Back in May, 2015, then Lieutenant General David Morrison AO, concluded as Australia’s Chief of Army after a 36-year career in the Australian Army. Over those 36 years he served operationally in Bougainville and then in East Timor.
Morrison is a well-respected leader who has taken a highly principled stand for gender equality, and was skilled at leading cultural change in large organisations. He was named Australian of the year in 2016. Probably, Morrison is most famous for a statement he made during a three-minute video speech directed at his army personnel. He strongly condemned aggression towards women after the appalling conduct of a group of officers and senior soldiers. The video was later posted on YouTube and clocked 1.8 million views within weeks. That statement was this:
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”
That statement became a catchphrase used by many other organisations, including Vicpol (Victoria Police). It continues to inspire. The standard you walk past, the standard you see but ignore, is the standard you accept and that you are prepared to tolerate – for better or for worse. And when that happens, where poor behaviour is displayed, standards are steadily lowered. I don’t know whether you have noticed it but our society has for decades walked past behaviours and moral standards that, just years earlier, it would never have tolerated. But this is not new. Not really.
Throughout history society has continued to tolerate this year what it never would have five or ten years earlier. Behaviours, values and morals deemed deviant, offensive, abnormal and even evil, ten years, or more, ago are now accepted without a bat of an eyelid. But not all this is bad. I mean, we once thought that burning witches at the stake was acceptable behaviour. We once thought transporting petty criminals to penal colonies in the antipodes was the proper response. We once thought that forcing unmarried mothers into slave labour in laundries and so forth was a proper response to their ‘waywardness’. We don’t think like this anymore which is a good thing. But that’s the lesser weight on the scales. Standards across the board at every level of society have been lowered to our enduring detriment.
About 30 years ago a United States senator, and former Harvard Professor, Patrick Moynihan, wrote about this trend in society where we lower our standards as a community and soon these become the new norm. In one article in The American Scholar in 1993 he wrote …
“(We’ve) been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatised, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behaviour is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”
While he was reflecting on the cultural malaise of his native North America, his observations apply to most western nations, including Australia. The big question here is, “Why has this happened?” Why have standards once considered benchmarks of decency, respect, and morality been inexorably lowered to unthinkable depths of depravity and immorality with little effective objection, and are now considered normal?
One big reason is the great loss of a moral compass. We no longer have an objective standard of morality as a nation and so we can redefine deviancy whenever we need to. There is no national moral compass that is held as objective and sacrosanct. What once were standards of decency and integrity embraced by the vast majority are no longer. These were once embedded in our legal codes, our cultural fabric and our education systems. We now have a seething mass of competing rights, preferences and strident tribal activism that has become so insistent and intense that it has steadily eroded and then completely overwhelmed previously cherished standards. Little by little this erosion has occurred and standards have been lowered accordingly until there is no original standard left. This is a gradualism that has led to the rapid decay of our society.
I remember clearly the debate around stem cell research in the late 1990s. There was ferocious debate in the Federal Parliament. Proponents of this research, which was then centred on extracting stem cells from human embryos, (or harvesting stem cells, to put it more crudely). The controversy was that human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research involved, at the time, the destruction of human embryos – an ethically shocking downside. Debate raged in the Federal Parliament, with only a very few voting for a bill to legislate to regulate the research – it was defeated.
Yet within just four years this standard was completely reversed. In December 2002, the Federal Parliament passed the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, which regulates the use of ‘excess human embryos created through ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology)’. Under this legislation, human embryo research (and, therefore, the use of embryos for the derivation of human embryonic stem cells) was now permitted. The research may involve only embryos that are ‘excess ART embryos’ – but excesses can be easily created to meet research demand. The standard of the sanctity of all of life was lowered by an overwhelming vote and was justified as being “in the interests of therapeutic outcomes.”
What changed in a few short years? What happened to our moral compass? The very same parliamentarians who vehemently opposed similar legislation were now the loudest proponents. Our national moral compass that protected the sanctity of all human life took a massive hit decades before when abortion on demand became the new standard. From then on the compass didn’t work as well and abortion law has continued to lower standards since. The faulty compass lost its integrity and soon embryonic stem cell research was next. There are hundreds of other examples of lowered standards which reflect back to us that we have accepted moral decline, and continue to so, by redefining deviancy.
But what is happening on a national scale has also happened on an individual level, too. Christians now walk past standards in their own churches that five years ago were unthinkable. Individual believers now accept standards for themselves as, over time, an erosion of righteousness has occurred with each unholy decision, each faith compromising choice, each redefinition of deviancy … and now we’re living at a new, normalised lower standard. This is a slippery slope.
The children and youth at ReChurch are leading a bible verse memorisation campaign at the moment, based on Psalms 119:11 (NIV) “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” And right there is the divine wisdom that ensures our moral compass remains properly calibrated. Of course, it is much more than a moral compass for the believer. Morality is relative which is why standards are so easily redefined, lowered and tolerated. But, holiness is God’s objective standard – and cannot be changed. God’s word teaches that standard and calls us to it.
Ephesians 1:4 (NIV)
“For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.”
What standards do you now walk past for yourself that no longer shock or concern you as a believer?
Think hard on these things.
Ps Milton
[Australian National University alumni files; National Institutes of Health website; Australian Law Reform Commission website]