally or how much one would like to see it differently. This kind of moral truth is something that is beyond the persuasion of man’s ideas, man’s feelings, and man’s personal or collective will, even as much as the physical truth of gravity. It is objective to man, and man is under obligation to recognize it, accept it for what it is, and live in accordance with it in genuine freedom.

The Law of Yahweh was never subjected to vote, public opinion, or human approval. It was simply non‑negotiable. The human conscience is meant to enforce laws, not to make them. Right and wrong, good and evil, are absolute values which transcend the capricious variations of time, place, and environment, just as they defy definition by relation to human intuition or expediency. These values derive their validity from the divine revelation at Mount Sinai.

Confronting the Challenge of Ethical Relativism

By D. Groothuis

Because the all‑knowing and eternal God is the source and standard of ethics, the moral law is universal, absolute, and objective; it is based on his unchanging, holy character. Although the application of unchanging moral principles may change throughout history, the principles themselves are perpetually binding and irrevocable. God isn’t morally moody.

In the modern Western world, ethical relativism poses a challenge to the biblical basis for ethics. Relativism affirms that moral right and wrong are only socially and individually determined. Ethics is split off from any objective moral order. Cultural norms of morality are relative to particular societies, individuals, and historical periods. What is “right for you” may not be “right for me.” What is wrong today may not be wrong tomorrow. When the idea of moral law is held in disrespect, the notion of sin softens and then dissolves. If all is relative, absolute evil is impossible. If sin is nonsense, then the notion of a Savior from sin is absurd. There is nothing from which to be saved.

One may believe there are moral absolutes and also believe that the best way to reach ethical conclusions is through open discussion, dialogue, and debate. Freedom of religion and speech does not necessitate that there can be no objectively true religion or morality. A free society guarantees your right to be right – and your right to be wrong! I can try to persuade you of the truth of my convictions without using coercion. In fact, I may take it as a moral absolute that I should not coerce those I believe to be absolutely wrong.

The relativist has abandoned the concept of objective moral truth. It is all a matter of opinion because everything is relative. There is, therefore, nothing objective to argue about and no good reason to believe one thing over another. Ethical relativism eliminates the notion of a moral mistake. But this is just as fallacious as saying that every answer on a multiple‑choice test is correct because there is a diversity of answers.

In the end everything is relative‑ but it is relative to God’s absolute standards, not ours.

The Smorgasbord Mentality

By D. Groothuis

Whereas pluralism once meant religious liberty and political diversity, it is now often used to mean a philosophical relativism in which no one “religious preference” is allowed to stand in judgment of others. Each is seen as simply one entree in the social smorgasbord, and all are equally acceptable. To assert or argue otherwise is to be “closedminded” ‑ the mortal sin against modern pluralism.

Christians should applaud our nation’s traditional defense of religious liberty and freedom of speech. We have fought for it and we want to live by it. In this sense, we can say a hearty “Amen” to pluralism. But another pluralism is perversely polluting our thinking as a culture, and logic is one of its first victims. Vagueness, imprecision, and even stupidity surround the notion that religions, world views, or ideologies are “true” and legitimate because they all exist in the same culture. It is a sure sign of intellectual laziness (or suicide) to assert that any belief is “true” for anyone who believes it. Mutually contradictory beliefs cannot logically both be true. We may live next door to a nice Mormon family yet must say that both Christianity and Mormonism cannot be true.

But in the pluralistic situation, religious certainty (“Here I stand,” as Martin Luther said) and well‑thought‑out convictions are often replaced by a noncommittal tentativeness. “Openmindedness” and “tolerance” become the virtues. Philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand saw our modern open‑mindedness as “a call for perpetual skepticism, for holding no firm convictions and granting plausibility to anything.”

Granting plausibility to anything also means granting certainty to nothing. The spirit of relativistic pluralism indicts certainty and firm conviction as closed‑minded. Being closed-minded is to be closed to the plurality of options. How rude! How exclusivistic! But these accusations mean nothing if what we firmly believe is indeed objectively true. Granted that one may be certain of an untruth; but certainty itself is not to be shunned. Misplaced certainty ‑ deception ‑ is error; but certainty should be the passionate goal of every active mind. A certain mind must be closed to some things because if filters out truth from error. It must − to use an unpopular word − discriminate. Rand amplifies this by saying, “An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating in a stagnant vacuum of uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds them.”

It is not necessarily bigoted or unloving to challenge someone’s beliefs. Not to speak the truth is to endorse a lie. The gospel involves radical surgery; it cuts to the heart of the problem, the festering malignancy of sin. Not to wield the scalpel of truth is to condone and support deception. But we must use the scalpel lovingly and not slash away with self‑righteous arrogance. While we can know the truth by God’s grace, our understanding of it is not infallible. The Bible is inerrant, but we are not.

But we don’t need to be infallible to have hope, or to be firm in our conviction of the truth of the uniqueness of Christ and of the gospel. Recognizing the pressures of living in a pluralistic culture can make us more alert yet less defensive to the challenges we face as servants of the truth.

Conclusion

If it is possible to pinpoint one single, fundamental area in which the Family has gone astray, and from which all other errors proceed, it may be this: the Family has rejected the absolute authority of the Bible as God’s prescribed standard of that which is right and wrong, replacing it instead with the words of their past and present leaders, or with the words of “prophecies” received by Family members.

While it is clear that Family members have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and who they follow, it is also clear that replacing biblical authority with their own writings is wrong.

References

Christian Overman, Different Windows, 1988, Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, ILL.

D. Groothuis, Christianity That Counts, 1994, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI.

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