Is Morality Just a Matter of Opinion?

It is a popular thing to say and a very hard thing to live.

Test it the way it actually gets tested — not in an argument, but when something is done to you.

Almost nobody lives as though morality were preference.

Say you dislike a piece of music and nobody objects.

Say you dislike torturing children and you are not reporting a taste. You are saying something is wrong, and you expect agreement.

The person who insists all morality is opinion still becomes indignant when they are betrayed, cheated, or lied about.

They do not say "I would have preferred otherwise." They say "you had no right."

That reaction is the argument, and it is nearly impossible to suppress.

If morality is opinion, some sentences stop meaning anything.

Follow it through, because the cost is high.

"That regime was evil" reduces to "I disapprove of that regime."

"Slavery was wrong" reduces to "our culture prefers not to."

Moral progress becomes unintelligible — you cannot improve toward a standard that does not exist, only change.

And the reformers we admire most were, by that account, simply out of step with their societies rather than right.

Most people who say morality is subjective do not actually accept any of these conclusions.

Scripture says the standard is written into you.

Paul makes a striking claim about people who never received God's law.

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness…

That accounts for something otherwise strange.

Cultures separated by oceans and centuries converge on courage, honesty, and care for the weak — not identically, but recognisably.

Scripture says that is not coincidence. It is conscience, and it is standard equipment.

Where the standard comes from.

A rule needs a source, and preference cannot supply one.

If morality is only what a society agreed, then a society can un-agree, and the objector has nothing left to appeal to.

Scripture grounds it in God's own character rather than in a vote, and grounds human dignity in something no majority can revoke.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

That is why a person's worth does not rise and fall with their usefulness.

It also means the standard applies to you.

This is where the subject stops being comfortable.

A real moral law is not only a weapon to point at other people.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Scripture says God will judge, and that the judgment is precisely what makes the moral outrage you already feel legitimate rather than sentimental.

You cannot have real evil and no reckoning.

So is morality just a matter of opinion?

Not when it is your child.

Not when it is your reputation.

Not when it is done to you.

Scripture says the standard is real, that it was written into you, and that its Author will hold every person to it — including the ones who deny it exists.

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

You already know it is not opinion. The question is what you do with the One it belongs to.